LDF Asks Supreme Court to Save Negro Charged with Rape in Georgia

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New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
FOR RELEASE 

PRESS RELEASE FRIDAY 
September 16, 1966 

President 
Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

Director-Counsel 
Jack Greenberg 

LDF ASKS SUPREME COURT 
TO SAVE NEGRO CHARGED 
WITH RAPE IN GEORGIA 

Escobedo Case Prominent in Argument 

WASHINGTON---The U.S. Supreme Court was today asked by the NAACP Legal 
Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) to reverse the Georgia death penalty 

against an illiterate Negro charged with rape. 

No life was taken in the crime. 

LDF attorneys argue that Isaac Sims, Jr. was "denied the right to 
counsel given by Escobedo v. Illinois." 

LDF Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg and his ascociates argue that 
Sims's 14th amendment rights "were violated by a conviction and sen- 
tence to death obtained on the basis of a confession made under 
inherently coercive circumstances . . ." and following the physical 
brutalization of the defendant. 

The Sims brief asserts that the text of the confession signed by 
Sims, while in custody, “was written by a deputy sheriff and read to 
Sims. 

"The first three sentences and the last three paragraphs of the 
statement were admittedly not statements by Sims but, rather, asser=- 
tions of voluntariness of the confession written by the deputy and 
read to Sims." 

Sims is unable to read or to write anything except his name. 

LDF attorneys further argue that Sims's 14th amendment rights were 
violated because "Negroes were systematically excluded from grand and 
petit juries in Charlton County," site of the trial and conviction. 

LDF lawyers attacked a Georgia law which provides that "names of 

colored and.white taxpayers shall be made out separately on the tax 

digest," from which jurors are picked. 

The brief specifically points out that under local Charlton 

County practice "separate sections of the tax digest are maintained 

for white and Negro names, the white listed on white paper, the: Negroes 

on yellow paper." 

The jury commissioners, all of whom are white, rely upon their 

personal knowledge of the persons listed in the tax digest in picking 

persons for the jury lists, the brief states. 

Census figures show 27.4 per cent of the population of Charlton 

County to be Negro. Negro taxpayers total 20 per cent. 

However, only 5 per cent of the jurors selected in the county 
during the term of the Sims trial were Negro. 

Sims was previously indicted, convicted and sentenced to death 

at the October 1963 term of the Superior Court of Charlton County. 

No appeal on the first conviction was taken by Sims's court 

appointed lawyer. 

(more) 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 SS a 

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LDF ASKS SUPREME COURT -2- September 16, 1966 

TO SAVE NEGRO CHARGED 
WITH RAPE IN GEORGIA 

The court reporter had destroyed his trial notes, execution had 

been set for Nov. 13, 1963, and a commutation of sentence denied when 

LDF attorneys entered the case. 

Sims was snatched from the electric chair with a scant 17 hours 

to spare by LDF lawyers, who learned of his plight only two days 

before. 

The Supreme Court of Georgia ordered a new trial in May of 1964. 

Joining Greenberg on the case are Associate Counsel James M. 

Nabrit, III and Conrad Harper of New York City; Professor Anthony 

Amsterdam of the University of Pennsylvania; and Atlanta attorneys 

Howard Moore, Jr. and Wiliiam H. Alexander. 

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