Supreme Court Justices Make Clear Decision in Rawlings Case
The Ruling in the Rawlings Case Is One of Wide Importance, Holding That the Exclusion of Names of Professional Men from Jury Box Is Not Unconstitutional
(From Tuesday’s Daily)
In delivering the opinion of the court in the Rawlings case and explaining the reasons for it, Mr. Justice Holmes, after citing the facts in the case, said:
“When the grand jury was organized, each of the accused filed a written challenge to the array on the grounds that while there are in Lowndes County many lawyers, many preachers, many ministers, many doctors, many engineers, and firemen of railroad trains, and many dentists, as many as ten of each class named or other large numbers of each of said class, all citizens and residents of said county, and being competent and qualified jurors as to age and uprightness, experience and intelligence, and as to all qualifications of a juror, yet each and every member thereof in the county is expressly and purposely excluded from the grand jury service by the commissioners failing and refusing to put any of said names in the box so that not being in the box, they cannot be legally drawn for service.
“This is a mistake.
“At the argument before this court,” continued Justice Holmes, “the not uncommon misconception seemed to prevail that the requirement of due process of law took up the amendment for the purposes of the case so that this court would revise the decision of the state court that the local provisions had been complied with. This is a mistake. If the state constitution and laws, as construed by the state court, are consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, we can go no further. The only question for us is whether a state could authorize the type of proceedings adopted, if that procedure were prescribed by its constitution in express terms.
Not Result of Prejudice
“When the question is narrowed to its proper form, the answer does not need much discussion. The nature of the classes excluded was not such as was likely to affect the conduct of the members as jurymen or to make them act otherwise than those who were drawn would act.
The exclusion was not the result of race or class prejudice. It does not even appear that any of the defendants belonged to any of the excluded classes. The ground of omission no doubt was that the business of the persons omitted was such that either they would have been entitled to claim exemption or that probably they would have been excused. Even when persons liable to jury duty under the state law are excluded, it is no ground for challenge of the array if a sufficient number of unexceptionable persons are present. But if the state law itself should exclude certain classes on the bona fide ground that it was for the good of the community that their regular work should not be interrupted, there is nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent it. The exemption of lawyers, ministers of the gospel, doctors, and engineers of railroad trains, in short, substantially the exemption complained of, is of longstanding and not uncommon in the United States. It could not be denied that the state properly could have excluded these classes had it seen fit, and that undeniable proposition ends the case. Judgment affirmed.”