Supreme Court of the United States
Akins v. Texas
June 4, 1945325 U.S. 398
Summary
The Supreme Court affirmed the Texas conviction, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require proportional racial representation on grand juries and that the petitioner failed to show purposeful racial discrimination; the Court also rejected the due‑process claim regarding the judge’s assignment. Justice Murphy’s dissent argued that any numerical limitation on Negro jurors violates equal protection.
Holding
- Whether the selection of a grand jury with only one Negro juror violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment does not require proportional racial representation on grand juries; a plaintiff must show purposeful racial discrimination, which the petitioner failed to prove, so no Equal Protection violation occurred
- Whether the procedural due‑process rights of the petitioner were violated by the method of assigning the trial judge under Texas law. The assignment of a judge under the Texas statute did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause
- Whether Texas’s statutory method of grand‑jury selection is constitutionally permissible. The Texas method of selecting grand jurors from a list of sixteen, from which twelve are chosen, is constitutionally valid and does not itself constitute discrimination
Docket 853