Moore v. Dempsey was the first case to come before the court in the 20th century related to the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice systems of the South, where they lived in a segregated society that had disenfranchised them.

The case resulted from prosecution of twelve men for the death of a white man associated with the Elaine Race Riot in Phillips County, Arkansas.

As Justice Holmes later stated in his opinion, "There was never a chance of an acquittal," as the jurors feared the mob.1 The Arkansas Gazette applauded the trials as the triumph of the 'rule of law,' as none of the defendants had been lynched.

White published his findings in the Daily News, the Chicago Defender and The Nation, as well as the NAACP's own magazine The Crisis, reporting on the high number of fatalities among blacks and the lack of government prosecution of their deaths.

It raised more than $50,000 and hired Scipio Africanus Jones, an African-American attorney from Little Rock, and Colonel George W. Murphy, a Confederate veteran, former Attorney-General for the State of Arkansas, for the defense team.

They were convicted again, but the state supreme court overturned the verdicts, saying that discrimination against black jurors (the juries were all-white) was contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of Moore and the other five murder defendants, rejecting the challenge to the all-white jury as untimely.

The defendants petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging that the proceedings that took place in the Arkansas state court, while ostensibly complying with trial requirements, satisfied these only in form.

They argued that the accused were convicted under pressure of the armed mob, with blatant disregard for their constitutional rights, and that pre-trial publicity had prejudiced the proceedings.

The defense team had originally intended to file this petition in federal court, but the only sitting judge was assigned to other judicial duties in Minnesota at the time and would not return to Arkansas until after the defendants' scheduled execution date.

The State did not dispute the defendants' evidence of torture used to obtain confessions or mob intimidation, but argued that, even if true, this did not amount to a denial of due process.

He also said that federal courts, upon being petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, were compelled to review such claims of discrimination in state trials and to order the release of defendants judged unfairly convicted.

The Court had previously ruled in Frank v. Mangum 237 U.S. 309 (1915) that, while mob interference with a criminal trial would amount to a denial of the due process promised by the Fourteenth Amendment, the state could undo the constitutional violation by allowing the defendant to challenge the conviction on appeal.