Strauder v. West Virginia

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Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States about racial discrimination and United States constitutional criminal procedure . Strauder was the first instance where the Supreme Court reversed a state court decision denying a defendant 's motion to remove his criminal trial to federal court pursuant to Section 3 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 .

Its holding , along with those of its companion cases of Virginia v. Rives (1880) and Ex parte Virginia (1880) established the proposition that it is a denial to criminal defendants of the equal protection of the law for a state to exclude persons from service on a grand or petit jury on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These holdings do not guarantee criminal defendants that the grand or petit juries involved in their case will be composed either in full or in part of members of a non-white defendant's race (as was sought in the Rives case), but held instead that equal protection demands only that potential jurors could not be excluded from jury service on account of their race. Additionally, the Supreme Court did not exercise its power of judicial review to strike down West Virginia's juror qualifications statute as unconstitutional, as Strauder and his attorneys did not seek such a remedy. Instead, Strauder desired his case be removed to federal court, where he expected he could receive a _venire _ that included freedmen.

In Strauder and the companion cases, the Supreme Court also issued a narrow interpretation of the removal provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 . For a case to be removed to federal court, the denial of rights must occur in the constitution or laws of the state, or in other pre-trial actions of state officials, that state courts are without power to remedy —that is, it held that the Civil Rights Act required removal be based on objectively discernible facts about the denial of rights (such as the exclusion of freedmen from the jury pool by Judge Coles in Ex parte Virginia, despite Virginia law allowing freedmen to serve as jurors, an act in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 ), and not the defendant's subjective beliefs about potential outcomes of a state-administered trial. The Supreme Court provided that the remedy for denials of equal protection occurring during trial can be found in the appeals process ; only those cases where equal rights cannot be enforced before state judicial bodies are appropriate to be removed to federal court.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Procedural history

  • 2.1 First trial

  • 2.2 First appeal

  • 2.3 Second trial

  • 2.4 Second appeal

• 3 Decision

  • 3.1 Dissent

• 4 Subsequent case history

  • 4.1 Federal court

  • 4.2 Rearrest

• 5 Impact

• 6 See also

• 7 References

• 8 Further reading

• 9 External links

Background

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On the morning of April 18, 1872 in Wheeling, West Virginia , Taylor Strauder, a former slave, allegedly murdered his wife Anna by bludgeoning her to death with two strikes from a hatchet handle to the left side of her head after having argued with her through the night about an allegation of her marital infidelity. Strauder's step-daughter, Fannie Green, supposedly witnessed the murder, and alleged that Strauder threatened Green to remain quiet, lest she too be killed. Strauder allegedly fled and was arrested in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 25, 1872.

Procedural history

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Following the passage and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 . Under section 3 of the act, Congress provided to defendants in state trials the right to remove to federal court "all causes, civil or criminal," arising under state or municipal laws wherein "any of the rights secured to [the defendant] by the first section of this act" were denied or could not be enforced. Later fearing that the Thirteenth Amendment might not provide a sufficient legal basis for the Civil Rights Act, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment . Congress then passed the act of May 31, 1870, of which section 18 reenacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Moreover, section 16 of the 1870 act also provided that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory in the United States... to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens[.]"

First trial

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Upon his return to Wheeling, Strauder appeared before the circuit court for Ohio County, West Virginia and received a preliminary examination before Judge Thayer Melvin . The court assigned George O. Davenport and Blackburn B. Dovener as Strauder's counsel, and set his arraignment for the May 1872 term of the circuit court. On May 20, 1872 the grand jury returned an indictment for murder in the first degree. Strauder demurred the indictment as defective, arguing the facts alleged did not rise to murder in the first degree, and that the panel from which the grand jury was selected excluded non-whites; the court overruled the arguments. Counsel for Strauder then attempted to remove the case to the U.S. district court for West Virginia, but this too was overruled. Strauder then pleaded not guilty by reason of temporary insanity and asked the court for a continuance to the October term, which was granted. At the next term, Strauder received a second continuance to the May 1873 term.

During the first continuance, the State of West Virginia adopted a new state constitution in August 1872. The state legislature reconstructed the state courts and passed a criminal procedure bill on April 3, 1873 providing criminal defendants with preliminary examinations to occur at the count

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