Page:Bone v. State (1939).pdf/8

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BONE v. STATE.
[198

tematically excluded from . . . service in the Parish of St. John . . . solely because of their race or color, the indictment should have been quashed." Exclusion from grand or petit jury service on account of race is forbidden by the fourteenth amendment. In addition to the safe-guards of the fourteenth amendment, Congress has provided that "No citizen possessing all other qualifications . . . shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court of the United States, or of any State, on account of race, color or previous conditionof servitude; . . ."

There are cited in support of these announcements of the rule the cases of Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L. Ed. 664; Carter v. Texas, 177 U.S. 442, 20 S. Ct. 687, 44 L. Ed. 839; Martin v. Texas, 200 U.S. 316, 50 L. Ed. 497, 26 S. Ct. 338.

In the cited case the court also annomiced that "his evidence was offered to show that Louisiana—acting through its administrative officers—had deliberately and systematically excluded negroes from jury service because of race, in violation of the laws and Constitutions of Louisiana and the United States."

There was cited by the court in this regard, the cases of Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 55 S. Ct. 579, 79 L. Ed. 1074; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370, 26 L. Ed. 567; Carter v. Texas, supra; Hale v. Kentucky, 303 U.S. 613, 57 S. Ct. 753, 82 L. Ed. 1050.

We think it perhaps unnecessary to do more than cite and call attention to these numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court for the reason that there is no substantial dispute as among lawyers generally as to the effect of these laws and their substantial requirements, nor is there any substantial dispute among the courts, as the general proposition, about the effect of the constitutional provisions as set forth in Amendment No. 14 or acts of Congress in relation thereto. The only difficulty or trouble arises in the practical application of these well-known, and we think universally recognized, propositions of law. The case at bar forms a somewhat startling example. The objection made and