NAACP Legal Defense Fund Holds National Conference on Capital Punishment

    1g today a nati C rence on capital 

I river Law 

scare Court' 

th penalty 

purpose 

and aboli- 

demned 

eee cluda Fred 

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. | 10 Columbus Circle | New York, N.Y. 10019 | (212) 586-8397 

stoman, Jr, - President 



onour life or death in capital cases. The Court also upheld 

the p by guilt and penalty at the 

same time. LDE t the Court tl 

cedures employed by the states allowed for hecked arbitrariness in 

to the concept of due proce 

o in the record of executions in 

the country. Of the 3,859 »ersons executed in the United States since 

1930, 2,066 have be Of the 455 executed for rape, 405 have 

been black. The majority of the present death row inmates are black. 

Virtually all of the condemned are poor. 

The Court's recent decision reached only two of the issues by 

which LDF attorneys had been challenging the constitutionality of the 

death penalty throughout the country. Yet to be determined are: 

- Challenge to death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment. 

- Challenge to racial discrimination in the imposition of the 

death penalty in rape cases 

- Challenge to the manner in which the lower courts have 

limited the 1968 Supreme Court decision in Withe 

Vou EG -- which held that a person sent ed to 

death by a jury from which persons generally objecting 

to capital punishment had been excluded -- could not be 

executed 

- Challenge to the procedures by which most states fail to 

provide indigent condemned men with counsel at the post- 

appeal stage in capital cases 

These issues were outlined in detail before the Supreme Court in 

a brief just filed by LDF on behalf of 23 condemned men whose cases 

are now pending in the Supreme Court of the United States. In that 

brief. LDF attorneys argue that "substantial issues ... concerning 

the constitutionality of the death penalty and the states' procedures 

for imposing it should be heard by this Court before the United States 

-- which h not conducted a legal execution since June, 1967 -- 

resumes killing these men and women, and in 

(continued) 



of 

e wi con i Lf in part ¢ il i 

several consti n ac 

the death penalty and on the availability of clemency 

ation conden secure commutation 

the several extremely velopments Recently 

on -both of th 

-- Sen. Hart and Rep. Celler have indicated that 

next week they will introduce a bill in 

Congress Wor a twe year moratc um on 

tions while “facts underlying the states' 

ation of capita 

cons trtut 

} puntsment relevant 

k6nality and 

administ 

to the issues of 

due process “are 

the Bills are nov 

everal 

eller, prior Executive Action - Recently vy. Winthrop Roc 

to leaving office, commuted the death sentences 

Of ait 15% row in Arkansas and 

urged ott 

to take similar 
hroaghout the count2 

Attorney General Fred Speaker of 

prior to leaving office, issued an executive 

order declaring the death penalty -cruel=and 

unusual punishment; ordering the dismantling 

of the electric chair, and ordering condémned 

prisone ceturned to the r 

popula dex 

a psyc office 

gene 

chamber has now Ik 

LDF o. inally became involved in capital punishment *throv 

representat of 1ern blacks sentenced to“@eathk for “the. x fe) 

whit nsive cudy, conducted during Dece 0£.1965, 

of 2,500 ra 20 year period, produced-over i 

evidence es Ge ip 1 b Z dad : 

on the S-of-Ti el In th c t } deat I 

prov itsel the*. re iN + yf rac 4, one 



already ta of more 

condemned 

is the highest fe The death penalty 

wit legitim 

of the right procedures of a just society. It 

this society is to move away from violence. §& 

will be eventually eliminated in this country 

tizes a method of coping with proble 

LDF h 

of the nation's 

to stop executions 

inflicted violence. 

at is the antithesis 

must be inated if 

ingalmost all civilized countries. How m I futile, tragic, 

senseless and indefensible it is tham: it has e been to kill the 

few poor, arbitrarily chosen few who must~die in the name of a theory 

that history has already repudiated. 

= Cpe 

{NOTE: " Ascopy o£-Mr. Greenberg's speech is attached.]