Le Jeune Case

In 1788, the planter Nicholas Le Jeune accused two enslaved women of using poison against other slaves, burned their legs, confined them, and threatened to kill any enslaved person who denounced him; fourteen slaves nevertheless brought a complaint to the court. When white judges inspected the plantation they found the women chained and mutilated — both died shortly afterward, and the supposed poison turned out to be tobacco mixed with rat droppings. Le Jeune was never punished despite the evidence, because planter pressure prevailed; the case is a sharp prehistory of 1791, showing how poison panic, racialized legal credibility, and the defense of white authority could converge into open impunity.