Per Curiam. 356 U.S. PORCHETTA v. OHIO. APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF OHIO. No. 863. Decided May 19, 1958. Appeal dismissed and certiorari denied. Reported below: 167 Ohio St. 14, 145 N. E. 2d 407. Henry Lavine for appellant. John T. Corrigan for appellee. PER CURIAM. The motion to dismiss is granted and the appeal is dismissed. Treating the papers whereon the appeal was taken as a petition for writ of certiorari, certiorari is denied. NEW YORK TRAP ROCK CORP. v. TOWN OF CLARKSTOWN, NEW YORK, ET AL. APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF NEW YORK. No. 867. Decided May 19, 1958. Appeal dismissed for want of a substantial federal question. Reported below: 3 N. Y. 2d 844, 938, 144 N. E. 2d 725, 146 N. E. 2d 188. John F. Lane for appellant. PER CURIAM. The appeal is dismissed for want of a substantial federal question. ALHAMBRA GOLD MINE CORP. v. ALHAMBRASHUMWAY MINES, INC. APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF CALIFORNIA, THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT. Appeal dismissed. No. 880. Decided May 19, 1958. Reported below: 155 Cal. App. 2d 46, 317 P. 2d 649. Jerome Weber for appellant. Richard Z. Lamberson for appellee. PER CURIAM. The motion to dismiss is granted and the appeal is dismissed. Gospel Army v. Los Angeles, 331 U. S. 543. BROWNING v. KANSAS. APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF KANSAS. No. 620, Misc. Decided May 19, 1958. Appeal dismissed. Reported below: 182 Kan. 244, 320 P. 2d 844. PER CURIAM. The appeal is dismissed. Syllabus. 356 U.S. EUBANKS v. LOUISIANA. CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA. No. 550. Argued April 30-May 1, 1958.-Decided May 26, 1958. Petitioner, a Negro, was indicted by an all-white grand jury in Louisiana for the murder of a white woman. He moved to quash the indictment on the ground that Negroes had been systematically excluded from grand juries in the parish in which he was indicted, including the grand jury which returned the indictment against him. After a hearing, his motion was overruled, and he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The State Supreme Court affirmed. Held: The consistent exclusion of Negroes from grand juries shown by the record in this case denied petitioner the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and the judgment is reversed. Pp. 585-589. (a) When a jury selection plan, whatever it is, operates in such a way as always to result in the complete and long-continued exclusion of any representative at all from a large group of Negroes, or any other racial group, indictments and verdicts returned against them by juries thus selected cannot stand. Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463. P. 587. (b) The uniform and long-continued exclusion of Negroes from grand juries shown by the record in this case cannot be attributed to chance, to accident, or to the fact that no sufficiently qualified Negroes have ever been included in the lists submitted to the various local judges for selection as grand jurors; and it seems clear that Negroes have been consistently barred from jury service because of their race. Pp. 585–588. (c) Local tradition cannot justify failure to comply with the constitutional mandate requiring equal protection of the laws. P. 588. 232 La. 289, 94 So. 2d 262, reversed and cause remanded. Herbert J. Garon argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief was Leopold Stahl. Michael E. Culligan, Assistant Attorney General of Louisiana, argued the cause for respondent. With him 584 Opinion of the Court. on the brief were Jack P. F. Gremillion, Attorney General, and Leon D. Hubert, Jr. William P. Schuler filed an appearance for respondent. Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court. 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.1 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 allwhite grand jury in the Parish of Orleans, Louisiana, for murder of a white woman. He moved to quash the indictment on the ground that Negroes had been systematically excluded from grand juries in the parish, including the grand jury which returned the indictment against him. After a hearing, his motion was overruled, and he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the record disclosed no discriminatory exclusion of Negroes from his grand jury, 232 La. 289, 94 So. 2d 262. We granted certiorari, 355 U. S. 812. The The method by which grand juries are selected in the parish is not controverted. A jury commission is 1 Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370; Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U. S. 565; Carter v. Texas, 177 U. S. 442; Rogers v. Alabama, 192 U. S. 226; Martin v. Texas, 200 U. S. 316; Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587; Hale v. Kentucky, 303 U. S. 613; Pierre v. Louisiana, 306 U. S. 354; Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128; Hill v. Texas, 316 U. S. 400; Akins v. Texas, 325 U. S. 398; Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463; Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282; Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U. S. 475; Reece v. Georgia, 350 U. S. 85. 458778 0-5841 Opinion of the Court. 356 U.S. required to select, "impartially, from the citizens of the Parish of Orleans having the qualifications requisite to register as voters, the names of not less than seven hundred and fifty persons competent . . . to serve as jurors." 2 Twice each year the Commissioners draw the names of 75 persons from this group. The list of 75 is then submitted to one of the six judges of the local criminal court who, in rotation, choose a new grand jury of 12 every six months.3 Obviously the judges have broad discretion in selecting from the list provided by the Commission. State v. Dorsey, 207 La. 928, 22 So. 2d 273. Several of them interview a substantial number of prospective jurors before making their choice. Others, including the judge who chose the jury that indicted petitioner, testified that they usually selected on the basis of personal knowledge or reputation in the community. Petitioner does not challenge this system of choosing grand jurors, as such, but he does contend that it has been administered by the local judges so that members of the Negro race have been systematically excluded from grand jury service. Although Negroes comprise about one-third of the population of the parish, the uncontradicted testimony of various witnesses established that only one Negro had been picked for grand jury duty within memory. And this lone exception apparently resulted from the mistaken impression that the juror was white. From 1936, when the Commission first began to include Negroes in the pool of potential jurors, until 1954, when petitioner was indicted, 36 grand juries were selected in the parish. Six or more Negroes were included in each list submitted to the local judges. Yet out of the 432 jurors selected only the single Negro was chosen. Undisputed testi 2 La. Rev. Stat., 1950, Tit. 15, § 194. 3 Id., § 196. |