Section 2 - Test Case

7/30/2019 Section 2 - Test Case

1/5

Section 2: Test Case

What is a test case and its necessity?

In the context of the article Cleansing the Gene Pool, a test case is one who is the first one to

undergo the so-called forced sterilization which forces people to undergo a surgical sterilization.

In the first half of the twentieth century, many such programs were instituted in countries around

the world, usually as part ofeugenics programs intended to prevent the reproduction and

multiplication of members of the population considered to be carriers of defective genetic traits

and in this case those that are Epileptics and Feeble-Minded. Forced sterilization has been

recognized as crime against humanity if the action is part of a widespread or systematic practice

by the Rome Statute Explanatory Memorandum, which defines the jurisdiction of the

International Criminal Court (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization).

Why Carrie Buck as the test case?

Carrie Buck is the one that Dr. Priddy chose to be a test case. In the article, she was chosen

because she had been legally designated feebleminded. She had borne an illegitimate child

who was also to be classified feebleminded. Most importantly, she was under the control of

the colony. Carrie Buck was the ideal test case, with a provable family history of

feeblemindedness and a proclivity for childbearing, and the board, Priddy, and Strode saw in

her the perfect opportunity.

Context: Society of Carrie Buck (Colony/Outside World)

The Society of Carrie Buck, being one of those allegedly belonged to the class of feeble-minded

is given a very negative impact on the outside world. They are being degraded and were
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_against_humanityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilizationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilizationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilizationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilizationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_against_humanityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics


2/5

considered to be defects of the society especially with their gene traits. They belonged to the

State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded to provide supervision and custody over the

growing number of such defective citizen. Those that are confined in the colony as epileptic

or feebleminded, lived there and at the same time work in a ward as the colony assigns them

different responsibility so that to make them more of a productive person than doing nothing at

all because of their illness and Carrie Buck was given kitchen duties in the colony and was doing

her best to have constant work in preparing, serving, and cleaning up after the majority of her

other inmates in the ward.

Virginia Sterilization Law

On March 20, 1924 the Virginia General Assembly passed two laws that had arisen out of

contemporary concerns about eugenics and race: SB 219, entitled "The Racial Integrity Act"

and SB 281, "An ACT to provide for the sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions

in certain cases", henceforth referred to as "The Sterilization Act".

The Racial Integrity Act required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth

and divided society into only two classifications: white and colored (all other, essentially, which

included numerous American Indians). It defined race by the "one-drop rule", defining as colored

persons with any African or Indian ancestry. It also expanded the scope of Virginia's ban on

interracial marriage (anti-miscegenation law) by criminalizing all marriages between white

persons and non-white persons. In 1967 the law was overturned by the United States Supreme

Court in its ruling onLoving v. Virginia.

The Sterilization Act provided for compulsory sterilization of persons deemed to be

"feebleminded," including the "insane, idiotic, imbecile, or epileptic."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_General_Assemblyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28classification_of_human_beings%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_lawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilizationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilizationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Courthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_lawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rulehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28classification_of_human_beings%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_General_Assembly


3/5

These two laws were Virginia's implementation ofHarry Laughlin's "Model Eugenical

Sterilization Law", published two years earlier in 1922. The Sterilization Act was upheld by the

U.S. Supreme Court in the caseBuck v. Bell274 U.S. 200 (1927). This had appealed the order

for compulsory sterilization of Carrie Buck, who was an inmate in the Virginia State Colony for

Epileptics and Feebleminded, and her daughter and mother.

