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![handle is hein.slavery/ussccases0426 and id is 1 raw text is: Oct. 1879.]
EX PARTE VIRGINIA.
Ex PARTE VIRGINIA.
1. A., a judge of a county court in Virginia, charged by the law of that State
with the selection of jurors to serve for the year 1878 in the circuit and
county courts of his county, was, in the District Court of the United States
for the Western District of Virginia, indicted for excluding and failing to
select as grand jurors and petit jurors certain citizens of his county, of
African race and black color, who,'possessing all other qualifications pre-
scribed by law, were excluded from the jury lists made out by him as
such officer, on account of their race, color, and previous condition of servi-
tude, and for no other reason, against the peace, &c., of the United States,
and against the form of the statute in such case made and provided. Being
in custody under that indictment, he -presented to this court his petition for
a writ of halecas corpus and a writ of certiorari to bring up the record of the
inferior court, that he might be discharged, averring that the finding of
the indictment, and his arrest and imprisonment thereunder, were unwar-
ranted by the Constitution of the United States, in violation of his rights
and the rights of the State of Virginia, whose judicial officer he is, and
that the inferior court had no jurisdiction to proceed against him. A simi-
lar petition was presented by Virginia. Held, that while a writ of iabeas-
corpus cannot generally be made to subserve the purposes of a writ of error,
yet 3vhen a prisoner is leld without any lawfl a utlority, and by an order
which an inferior court of the United States had no jurisdiction to make,
this court will, in favor of liberty, grant the writ, not to review the whole
case, but to examine the authority of the court below to act at all.
2. The section of the act entitled An Act to protect all citizens in their civil
and legal rights, approved-March 1, 1875 (18 Stat., part 3, 336), which
enacts that no citizen, possessing all other qualifications which are or may
be prescribed by law, shall be disqualified from service as grand or petit
juror in any court of the United States, or of any State, on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude; and any officer or other person,
charged with any duty in the selection or summoning of jurors, who shall
exclude or fail to summon any citizen for the cause aforesaid, shall, on
conviction thereof, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and be fined not
more than P'5,000, examined, and hedd to he authorized by the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.
3. The inhibition contained in the Fourteenth Amendment means that no agency*
of the State, or of the officers or agents by whom her powers are exerted,
shall deny to any person within her jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws. Whoever by virtue of his public position under a State government
deprives another of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, or
denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws, violates that inhibi
tion; and as le acts in the name of and for the State, and if clothed with
her power, his act is her act. Otherwise, the inhibition has no mean
ing, and the State has clothed one of her agents with power to annul
evade it.
4. hat amendment was ordained to secure equal rights to all persois.
render its purpose effectual, Congress is vested with power to enforce](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/ussccases0426&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)