On January 6, 1897, Lawrence Brown, colored, was lynched in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, for suspected arson. Isaac Brown, administrator of the estate of Lawrence Brown, deceased, entered suit against Orangeburg County in the common pleas circuit court of that county for the recovery of damages under Section 6, Article 6, of the constitution, and the act to prevent lynching which was passed in 1896.[301] Judgment was rendered for the defendant, the presiding judge directing the jury to find a verdict in his favor, on the ground that the provision in the constitution and the act of the legislature conferred upon the plaintiff no right to recover damages against the defendant, as the person lynched was not a prisoner. An appeal from this decision was taken to the supreme court where the judgment of the lower court was reversed and the case was remanded for trial. The supreme court, construing the constitutional provision broadly and in connection with the act of the legislature, ruled that the judge had been in error in his directions to the jury, that the correct construction of the constitutional provision made a county liable for damages when the person lynched was not in the custody of the law as a prisoner. While the court declared a consideration of the question of the power of the legislature to pass such an act, independently of the constitutional provision, to be unnecessary in the case in hand, an opinion in regard to the matter was expressed in the following words: “It has been held that statutes making a community liable for damages in cases of lynchings, and giving a right of recovery to the legal representatives of the person lynched, are valid, on the ground that the main purpose is to impose a penalty on the community, which is given to the legal representatives, not because they have been damaged, but because the legislature sees fit thus to dispose of the penalty. Such statutes are salutary, as their effect is to render protection to human life, and make communities law-abiding.”[302]