Reversal of Death Penalty Because of Unfair Jury
Press Release

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Press Releases, Volume 5. Reversal of Death Penalty Because of Unfair Jury, 8dd390cc-b892-ee11-be37-6045bddb811f. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/8056a990-1970-4e19-9aac-1e1442a7df08/reversal-of-death-penalty-because-of-unfair-jury. Accessed July 30, 2025.
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Civil rights lawyers hailed today a decision of the United States court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit * reversing the death sentence of a Texas murderer because . Persons opposed to capital punishment were excluded from the jury which sentenced him to death. The decision was the first applying a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in favor of a death row inmate holding that no person could be executed who was tried by a jury from Which persons generally opposed to capital Punishment were systematically excluded. Leon Spencer, a Texas Negro, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1964 for the crime of rer rn the process of selecting a jury, 23 bersons.who stated they were opposed to capital punishment were excused. Spencer originally unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court on other grounds and was resentenced to die on November 19, 1967. Three days before the scheduled . execution, his Texas attorney, Michael D. Matheny joined based by New york/attorneys with ‘the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, obtained a reprieve and appealed to the Fifth Circuit. Spencer's case is one of the over 200 brought by the Legal Defense Fund in State and Federal Courts challenging the constitutionality of capital punishment. According to Jack Himmelstein who SG s sheets these suits for the Fund, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision "may well point the way for other courts to reverse the death sentences of the presently 500 condemned men in the country: