| Litigants: | Hale v. Kentucky |
| Arguedate: | March 29 |
| Argueyear: | 1938 |
| Decidedate: | April 11 |
| Decideyear: | 1938 |
| Fullname: | Joe Hale v. Commonwealth of Kentucky |
| Usvol: | 303 |
| Uspage: | 613 |
| Parallelcitations: | 58 S.Ct. 753; 82 L. Ed. 1050; 1938 U.S. LEXIS 300 |
| Prior: | Hale v. Commonwealth, 269 Ky. 743, 108 S.W.2d 716 (1937); cert. granted, . |
| Holding: | The equal protection of the laws guaranteed to petitioner by the Fourteenth Amendment had been denied. |
| Percuriam: | yes |
| Notparticipating: | Cardozo |
Hale v. Kentucky, 303 U.S. 613 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court case relating to racial discrimination in the selection of juries for criminal trials.[1] The case overturned the conviction of an African American man accused of murder because the lower court of Kentucky had systematically excluded African Americans from serving on the jury in the case.[2] NAACP counsel, including Charles H. Houston, Leon A. Ransom and Thurgood Marshall, represented Hale.
Joe Hale, an African American, had been convicted in McCracken County, Kentucky. No African Americans were selected as jury members within the previous 50 years although nearly 7,000 were eligible for jury service.
The court unanimously ruled that the plaintiff's civil rights had been violated.
Hale v. Kentucky was one in a series of cases where the Supreme Court overturned convictions of blacks for reason of discrimination in jury selections in the lower courts.