Supreme Court of the United States, 1896

The Supreme Court affirmed Allen's third conviction and death sentence for the murder of Philip Henson, rejecting nine groups of assignments of error aimed at the trial judge's lengthy jury instructions.

The Court upheld Louisiana's requirement that railway passengers use separate accommodations based on race, concluding that the statute applied only to intrastate travel and was not inconsistent with the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendments.

Justice Shiras delivered the Court’s opinion holding that Congress may authorize exclusion, deportation, and detention necessary to accomplish those purposes, but may not impose imprisonment at hard labor upon aliens through summary proceedings without the protections of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

The Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s denial of a habeas corpus petition, holding that the Fifth Amendment grand‑jury clause and the Fourteenth Amendment due‑process clause do not apply to prosecutions by the Cherokee Nation, that questions of tribal grand‑jury composition are matters for tribal courts, and…