Editing Moore v. Dempsey (section)

==The Case==

===U.S. Supreme Court Proceedings===
[[File:Supreme Court of the United States - Taft Court - c.1923 - (1923-1925) LCCN2016861504.png|thumb|The [[Taft Court]]]]
The Court did not consider issues related to the convictions of the accused black men, but rather whether their rights were abridged under the [[Due Process Clause]] of the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] by the process of the trial. In a 6–2 decision, Justice Holmes wrote for the Court that a mob-dominated trial violated the due process provisions. He also said that federal courts, upon being petitioned for a writ of ''habeas corpus,'' were compelled to review such claims of discrimination in state trials and to order the release of defendants judged unfairly convicted.

===Opinions===

====Justice Oliver W. Holmes, Jr.====
In his majority opinion, Associate Justice Holmes outlined the pertinent facts of the case, in a somewhat acerbic manner,{{ref|2|2}} before proceeding to the Court's considerations and decision.

The Court had previously ruled in ''[[Frank v. Mangum]]'' {{ussc|237|309|1915}} that, while mob interference with a criminal trial would amount to a denial of the due process promised by the Fourteenth Amendment, the state could undo the constitutional violation by allowing the defendant to challenge the conviction on appeal. This foreclosed any federal review of the allegations of mob intimidation. The Court effectively overruled ''Frank'', holding that the district court presented with a ''habeas corpus'' petition must examine the facts presented in order to determine if the defendants' rights had been violated.

Holmes' opinion acknowledged the rule in ''Frank,'' while holding that subsequent judicial review would not cure constitutional violations if the state courts, in fact, had failed to correct the wrong:

:We assume in accordance with that case that the corrective process supplied by the State may be so adequate that interference by habeas corpus ought not to be allowed. It certainly is true that mere mistakes of law in the course of a trial are not to be corrected in that way. But if the case is that the whole proceeding is a mask—that counsel, jury and judge were swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion, and that the State Courts failed to correct the wrong, neither perfection in the machinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent this Court from securing to the petitioners their constitutional rights.

The Court therefore remanded the matter to the federal district court for it to determine if the defendants' claims of mob intimidation and coerced testimony were true:

:We shall not say more concerning the corrective process afforded to the petitioners than that it does not seem to us sufficient to allow a Judge of the United States to escape the duty of examining the facts for himself when if true as alleged they make the trial absolutely void. We have confined the statement to facts admitted by the demurrer. We will not say that they cannot be met, but it appears to us unavoidable that the District Judge should find whether the facts alleged are true and whether they can be explained so far as to leave the state proceedings undisturbed.

====McReynolds' dissent====
Justice [[James C. McReynolds]], joined by Justice [[George Sutherland]], deemed the issue at stake to be "one of gravity". He suggested that if any man convicted of a crime in a state court may try his luck with the federal court by swearing that some events that have abridged his constitutionally protected rights took place, the already long list of permitted delays in punishment would grow even longer.