Farrow v. State

• Citation: 91 Miss. 509,45 So. 619
• Decision Date: 17 February 1908
• Docket Number: 12823
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Mississippi
• Parties: ARTHUR FARROW v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

45 So. 619

91 Miss. 509

ARTHUR FARROW v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

No. 12823

Supreme Court of Mississippi

February 17, 1908

FROM the circuit court of Tate county, HON. JAMES B. BOOTHE Judge.

Farrow appellant, a negro, was jointly indicted with another negro for the murder of a white man. Appellant was tried separately, convicted, sentenced to suffer death, and appealed to the supreme court.

The opinion of the court states the facts.

Judgment reversed and cause remanded.

Phil A Rush, for appellant.

It is the common knowledge of all persons who live under a republican form of government that the rights guaranteed by the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution are inter-dependent. No person can have his personal liberty under the first of these without his civil liberty and rights under the second, and no person can have his civil rights under the second so long as he, and his class of people, those in sympathy with him and conditioned as he is, are debarred from all participation in the administration of the law. Without extending this line of reasoning, it must follow that where a county board of supervisors, in selecting a list of persons qualified for jury service, knowingly and in accordance with a well established practice, and for the purpose of depriving negro citizens of participating in the administration of justice and intentionally, keep off the names of negroes from such list, an indictment returned by a grand jury drawn from such jury list should be quashed. Such action has the necessary effect of denying to a negro defendant, such as was the appellant, the "equal protection of the law."

It is not contended that a negro or negroes should have been upon the grand jury. The contention for the appellant is that negroes should not purposely have been excluded from the grand jury list in order that there should be white men alone upon the grand jury. The omission to list any names of negroes for jury service was not done accidentally, but wittingly, in accordance with and in furtherance of a long established custom.

George Butler, assistant attorney-general, for appellee.

The facts stated in the motion to quash the indictment are doubtless sufficient to present the federal question, but the burden of proving the facts set up in the motion rested upon appellant, and should have been sustained by distinct evidence. Smith v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 592; 40 L.Ed. 1082; Farrance v. Florida, 188 U.S. 520; 48 L.Ed. 372; Martin v. Texas (U. S.), 50 L.Ed. 479.

In this case there was no evidence offered by appellant in behalf of the motion to quash the indictment. It will not do to say that the alleged facts set forth in the motion were admitted as true by the district attorney.

The order of the trial court on the two motions of the appellant viz., the motion to quash the indictment and the motion to quash the special venire, shows conclusively that the district attorney admitted only the truth of the alleged facts set forth in the motion to quash the venire, and for that reason the motion to quash the venire was sustained. ...