Scipio Jones' Brief to the Supreme Court Regarding the Elaine Twelve

Scipio Jones, a prominent African-American attorney from Little Rock, represented the twelve men convicted for their supposed involvment in the Elaine Race Massacre in 1919. Jones wrote this brief, entitled "Arkansas Peons" and published in the NAACP's magazine The Crisis in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court's review of the case.(Banks vs. State, 143 Ark. 154), and remanded for a new trial; that upon a retrial of said cases, defendants were again reversed (Ware vs. State, Vol. 4 Sup. Court Rep. No. 11, Page 674), and remanded for a new trail on December 6, 1920; that said cases were coming on for trial at the May term of the Phillips Circuit Court, which convened May 2nd, 1921, and it was represented to the Governor of the State of Arkansas by the white citizens and officials of Phillips County that unless a date of execution was set for petitioners there was grave danger of mob violence to the other six defendants whose cases would be called for trail at the May term of said Court and that in all probability they would be lynched; that in order to appease the mob spirit still prevalent in Phillips County and in a measure to secure the safety of the six Negroes whose cases were to be called for trail and were called on May 9th, 1921, the Governor issued a proclamation fixing a date of execution of Petitioners for June 10, 1921, which was stayed by Court Proceedings; that these facts conclusively show that mob spirit and mob domination are still universally present in Phillips County. Petitioners further say that on the 8th day of June, 1921, they filed a petition in the Pulaski Chancery Court for a Writ of Habeas Corpus setting out the matters and things herein stated, and that on said date the Pulaski Chancery Court issued its Writ of Habeas Corpus, directed to the defendant, E. H. Dempsey, keeper of the Arkansas State Penitentiary, commanding him to have the bodies of the Petitioners in Court at 2 o’clock P.M. on the 10th day of June, 1921, and then and there state in writing the term and cause of their imprisonment; that on the 9th day of June, 1921, the Attorney General for the State of Arkansas filed with the Supreme Court of Arkansas a Petition for Writ of Prohibition against J. E. Martineau, Chancellor of the Pulaski Chancery Court, and your petitioners, and that on the 20th day of June, 1921, the Supreme Court of the State of Arkansas issued its Writ of Prohibition against the Judge of the Pulaski Chancery Court, prohibiting him from hearing the Petitions for Habeas Corpus pending in his court and quashed the Writ of Habeas Corpus theretofore issued; that thereafter, to wit, on the 4th day of August, 1921, your petitioners made application to the Hon. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, for a Writ of Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Arkansas in the matter of said Writ of Prohibition, but same was denied. Petitioners, therefore, say that by the proceedings aforesaid, they were deprived of their rights and are about to be deprived of their lives in violation of Section 11, of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the United States enacted in pursuance thereto, in that they have been denied the equal protection of the law, and have been convicted, condemned and are about to be deprived of their lives without due process of law; that they are now in the custody of the defendant, E. H. Dempsey, Keeper of the Arkansas State Penitentiary, to be electrocuted on the 23rd day of September, 1921; that they are now detained and held in custody by said Keeper and will be electrocuted on said date unless prevented from so doing by the issuance of a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Petitioners therefore pray that a Writ of Habeas Corpus be issued to the end that they may be discharged from said unlawful imprisonment and unlawful judgment and sentence to death. -------------- The writ of Habeas Corpus asked for above was granted. Later a demurrer was sustained and the writ discharged. Thereupon the attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States and their appeal was allowed in the United States District Court. Thus, the greatest case against peonage and mob-law ever fought in the land and involving 12 human lives, comes before the highest court. Reader, we have already spent $11,299 to save these poor victims; we need $5,000 more. Can you help? Crisis, vol. 23:2 (December, 1921), pp. 72-76; vol. 23:3 (January, 1922), pp. 115-117