Caldwell v. State of Texas (137 U.S. 692)/Opinion of the Court

by Melville Fuller

United States Supreme Court

137 U.S. 692

Caldwell  v.  State of Texas

By the fourteenth amendment the powers of the states in dealing with crime within their borders are not limited, but no state can deprive particular persons or classes of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law. Law, in its regular course of administration through courts of justice, is due process, and, when secured by the law of the state, the constitutional requisition is satisfied. 2 Kent, Comm. 13. And due process is so secured by laws operating on all alike, and not subjecting the individual to the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government, unrestrained by the established principles of private right and distributive justice. Bank v. Okely, 4 Wheat. 235, 244. The power of the state must be exerted within the limits of those principles, and its exertion cannot be sustained when special, partial, and arbitrary. Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 535, 4 Sup. Ct. Rep. 111, 292. No question of repugnancy to the federal constitution can be fairly said to arise when the inquiry of the state court is directed to the sufficiency of an indictment in the ordinary administration of criminal law, and the statutes authorizing the form of indictment pursued are not obviously violative of the fundamental principles above adverted to. The case before us is destitute of the elements of a federal question, since there was nothing special, partial, or arbitrary, or in violation of fundamental principles, in the law of the state in accordance with which the indictment was found, and as applied in passing upon its sufficiency. The plaintiff in error was not denied the equal protection of the laws, nor deprived of the process due by the law of the land. The constitution of Texassecured to him the right to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against him, and the state court determined, as was its province, that this demand was satisfied by the indictment in question. His objections were in effect to the technical sufficiency of the indictment, but not that his rights had been determined by any other rules than those applied to the rest of the community, nor that the court had don mo re than commit errors in the disposition of a subject within its jurisdiction. No title, right, privilege, or immunity under the constitution of the United States was specially set up or claimed in the trial court, or in the court of appeals, except as the petition for rehearing may be held to have constituted such claim. The validity of the existence of the court, and its jurisdiction over the crime named in the indictment, and over the person of the defendant, were not drawn in question, nor was the validity of the laws of the state, except after judgment and upon the petition for a rehearing. The usual rule is that a contention thus delayed comes too late, but if this should be treated as an exception, on the ground that the court of appeals permitted argument on the question and delivered a decision and opinion upon it, yet, where the misconception of the application of the fourteenth amendment is so obvious, we are unwilling to retain the cause for further argument, and may avail ourselves of the rule ordinarily applicable to the after-thoughts of counsel. The writ of error is dismissed.

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