Pursuant to Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, slavery or involuntary servitude remains lawful as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.

"[1] Tabert was a 22-year-old man from Munich, North Dakota, who was arrested in December 1921 as part of a police mass-arrest sweep, on a charge of vagrancy, for being on a train without a ticket in Tallahassee, Florida.

[2][3] Although his parents sent $50 to pay the fine, plus $25 more so Tabert could afford transportation back home to North Dakota,[4] their money disappeared in the Leon County prison system, where Sheriff James Robert Jones earned $20 for each prisoner he leased out as cheap labor to local businesses.

The sheriff sent Tabert to work at the Putnam Lumber Company[5][6] in Clara, Florida, approximately 60 miles (97 km) south of Tallahassee in Dixie County.

[9] Coverage of Tabert's killing by the newspaper New York World earned it the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.