Together these laws implemented the practice of "scientific eugenics" in Virginia.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924)

The Trial

The plan was first for Carrie Buck to file an appeal so that the sterilization that will be done to

her would be valid and approved of by the Courts first before being performed. She was

represented by an ironic lawyer, Irving P. Whitehead. It was ironic because according to the

article he served on the colonys Board of Directors, who had completely supported and

authorized, and even attempted to persuade other board members to agree to, the use of eugenic

sterilization in the colony; he served with Dr. Priddy in the General Board of State Hospitals and

is a childhood friend and associate of Aubrey Strode who is the lawyer for Dr. Priddy and is the

one who drafted the law in the first place. His acceptance of being Carries lawyer was simply

a way to expedite the test case along the way and so that there would be no problem in passing

such law that will favour Dr. Priddy and Strode in what they wanted to do, to legalize the forced

sterilization law and to have Carrie as their first test case. The appeal was titledBuck v. Priddy

that was heard in the Circuit Court of Amherst County, Virginia. The Judge of the case was

Bennett Gordon who also knew both Whitehead and Strode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_H._Laughlinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Colony_for_Epileptics_and_Feeblemindedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Colony_for_Epileptics_and_Feeblemindedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Colony_for_Epileptics_and_Feeblemindedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Colony_for_Epileptics_and_Feeblemindedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bellhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_H._Laughlin


4/5

During the proceedings of the case Strode presented a total of eleven (11) witnesses to testify and

establish the family background of Carrie Buckwho alleged mental defects attributable to her,

her mother, her half-brother and half-sister, her child, and other family members. There were

also a doctor and a superintendent of a major mental institution in Virginia who provided cost-

benefit analysis of sterilizing Carrie, as well as their professional opinions on the mental

defectiveness present in her family. Within weeks of the trial, Judge Bennett Gordon decided in

favour of the Virginia sterilization law and affirmed the decision to sterilize Carrie Buck.

The case in connection to Legal Counselling

In the book titled Legal Counselling for the Young Lawyer that was authored by Judge

Recaredo Barte, he mentioned the code of conduct for successful lawyering and I quote:

The key to a satisfied client is to treat him with cordiality and compassion, with sincerity and

honest intentions, and with a spirit of not giving up even when all the odds seem to shatter the

brightest of hopes. These plus a strong determination to succeed and sustain a good fight,

believing that not all days are cloudy and that in a court battle only one party is going to win and

the other lose.

In the case of Carrie Buck, Irving Whitehead did not call any witness to testify in favour of

Carrie. In his cross-examination of the witnesses presented by Strode, his questions seemed less

like a cross-examination and more like a continuation, clarification, and embellishment of

Strodes direct examination. His objections to the testimony ofthe witnesses never materialized.

He made no mention of cases or jurisprudence that will help struck down the sterilization law as

being unconstitutional because it did not provide adequate due process rights to the individual


5/5

scheduled to be sterilized and also because it violates the rights of equal protection of the law

since it only applies to feeble-minded inmantes of state institutions. It was really unfair for

Carrie who merely was silent in the course of the trial because if the sterilization law will pursue,

it will prejudice her right to be a mother and to conceive and born babies that we believe every

woman deserves to have to establish happiness in life and also to establish a family in the future.

Irving Whitehead is the kind of lawyer who does not protect the proper interest of his client as

long as it is adverse in his own way even though such interest is the legal and proper way to

defend what a client wants and what a client fights for. He should have been more sensitive

towards her client because even though Carrie was silent during the trial, we believe that Carrie

didnt want to be a test case for forced sterilization and that she was not really a feeble-minded

person but that she was just a victim of a family who subjected her to be a feeble-minded person

for the sake of their familys reputation and that is clearly unfair to Carrie. Also the fact that she

was raped and even bore a child out of that should make Irving sympathize with Carrie and

should do what is right as a lawyer.

Being a lawyer comes great power and with great power comes great responsibilities a lawyer

should owe his clients. Irving Whitehead should have properly prepared the case of Carrie;

diligently have located witnesses that will be essential for the defense of her case; researched and

provided the courts cases and jurisprudence that will make the sterilization law unconstitutional

for Carries sake and protection but all of this was not seemed to be done by Whitehead and as a

result, Carrie did not have the opportunity to be defended in the case and was just to be subjected

on the outcome of the trial. It was hard for her, it was not right, it was unjust.

Documents

Section 2 - Test Case