Murray v. Louisiana

Citations

• 163 U.S. 101
• 16 S. Ct. 990
• 41 L. Ed. 87
• 1896 U.S. LEXIS 2249

Syllabus

<p>Congress has not, by Rev. Stat. § 641, authorized a removal of a prosecution from a state court upon an allegation that jury commissioners or other subordinate officers had, without authority derived from the constitution and laws of the State, excluded colored citizens from juries because of their race. Said section does not embrace a case in which a right is denied by judicial action during a trial, or in the sentence, or in the mode of executing the sentence. For such denials arising from judicial action after a trial commenced the remedy lies in the revisory power of the higher courts of the State, and ultimately in the power of review which this court may exercise over their judgments whenever rights, privileges or immunities claimed under the Constitution or laws of the United States are withheld or violated. The denial of, or inability to enforce in the judicial tribunals of a State, rights secured by any law providing for the equal civil rights of citizens of the United States, to which § 641 refers, and on account of which a criminal prosecution may be removed from a state court, is primarily, if not exclusively, a denial of such rights, or an inability to enforce them, resulting from the constitution or laws of the State, rather than a denial first made manifest at and during the trial of a case.</p> <p>Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, and Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U. S. 565, affirmed to the above points.</p> <p>Rulings of the court below refusing writs of subpoena duces tecum held to work no injury to defendant.</p> <p>The state court, on the trial of the plaintiff in error for murder, permitted to be read in evidence the evidence of a witness taken in the presence of the accused at a preliminary hearing, read to and signed by the witness, the prosecuting officer alleging that the witness was beyond the jurisdiction of the court, and his attendance could not be procured. The bill of exceptions to Its allowance was not presented to the trial judge for