In the 1913 case of Baccus v. State of Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with issues related to racial discrimination and jury selection. The petitioner, a black man named Baccus, was convicted for murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana state court. He appealed his conviction on grounds that African Americans were systematically excluded from both grand and petit juries in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under law. The Supreme Court dismissed his claim stating that there was insufficient evidence proving systematic exclusion based on race during jury selection process at the time of trial or over a period prior to it. The court noted that while there may have been few or no African American jurors selected within recent years, this alone did not constitute proof of intentional racial discrimination. Therefore, despite acknowledging potential disparities in representation, without clear evidence demonstrating deliberate exclusionary practices based on race during juror selection process; mere statistical imbalance could not be used as definitive proof for constitutional violation according to the ruling made by justices at this time.

In the dissenting opinion for Baccus v. State of Louisiana, it was argued that the majority's decision to uphold a conviction based on evidence obtained through an unconstitutional search and seizure violated fundamental principles of justice. The dissent contended that allowing such evidence to be used in court would effectively condone illegal police conduct and undermine citizens' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. They believed this ruling set a dangerous precedent by incentivizing law enforcement officers to disregard constitutional protections in their pursuit of criminal convictions. Furthermore, they expressed concern about the potential for abuse if courts were permitted to admit illegally obtained evidence without any restrictions or safeguards in place.