Supreme Court of the United States, 1880

The Supreme Court held that the West Virginia statute limiting jury service to white male citizens denied a colored defendant, tried for murder before a jury from which all Black men were excluded by law, the equal protection of the laws secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, because the constitution of the jury is an…

The Supreme Court denied the petitions of J. D. Coles, a Virginia county judge indicted under section 4 of the Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875 for excluding Black citizens from his county's jury lists on account of race, and the companion petition of the State of Virginia, for writs of habeas corpus and certiorari.