Swain V. Tallabama's Appeal In 1965

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the case of Swain vs. Alabama’s appeal in 1965. Swain was a black man convicted of raping a white women in Talladega, Alabama, which sentenced him to death. The court that found him guilty consisted of an all white jury. However, the Supreme Court still denied the appeal because the jury had been selected from a panel consisting of 100 men over the age of 21 that had 8 black men on it. They decided that the difference in the proportion of the black men over 21 on the panel and the proportion of black men over 21 living in Talladega was small enough that it did not suggest blacks were being excluded from the panel on purpose. I believe that the Supreme Court made an improper ruling in the case. I first began to …show more content…
Looking at the sampling distribution, .08 is at the far end of the left tail, with few samples out of 10,000. Also the 90%, 95%, and 99% confidence intervals all did not contain the true proportion of black men living in Talladega, which was .26. The largest of these intervals was the 99% confidence interval that was between .01012 and .14988, this shows that the panel did not represent the black men over 21 in Talladega at that time and could not have been made without purposeful exclusion of black men. However, our large enough condition was not met so we must be cautious when drawing conclusions based on the intervals. The 1-proportion z-test, on the other hand, also gave evidence that black men were excluded on purpose. I found the p-value of the 100 man panel to be .00002035, meaning that there was about a .002% chance that the panel consisted of 8 black men given the proportion of black men on the panel was equal to the proportion of black men living in Talladega at the time. With a p-value this low I rejected the null, and we had sufficient evidence to say the proportion of black men chosen for the panel …show more content…
In this case, given our data, it seems fairly certain that Talladega ignored the part of the 6th amendment that states, “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed” (1). They ignored the fact that Swain had the right to an impartial jury and failed to provide him with one. They also ignored the 14th amendment that states, “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (1). We know that since they failed to provide Swain with a panel that was fairly chosen and represented the population of Talladega. Plus a white man in Swain’s position would have most likely had better protection from the law. These are violations of his constitutional rights and further highlight the social injustice that blacks experienced and continue to experience today. Today, we see how blacks are not fairly protected by the law, while numerous white men have not been convicted after killing black men. This case shows that this has been a problem in our society for a long time and that as many of us know this is nothing new. I think that statistical analysis would be extremely beneficial in court cases like these because it would help ensure everyone has equal protection under the law. When dealing with controversial cases it is key to review the facts and