Moore V. Dempsey - The Facts of The Case

The Facts of The Case

Moore v. Dempsey was the first case concerning the justice given to African-Americans in the South that came before the Court in the 20th century. The case resulted from the Elaine Race Riot in Phillips County, Arkansas, which followed the shooting death of a white railroad security employee on September 30, 1919 after shots were exchanged outside a church where a black tenant farmers union was meeting. Who fired the first shot is unknown. The governor, Charles Hillman Brough, led a detachment of federal troops into the county, arresting hundreds of blacks and allowing other blacks to move about in public only if they had a pass signed by military authorities and attested by a reputable white citizen. In the week after the shooting roving bands of whites and federal troops killed upwards of two hundred blacks.

In the aftermath of the violence, a grand jury made up of local landlords and merchants decided who would be indicted. Those blacks willing to testify against others and who agreed to work on whatever terms their landlords set for them were let go; those who had been labeled ringleaders or who were judged unreliable were indicted. According to the affidavits later supplied by the defendants, many of the prisoners had been beaten, whipped or tortured by electric shocks to extract testimony or confessions and threatened with death if they later recanted their testimony.

On November 2, 1919, the Phillips County authorities began trying the defendants on charges of the murder of connected to the violence. Eleven defendants were sentenced to death after perfunctory trials: counsel for the accused, who did not meet their clients until the trial began, called no witnesses, produced no evidence, and did not call on the defendants to testify. The first trial took all of three-quarters of an hour, after which the white jury returned a guilty verdict on the first-degree murder charge in eight minutes. Later trials were just as short; the juries took less than ten minutes to reach a verdict in each case. A twelfth defendant was sentenced to death several weeks later, after the jury deliberated for four minutes.

Thirty-six other defendants chose to plead guilty to second-degree murder rather than face trial. Sixty-seven other defendants were convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

The trials were mob-dominated, as crowds of armed whites milled around the courthouse. There was never a chance of an acquittal, as the jurors feared the mob.1 The Arkansas Gazette applauded the trials as the triumph of the rule of law, as none of the defendants had been lynched.