Memorandum on Maxwell v. Bishop Death Penalty Case

    . Ul 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 

1095 Market St., San Francisco, Calif. 94103 * 861-8553 
efense uN (National Office: 10 Columbus Circle, N. Y., N. Y. 10019 * 586-8397 

April 23, 1970 

MEMORANDUM 

TO: NEWS EDITORS 

FROM: Charles J. Hayes, Director of Public Information 

The fate of over 500 death row prisoners may well hinge on 

arguments presented to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, 

April 30, 1970, in the case of Maxwell v. Bishop. 

For the second time in as many years, attorneys of the NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) will ask the high 

court to reverse the death penalty for William L. Maxwell, an 

Arkansas Negro convicted of raping a white woman. 

Mr. Maxwell was stricken recently with tubercvlosis and is in an 

Arkansas hospital. 

The challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty 

as presented in this case could result in the abolition of capital 

punishment in the United States. 

Professor Anthony G. Amsterdam of Stanford University Law 

School will argue Maxwell for the LDF. 

A background statement on the LDF campaign against the death 

penalty is enclosed. 

Contributions are deductible for U. S. income tax purposes 



= ttn. Francia E-Hivers 
i iN (\ PRESS RELEASE Directer-Counsel 

egal Bionse und Jack Greenberg 
April 23, 197Qrector, Public Relations 

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

THE BACKGROUND 

The second Supreme Court argument next Thursday in the case of 

William Maxwell is the latest development in the LDF national drive 

to end capital punishment. : 

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., originally 

became involved in this issue because of the great severity with 

which the death penalty falls on black people. Its five-year 

campaign has halted executions in the United States since June 2, 

1967, and LDF attorneys are now representing over half of the more 

than 500 persons awaiting execution across the nation. 

Jack Greenberg, LDF director-counsel, said that an excess of 

$400,000 has been spent to date. 

Mr. Greenberg stressed that “if the goal of this litigation is 

achieved, we will have spared a few lives that, thereafter, will be 

spent in prisons. We will perhaps make it possible, in some cases, 

for men whose innocence is established years from now to go free. 

“Most important of all, we may make a small contribution to 

advancing the day when man's problems are dealt with by reason and 

persuasion and not by brute force." 

Accordingly, LDF attorneys have attacked the death penalty in 

the way it is administered, in every way that they as lawyers for 

condemned men can, finding the present process arbitrary, unfair 

and cruel. 

LDF attorneys have challenged capital punishment throughout the 

country on the grounds that: 

1) the law provides no legal standards for the choice between 

life and death, leaving the decision in the unfettered and 

arbitrary discretion of the jury. 

z the determinations of both guilt and penalty are made at the 

same time by the same jury, forcing the defendant either to 

refrain from placing evidence in mitigation on the penalty 

question before the jury or giving up the privilege against 

self-incrimination on the guilt issue. In other words, he is 

denied a fair trial, on either the guilt issue or the penalty 

issue or both. 

3 the death penalty, when considered in light of evolving 

standards of decency, has become cruel and unusual punishment 

in today's society. 

a persons opposed to capital punishment (now 50 per cent of the 

population) are excluded from service on the guilt and penalty 
determinations of capital juries, denying capital defendants 

a representative jury, and leaving the decision in the hands 

of the less enlightened, more vengeful elements of society. 

5 states are obliged to provide the legal representation for all 

men on death row for the many critical procedures--~including 

clemency hearings--available to them after the routine state 

appeal is ended. 

The campaign started in 1965 when LDF sponsored an extensive 
sociological survey during the summer of 2,500 rape cases in the 

gythern states, involvina both white and Negro defendants, to deter- 



-2- April 23, 1970 

mine objectively and scientifically whether any factors other than 

racial discrimination could account for the high rate of death 

sentences for the Negroes convicted of raping white women. (400 

of the 450 men executed for rape since 1930 have been Negroes.) 

Results of this survey have been introduced into evidence in 

courts throughout the southern states. 

As a result of this experience, we became familiar with the 

particularly vicious procedures which underlie the administration 

of capital punishment in the United States, both for Negroes and 

whites. These procedures make racial minorities, the deprived and 

downtrodden the peculiar objects of capital charges, capital 

convictions and sentences of death. 

We learned that after the routine state appeal has ended the 

vast majority of these condemned men were left penniless, friendless, 

and lawyerless in the case of death. 

We therefore, took action (and will continue) without regard 

to race in behalf of men on death row across the country, challenging 

under the Federal Constitution the most egregious failures in the 

administration of capital punishment. 

=30— 

NOTE: Please bear in mind that the LDF is a completely separate and 

distinct organization even though we were established by the NAACP 

and those initials are retained in our name. Our correct designa- 

tion is NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., frequently 

shortened to LDF.