LDF Seeks High Court Review of Capital Punishment Cases

Press Release
October 1, 1968

Cite this item

LDF Seeks High Court Review of Capital Punishment Cases preview

Document text

The following text has been generated automatically during the document scanning process. It may contain errors, omissions, or incorrect formatting. Please refer to the PDF document if this text is not usable.

Download

By downloading, publishing, or reusing the Materials outside of the Website, you hereby confirm and attest that you have read and agree to the LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use linked below. We draw your attention to the following:

For those Materials owned by LDF, your use of the Material outside the Site is solely for one or more of the following (the “Permitted Purposes”):

Non-commercial research and private study;
Teaching, scholarship and instruction (including distance learning);
Non-commercial print and non-commercial online use;
Criticism, comment or news reporting; or
For people with visual disabilities (See Section 121 of the Copyright Act).
For those Materials not owned by LDF you understand that:
- It is your responsibility to determine whether the way you plan to use the materials falls within the copyright exception of Fair Use.
- For any use outside of Fair Use, it is your responsibility to seek and obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders.

LDF hereby grants you the right to use LDF owned Materials for the Permitted Purposes without seeking further permission from LDF.

If you publish or redistribute any Materials (including excerpts and quotes), you must include a credit line and/or proper citation to the source of the Material. However, you may not use the name of LDF in any manner which creates any false association between you and LDF or that incorrectly implies any sponsorship or endorsement of you by LDF.

NOTICE: Uses that do not comply with these Terms or that do not fall under Fair Use (or another exception) may make you liable for copyright infringement.

Read the full LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use Here.

I agree to the terms and conditions for use of this content.

If you would like to use this content in other ways, contact us at .

Collection
- Press Releases
Creator
- LDF
Taxonomy
Identifier
- 5a89ff03-b992-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

Cite this item

Press Releases, Volume 5. LDF Seeks High Court Review of Capital Punishment Cases, 1968. 5a89ff03-b992-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/3e8a7948-aae4-4414-899b-bb769518052a/ldf-seeks-high-court-review-of-capital-punishment-cases. Accessed November 23, 2025.

Copied!

e 45%

”'*Hion. Francis E. Rivers
PRESS RELEASE Director-Counsel

egal fefense lund Jack Greenberg
Director, Public Relations

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC, Jesse DeVore, Jr.
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 FOR RELEASE NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487

TUESDAY
October 1, 1968

LDF SEEKS HIGH COURT REVIEW
OF CAPITA, PUNISHMENT CASES

WASHINGTON, D.C.---Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educa-
tional Fund, Inc. (LDF) today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review
two capital punishment cases.

The attorneys charge that the death sentences handed out to two condemned men @n New Jersey's death row and one on Alabama's death
row are unconstitutional.

Director of LDF's capital punishment project, Jack Himmelstein, said the case on behalf of the New Jersey prisoners, Leo R. Forcella and Victor R. Funicello, attacks important basic procedures that were
involved in sentencing them.

He said also that, if the Supreme Court reviews the case, the Court's ruling will affect not only the two prisoners but some 20 additional men now under death sentences in New Jersey as well as a substantial number of the 500 condemned men across the country.

In the case of Alabama prisoner Climmie McCants, Mr. Himmelstein said police forced a confession from McCants after three days of interrogation even though they knew that his family had obtained a
lawyer for him.

Alabama juries, according to Himmelstein, have no guidance under
law relevant to what he termed "the all-important life-death choice." | Such choices, he said, are therefore left to the "whim and caprice" | 65£ the individual jurors.

| :
|

“. LDF attorneys challenge the procedure whereby a capital defendant | ‘who pleads guilty can receive a maximum cf life imprisonment while a | defendant. pleading not guilty and choosing trial by jury can be | punished by death.

| | This, LDF officials hold, unconstitutionally penalizes with death “one*s right to jury trial and the right to contest one's guilt.

LDF will also challenge what it calls the "death-qualifying" of
Capital juries whereby persons Opposed to capital punishment are ex-
cluded from juries. It is claimed that this procedure produces juries
uncommonly willing to hand down a death sentence.

LDP attorneys say that juries in New Jersey have no guidance
‘under the law on how to choose between life and geath penalties,
making a death verdict arbitrary; that they determine guilt and punish-
ment simultaneously, making it fairly impossible to introduce evidence
on punishment; and that juries from which opponents of capital punish-
ment are excluded are more likely to convict than average juries.

Hinmelstein said that the case present to the Supreme Court the
question of whether capital punishment should today be prohibited as
cruel and unusual.

=30~

Copyright notice

This collection and the tools to navigate it (the “Collection”) are available to the public for general educational and research purposes, as well as to preserve and contextualize the history of the content and materials it contains (the “Materials”). Like other archival collections, such as those found in libraries, LDF owns the physical source Materials that have been digitized for the Collection; however, LDF does not own the underlying copyright or other rights in all items and there are limits on how you can use the Materials. By accessing and using the Material, you acknowledge your agreement to the Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Materials.

Additional info

To the extent that LDF includes information about the Materials’ origins or ownership or provides summaries or transcripts of original source Materials, LDF does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of such information, transcripts or summaries, and shall not be responsible for any inaccuracies.

LDF Seeks High Court Review of Capital Punishment Cases

Collection

Creator

Taxonomy

Identifier

Cite this item

Copyright notice

Additional info

You may also be interested in