State of Tennesse ex rel. Ford v. Morris

BAILEY BROWN, District Judge.

This is a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by eight persons, all of the Negro race, who were convicted in the Criminal Court of Shelby County, Tennessee, of wilfully disturbing a religious assembly. Petitioners contend that their convictions cannot stand in that they violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

At the trial in state court, petitioners raised, by way of a motion to dismiss and later by a motion for a new trial, their Fourteenth Amendment defenses, which motions were overruled. They appealed their convictions to the…