process; only those cases where equal rights cannot be enforced before state judicial bodies are appropriate to be removed to federal court. Background On the morning of April 18, 1872 in Wheeling, West Virginia, Taylor Strauder, a former slave, murdered his wife Anna by bludgeoning her to death with two strikes from a hatchet handle to the left side of her head after having argued with her through the night about an allegation of her marital infidelity. Strauder's step-daughter, Fannie Green, witnessed the murder, and Strauder threatened Green to remain quiet, lest she too be killed. Strauder fled and was arrested in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 25, 1872. Procedural history Following the passage and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Under section 3 of the act, Congress provided to defendants in state trials the right to remove to federal court "all causes, civil or criminal," arising under state or municipal laws wherein "any of the rights secured to [the defendant] by the first section of this act" were denied or could not be enforced. Later fearing that the Thirteenth Amendment might not provide a sufficient legal basis for the Civil Rights Act, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress then passed the act of May 31, 1870, of which section 18 reenacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Moreover, section 16 of the 1870 act also provided that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory in the United States... to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens[.]" First trial Upon his return to Wheeling, Strauder appeared before the circuit court for Ohio County, West Virginia and received a preliminary examination before Judge Thayer Melvin. The court assigned George O. Davenport and Blackburn B. Dovener as Strauder's counsel, and set his arraignment for the May 1872 term of the circuit court. On May 20, 1872 the grand jury returned an indictment for murder in the first degree. Strauder demurred the indictment as defective, arguing the facts alleged did not rise to murder in the first degree, and that the panel from which the grand jury was selected excluded non-whites; the court overruled the arguments. Counsel for Strauder then attempted to remove