FRANK GUINN AND J. J. BEAL V. UNITED STATES.

Argued October 17, 1913. Decided June 21, 1915.

Mr. Chief Justice White delivered the opinion of the court:

This case is before us on a certificate drawn by the court below as the basis of two questions which are submitted for our solution in order to enable the court correctly to decide issues in a case which it has under consideration. Those issues arose from an indictment and conviction of certain election officers of the state of Oklahoma (the plaintiffs in error) of the crime of having conspired unlawfully, wilfully, and fraudulently to deprive certain negro citizens, on account of their race and color, of a right to vote at a general election held in that state in 1910, they being entitled to vote under the state law, and which right was secured to them by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The prosecution was directly concerned with Section 5508, Revised Statutes, now Section 19 of the Penal Code [35 Stat. at L. 1092, chap. 321, Comp. Stat. 1913, Section 10183], which is as follows:

''If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or if two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured, they shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars and imprisoned not more than ten years, and shall, moreover, be thereafter ineligible to any office, or place of honor, profit, or trust created by the Constitution or laws of the United States.''

We concentrate and state from the certificate only matters which we deem essential to dispose of the questions asked.

Suffrage in Oklahoma was regulated by Section 4a, article 3, of the Constitution under which the state was admitted into the Union. Shortly after the admission there was submitted an amendment to the Constitution making a radical change in that article, which was adopted prior to November 8, 1910. At an election for members of Congress which followed the adoption of this amendment, certain election officers, in enforcing its provisions, refused to allow certain negro citizens to vote who were clearly entitled to vote under the provision of the Constitution under which the state was admitted; that is, before the amendment; and who, it is equally clear, were not entitled to vote under the provision of the suffrage amendment if that amendment governed. The persons so excluded based their claim of right to vote upon the original Constitution and upon the assertion that the suffrage amendment was void because in conflict with the prohibitions of the 15th Amendment, and therefore afforded no basis for denying them the right guaranteed and protected by that Amendment. And upon the assumption that this claim was justified and that the election officers had violated the 15th Amendment in denying the right to vote, this prosecution, as we have said, was commenced. At the trial the court instructed that by the 15th Amendment the states were prohibited from discriminating as to suffrage because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and that Congress, in pursuance of the authority which was conferred upon it by the very terms of the Amendment, to enforce its provisions had enacted the following (Rev. Stat. Section 2004, Comp. Stat. 1913, Section 3966):

''All citizens of the United States who are otherwise qualified by law to vote at any election by the people in any state, territory, district, . . . municipality, or other territorial subdivision, shall be entitled and allowed to vote at all such elections without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; any constitution, law, custom, or usage, or regulation of any state or territory, or by or under its authority, to the contrary notwithstanding.''

It then instructed as follows:

''The state amendment which imposes the test of reading and writing any section of the state Constitution as a condition to voting to persons not, on or prior to January 1, 1866, entitled to vote under some form of government, or then residents in some foreign nation, or a lineal descendant of such person, is not valid, but you may consider it in so far as it was in good faith relied and acted upon by the defendants in ascertaining their intent and motive. If you believe from the evidence that the defendants formed a common design and cooperated in denying the colored voters of Union township precinct, or any of them, entitled to vote, the privilege of voting, but this was due to a mistaken belief sincerely entertained by the defendants as to the qualifications of the voters,—that is, if the motive actuating the defendants was honest, and they simply erred in the conception of their duty,—then the criminal intent requisite to their guilt is wanting and they cannot be convicted. On the other hand, if they knew or believed these colored persons were entitled to vote, and their purpose was to unfairly and fraudulently deny the right of suffrage to them, or any of them entitled thereto, on account of their race and color, then their purpose was a corrupt one, and they cannot be shielded by their official positions.''

The questions which the court below asks are these: