![handle is hein.journals/missourc79 and id is 1 raw text is: UNEQUAL JUSTICE
AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE IN MISSISSIPPI COUNTIES
WITH Two JUDICIAL DISTRICTS
Professor David G. Sansing
Walker W. Jones, III
Jason R. Bush'
I. INTRODUCTION
The setting is Hinds County, Mississippi, in the 1850s, just a few years before the Civil
War. A slave named Alfred has been tried and convicted of murder in the first judicial district of
Hinds County. Alfred murdered his overseer, Coleman, who forced Alfred's wife to submit to
sexual intercourse. On appeal, in Alfred v. State, Alfred's attorney, B. F. Trimble, argued before
the Mississippi Supreme Court that his client had been wrongfully convicted because the jury
had been chosen exclusively from the first judicial district of Hinds County, rather than the
county at large.2
Trimble, who would later serve as a circuit judge for almost twenty years, based his claim
on Article I, Section 10 of the Mississippi Constitution of 1832 which stated that the accused, in
all prosecutions ... hath a right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the county
where the offence was committed.,3 This clause, rightly interpreted, Trimble argued, forbids
the legislature ... from restricting the accused to any district or territory, less than the county.4
Trimble argued:
Which construction [of Section 10] is the better calculated to secure to the
accused 'an impartial jury?' Manifestly the one which allows him the entire
county from which to select his jury, and which does not limit him to any
particular district or neighborhood, or fractional township, which is the case in the
'Jackson district,' under this special law.5
The implication of Trimble's argument was clear. On the eve of the Civil War over
slavery, the murder of a white man by a slave had so inflamed the public mind that few, if any,
white male jurors in the vicinity of Jackson would consider the extenuating circumstances. To
obtain a jury that had not been tainted, the jury panel would have to be drawn from outside the
I David Sansing is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Mississippi. He has authored several works,
including THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI: A SESQUICENTENNIAL HISTORY (1999), MAKING HASTE SLOWLY: THE
TROUBLED HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN MISSISSIPPI (1990) and Mississippi, ITS PEOPLE AND CULTURE
(1981). Walker Bill Jones, III and Jason R. Bush are attorneys in the Jackson, Mississippi office of Baker
Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, P.C. The authors would like to thank Brad Moody and Amanda
Simpson for their contributions and assistance with this article.
2 37 Miss. 296, 1859 WL 3636, at *3 (Miss. 1859).
3 Id. at *3.
4 Id.
5Id. at *4.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/missourc79&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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