Moore v. Dempsey

Moore v. Dempsey
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 9, 1923 Decided February 19, 1923
Full case name	Frank Moore, et al. v. E. H. Dempsey, Keeper of Arkansas State Penitentiary
Citations	261 U.S. 86 (more) 43 S. Ct. 265; 67 L. Ed. 543; 1923 U.S. LEXIS 2529
Prior history	Defendants convicted, Phillips County, Arkansas; affirmed, Arkansas Supreme Court; certiorari denied, U.S. Supreme Court; petition for habeas corpus granted, Pulaski County, Arkansas; vacated, Arkansas Supreme Court; petition for habeas corpus denied, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas
Holding
Mob-dominated trials were a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Federal courts were furthermore duty-bound to review habeas corpus petitions that raised claims of discrimination in state trials, and to order the release of unfairly convicted defendants if the alleged violations were found to be true. Eastern District of Arkansas reversed and remanded.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Holmes, joined by Taft, McKenna, Van Devanter, Brandeis, Butler
Dissent	McReynolds, joined by Sutherland
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Moore et al. v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86 (1923), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled 6-2 that the defendants' mob-dominated trials deprived them of due process guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reversed the district court's decision declining the petitioners' writ of habeas corpus. This case was a precedent for the Supreme Court's review of state criminal trials in terms of their compliance with the Bill of Rights.

Moore v. Dempsey was the first case to come before the court in the 20th century related to the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice systems of the South, where they lived in a segregated society that had disenfranchised them. The case resulted from prosecution of twelve men for the death of a white man associated with the Elaine Race Riot in Phillips County, Arkansas. A white railroad security employee died on September 30, 1919 after shots were exchanged outside a church where a black tenant farmers union was meeting. With rumors of black insurrection, Governor Charles Hillman Brough led a detachment of federal troops into the rural county, arresting hundreds of blacks. Other blacks were allowed to be in public only with military passes. In the week after the shooting, roving bands of whites and federal troops killed upwards of 200 blacks.

In the aftermath, a grand jury made up of local landlords and merchants decided who would be indicted. Those blacks willing to testify against others and who agreed to work on whatever terms their landlords set for them were let go; those who had been labeled ringleaders or who were judged unreliable were indicted. According to the affidavits later supplied by the defendants, many of the prisoners had been beaten, whipped or tortured by electric shocks to extract testimony or confessions and threatened with death if they later recanted their testimony. Indictments were brought against 122 defendants, including 73 for murder.