Eubanks v. Louisiana

In an unbroken line of cases stretching back almost 80 years this Court has held that a criminal defendant is denied the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment if he is indicted by a grand jury or tried by a petit jury from which members of his race have been excluded because of their race. Our only concern here is with the application of this established principle to the facts disclosed by the record now before us.

The petitioner, a young Negro, was indicted by an all-white grand jury in the Parish of Orleans, Louisiana, for murder of a white woman. He moved to…