Brown v. New Jersey

Citations

175 U.S. 172
20 S. Ct. 77
44 L. Ed. 119
1899 U.S. LEXIS 1555

Syllabus

Sections 75 and 76, of Chapter 237 of the Laws of New Jersey of 1898, contained the following provisions: “Sec. 75. The Supreme Court, Court of Oyer and Terminer and Court of Quarter Sessions, respectively, or any judge thereof, may on motion in behalf of the State, or defendant in any indictment, order a jury to be struck for the trial thereof, and upon making said order the jury shall be struck, served and returned in the same manner as in case of struck juries ordered in the trial of civil causes, except as herein otherwise provided.” “Sec. 76.' When a rule for a struck jury shall be entered in any criminal case, the court granting such rule may, on motion of the prosecutor, or of the defendant, or on its own motion, select from the persons qualified to serve as jurors in and for the county in which any indictment was found, whether the names of such persons appear on the sheriff’s book of persons qualified to serve as jurors in and for such county or not, ninety-six names, with their places of abode, from which the prosecutor and the defendant shall each strike twenty-four names in the usual way, and the remaining forty-eight names shall be placed by the Sheriff in the box in the presence of the court, and from the names so placed in the box the jury shall be drawn in the usual way.” By sections 80 and 81 it was provided that where there is no struck jury, and the party is on trial for murder, he is entitled to twenty peremptory challenges, and the State to twelve; but in the case of a “struck jury” each party is allowed only five peremptory challenges: Held, (1) That these provisions are not in conflict with the Constitution of the United States; (2) That the highest court of the State of New Jersey having held that they are not in conflict with the constitution of that State, this court is foreclosed on that question by that decision.

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1899 United States Supreme Court case

Brown v. New Jersey, 175 U.S. 172 (1899), is a United States Supreme Court case which held that the use of a struck jury did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment .

Background

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On October 5, 1898, James Brown was found guilty of murder in the court of oyer and terminer in Hudson County , New Jersey . He appealed to the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals , which affirmed the verdict. The case was remanded to the trial court, and Brown was sentenced to death by hanging . Brown was tried and sentenced under a state statute which provided for a struck jury and limited the defendant to five peremptory challenges . If tried by an ordinary jury, the state allowed for twenty peremptory challenges. The decision to use a struck jury was under the discretion of the court. Brown petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the law as violative of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment in the US.

The Supreme Court's decision

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Justice David J. Brewer delivered the opinion of the Court. Brewer concluded that the state had wide latitude in prescribing the rules of court procedure:

The state has full control over the procedure in its courts, both in civil and criminal cases, subject only to the qualification that such procedure must not work a denial of fundamental rights, or conflict with specific and applicable provisions of the Federal Constitution.

Brewer held that the due process clause had not been violated since the use of struck juries could be traced to the common law . Nor did the statute deny to the plaintiff equal protection of the law since it provided for an equal number of peremptory challenges in all cases tried by a struck jury.

External links

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Works related to Brown v. New Jersey at Wikisource
Text of Brown v. New Jersey, 175 U.S. 172 (1899) is available from: Findlaw Internet Archive (docket files) Justia Library of Congress OpenJurist

United States Fourteenth Amendment case law

Due Process Clause

Equal Protection Clause

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How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

“The right to challenge is the right to reject, not to select, a juror.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Brewer, Harlan

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Cited by

129 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

15 cases in this archive are cited by this case.

Other cases named Brown v. New Jersey

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