Michel v. Louisiana

Louisiana requires that objections to a grand jury be raised before the expiration of the third judicial day following the end of the grand jury’s term or before trial, whichever is earlier.1 In these cases we are asked to *93decide whether this statute as applied violates the Fourteenth Amendment. The three petitioners, all Negroes sentenced to death for aggravated rape, make no attack on the composition of the petit jury nor on the fairness of their trials but challenge the composition of the grand juries which indicted them on the ground that there was a systematic exclusion of Negroes from…