Page:Bone v. State (1939).pdf/7

and inferior courts of all the states. The case referred to is Hugh Pierre, Petitioner, v. State of La., 306 U.S. 354, 59 S. Ct. 536, 83 L. Ed. 757. It is true in the Pierre Case evidence was offered tending to show the systematic exclusion of members of the colored race from the grand jury and petit jury panels. The motion was filed in that case in due time, praying that the grand jury and petit jury panels be quashed. The motion was not essentially different from the one filed in the case under consideration. The evidence is not set out with any degree of detail in the opinion. The court, however, announces the fact that the Louisiana courts had decided the issues of fact contrary to what the Supreme Court believed was justified under the evidence, and for that reason the Supreme Court of the United States proceeded to settle the facts first and then announced its conclusions of law applicable, as this was in itself a federal question as held in Carter v. Texas, 177 U.S. 442, 20 S. Ct. 687, 44 L. Ed. 839. In order that this Louisiana case may be appreciated, we think it should be said that the trial court sustained the motion and quashed the petit jury, but refused to quash the grand jury panel or to enter an order of quashal of the indictment. The Louisiana Supreme Court, in what we consider a very able announcement of its position, held that inasmuch as an indictment found by the grand jury was no evidence of guilt, but that it was a mere charge that a crime had been committed, sufficient to put the defendant upon trial, the defendant suffered no substantial prejudice by reason of the fact that he had been indicted and charged with the commission of a crime by a grand jury, from which members of the negro race had been systematically excluded. Mr. Justice BLACK, in commenting upon these conditions said: "And the State concedes here, as the Supreme Court of Louisiana pointed out in its opinion in this ease, that it is especially provided in the (Louisiana) law prescribing the method of drawing grand and petit jurors to serve in both civil and criminal cases that there shall be no distinction made on account of race, color or previous condition (of servitude)," and "If . . . (qualified) members of the negro . . . race . . . have been sys-