In October 1966, Gary Duncan, a 19-year-old African-American, was driving down a Louisiana highway when he noticed his nephew Bert Grant and cousin Bernard St. Ann with a group of four white teenagers, including Herman Landry, on the side of the road.

According to historian Matthew Van Meter, Duncan told Landry to go home, "reaching out to the boy's arm in a gesture that was both conciliatory and final.

Do the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to jury trial in state prosecutions where sentences as long as two years may be imposed?

Justice White noted that the right to a jury trial for criminal offenses is a deeply enshrined value in the British and American legal traditions.

The majority noted that at the time of ratification, crimes punishable by more than six months imprisonment were typically subject to jury trial.

The states should be free to develop their own rules regarding the exercise of a jury trial and not to be held accountable to some historical or federal standard.