United States v. Harris

Infobox SCOTUS case
Litigants=United States v. Harris
ArgueDate=
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DecideDate=January 22
DecideYear=1883
FullName=United States v. R. G. Harris, et al.
USVol=106
USPage=629
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Holding=Local, not federal government, has the power to penalize crimes such as assault and murder.
SCOTUS=1882-1887
Majority=Woods
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"United States v. Harris", 106 U.S. 629 (1883),ref|citation sometimes referred to as the "Ku Klux Case", was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to penalize crimes such as assault and murder. It declared that the local governments have the power to penalize these crimes. The fact that many of these crimes were racially motivated in the south was ignored.

In the specific case, four men were removed from a Crockett County, Tennessee jail by a group led by Sheriff R. G. Harris and 19 others. The four men were beaten and one was killed. A deputy sheriff tried to prevent the act, but failed. Section 2 of the Force Act of 1871 was declared unconstitutional on the theory that an Act to enforce the Equal Protection Clause applied only to state action, not to state inaction.

ee also

* List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 106

Further reading

*cite book |title=The American Story |last=Divine |first=Robert A. |authorlink= |coauthors="et al." |year=2005 |publisher=Pearson Education |location=New York |isbn=0321183134 |pages=p. 413
*cite journal |last=Lawrence |first=Frederick M. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1993 |month= |title=Civil rights and criminal wrongs: The mens rea of Federal civil rights crimes |journal=Tulane Law Review |volume=67 |issue= |pages=2113–2229 |id= |url= |accessdate= |quote=

External links

* [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=106&page=629 106 U.S. 629] Full text of the opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
* [http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/407/ Summary of case from OYEZ] The summary from OYEZ is factually inaccurate in that it states the four prisoners were black. According to Crockett TN and Haywood TN censuses as well as other temporal records, they were in fact white.