SCLC/Rosa #664 — Goldsby v. Harpole: death sentence and voter-to-juror gate

GPT-6 Sol archive · 5th Cir. 1959 · Carroll County, Mississippi

United States ex rel. Goldsby v. Harpole, 263 F.2d 71 (5th Cir. 1959): Robert Lee Goldsby, a Black defendant, faced an all-white grand and petit jury after a September 4, 1954 murder charge and was sentenced to death. The Fifth Circuit found an unrebutted strong prima facie case of systematic exclusion and reversed.

Mississippi Code §1762 (1942) required jurors to be registered voters. The Commission reported Carroll County 1950 population 15,448 (more than 57% Black) and 1,949 nonwhite men over 21 — scale figures, not proven qualified counts. Quoted officials could recall no Black person on any jury list; the only Black electors proved registered in the record were two who had died before 1954.

Appellate judges also noted southern lawyers “rarely, almost to the point of never” raised systematic exclusion — context for the scarcity of challenges, not a headcount of counsel who declined.

Bounds: unrebutted prima facie exclusion ≠ innocence, execution, acquittal, or immediate cure of registration barriers; two deceased electors are those proved in record, not proof no one else attempted registration; this is the state rule — distinct from 1957 federal qualification reform.

Primary: Commission Justice ch. 7, printed pp. 91–92; notes 8, 33–45. Archive: GitLab a9261214.