Legal Defense Fund asks Supreme Court to Assure Unbiased Jury Selection

    PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
10 COLUMBUS CIRCLE * NEW YORK, N. Y. 10019 © JUdson 6-8397 

DR. ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS JACK GREENBERG CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY 
President Director-Counsel Associate Counsel 

Ss 

LEGAL DEFENSE FUND ASKS 
SUPREME COURT TO ASSURE 
UNBIASED JURY SELECTION 

March 25, 1964 

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund today 
asked the U.S, Supreme Court to assure the right of southern Negroes 
to be tried before juries from which Negroes have not been excluded. 

Michael Meltsner, assistant counsel, asked the high court to re- 
verse the death penalty passed on John Coleman, a Negro, for the al- 
leged murder of a white man in Greene County, Alabama. 

Mr. Coleman was originally represented by Thomas F. Seale, a 
white attorney appointed by the Alabama trial court, The petitioner 
was "convicted and sentenced on circumstantial evidence alone," the 
Legal Defense Fund attorneys maintained. 

Defense Fund attorneys pointed out that "at no time did Mr. 
Seale make any attempt to assert Mr. Coleman's constitutional right 
to grand and petit juries chosen without systematic exclusion of mem- 
bers of the Negro race." 

However, when Defense Fund Attorney Orzell Billingsley of 
Birmingham entered the case in Mr. Coleman's behalf, the issue was 
formally raised, 

Attorney Billingsley filed motion for a new trial, urging for 
the first time in this case, "that Negroes had been systematically 
excluded" from the juries. 

He filed also an affidavit of Coleman's mother which stated 
that the petitioner was indicted by a grand jury of 18 white men and 
tried by a petit jury of 12 white men. 

The affidavit also pointed out that "no Negroes, or only a mere 
token, have been summoned for jury duty in Greene County, Alabama, in 
spite of the population ratio of the two races in modern times." 

Negroes make up 80 per cent of the residents of Greene County, 
Two per cent of the eligible Negroes are registered voters. 

However, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of the lower court. It said that the defendant had not carried the bur- den of proving exclusion of Negroes, although the trial judge had not permitted Billingsley to prove anything about the race of jurors. 

Defense Fund attorneys arguedthat no evidence of exclusion was admitted because counsel was not allowed to make his proof. 

Mr, Meltsner was joined by Legal Defense Fund Director-Counsel 
Jack Greenberg and Mr. Billingsley. 

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