◆ SpookStack

ee ee Oe ery ae Ole wy, Glacin ...-- tr. Ladd ...-.--- “ ,, nas r, Rosen 4.---- SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATE No. 391.—Ocrornrer Term, 1943. Rie, Tracy... + Mr. Mohr ...---- her, Car.om oa E. E. Asheraft and John Ware Petitioners } On Writ of Certiorari to t e" " a , Supreme Court of the Stafe‘” °~ vs. of Tennessee. Mr. douer State of Tennessee. jo Coes Mr. Quine Ta! Mro flare a Sil Mr. Justice Buack delivered the opinion of the Court. ' About three o’elock on the morning of Thursday, June 5, 1941, Mrs. Zelma Ida Asheraft got in her automobile at her home in ‘Memphis, Tennessee, and set out on a trip to visit her mother’s a lw Wantualk T ta in a nome I WKenuchy. wate it the afternoon of the same day her car was observed a few miles out of Memphis, standing on the wrong side of a road which she would likely have taken on her journey. Just off the road, in a slough, her lifeless body was found. On her head were cut places inflicted by blows sufficient to have caused her death. Petitioner Ware, age 20, a Negro, was indicted in a state court and found guilty of her murder. Petitioner Ashcraft, age 45, a white man, husband of the deceased, charged with having hired, Ware to commit the murder, was tried jointly with Ware and convicted aS an accessory before the fact. Both were sentenced to ninety-nine years in the state penitentiary. The Supreme Court of Tennessee affirmed the convictions. —Tenn. —. In applying to us for certiorari, Ware and Ashcraft urged that alleged. confessions were used_at their_ trial which had been ex- torted from them by state law enforcement, officers in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that “solely and. alone” on the basis of these confessions they had been ‘convicted. Their conten- tions raised a federal question which the record showed to be sub- ate i | stantial and we brought both cases here for review. Upon Oral “argument before this Court Tennessee's legal representatives con- ceded that the convictions could not be sustained without the con- . fessiong but defended their use upon the grcund that they were / not compelled but were ‘‘freely and voluntarily made.’’ ras ar } Ny, C2 TRA 2 & opel