Robert H. Jackson

“ A single juror's dissent is generally enough to prevent conviction. A trial jury on which one of the defendant's race has no chance to sit may not have the substance, and cannot have the appearance, of impartiality, especially when the accused is a Negro and the alleged victim is not.
The grand jury is a very different institution. ”

“ It is the command of the Fourteenth Amendment that Negro citizens be afforded the same opportunities to serve upon grand juries as are afforded white citizens. Moreover, Congress, which is authorized to provide for its enforcement, has enacted that 'no citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for 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 ”

“ The right is conferred upon the qualified colored citizen to serve on equal terms with the qualified white citizen. This defendant is not here asking that right for himself. He claims that failure to give other Negroes an equal right to sit on the grand jury gives him quite a different right-a right not to be indicted by it. Two reasons occur to me which could justify this Court in translating the wrong to those Negroes excluded from a grand jury into a right of this defendant to void an indictment. One is that the absence of Negroes on the grand jury prejudiced this defendant. ”

“ Congress has also provided that 'every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceedings for redress.' 17 Stat. ”

“ Its power is only to accuse, not to convict. Its indictment does not even create a presumption of guilt; all that it charges must later be proved before the trial jury, and then beyond a reasonable doubt. The grand jury need not be unanimous. ”

“ In so deciding, it is influenced by imponderables unconscious and conscious prejudices and preferences-and a thousand things we cannot detect or isolate in its verdict and whose influence we cannot weigh. ”

“ So in effect it holds that the crime of discrimination offsets the crime of murder and that the State must start over again, if death of witnesses, loss of evidence or other conditions wrought by time do not prevent. ”