Who was the Chief Justice behind the Supreme Court decision where Robert Cooper Grier served as a juror, which denied a "negro" could an American citizenship?
Robert Cooper Grier Robert Cooper Grier (March 5, 1794 – September 25, 1870), was an American jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States. A Jacksonian Democrat from Pennsylvania who served from 1846 to 1870, Grier weighed in on some of the most important cases of the 19th century. As a rare Northern member of the majority in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, Grier concurred that African Americans were not—and were never meant to be—citizens of the United States and that the property rights of slaveholders were clearly protected in the Constitution. However, Grier wrote the majority opinion in the 1863 Prize Cases, upholding Abraham Lincoln’s presidential power to institute Union blockades of Confederate ports and giving the Union Army a strategic advantage in the American Civil War.
United States v. Thomas (1997) United States v. Grady Thomas, 116 F.3d 606 (2nd Cir. 1997), was a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that a juror could not be removed from a jury on the ground that the juror was acting in purposeful disregard of the court's instructions on the law, when the record evidence raises a possibility that the juror was simply unpersuaded by the Government's case against the defendants. The case had important implications for secrecy of the jury deliberation process outweighs the ability to dismiss a juror for nullification.