LDF Lawyers Beat Death Deadline in Arkansas

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New York, N.Y. 10019 
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NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE ia raed 
President September 3, 1966 

on. Francis E. Rivers 

Director-Counsel 

Jack Greenberg 

LDF LAWYERS BEAT 
DEATH DEADLINE 
IN ARKANSAS 

WASHINGTON-- A team of five NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys, from 

three states, feverishly worked against a 38-hour deadline this week 

in a race to save a condemned Negro from the Arkansas electric chair. 

They were successful. 

William L. Maxwell was confined to death row, Arkansas 

State Penitentiary in Tucker, Arkansas, for the November, 1961 

rape of a white woman. 

Maxwell was slated to die by electrocution on Friday, 

September 2, 1966 "between the hours of sunrise and sunset." 

Associate Justice Byron R. White of the U, S. Supreme 

Court signed a stay of execution, Thursday, September 1, pending 

filing of additional papers by Legal Defense Fund attorneys. 

The lawyers made it with less than 24 hours to spare. 

The latest, and most frantic chapter in Maxwell's fight 

to live started at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, August 30th. The U. S. Eighth 

Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Mo., told Assistant Counsel 

Norman Amaker that his request for a, “Certificate of probable cause 

and a stay of execution," were denied. 

Amaker, who had been in constant telephone contact with 

Associate Counsel James Nabrit, in New York City, immediately left 

for the airport. 

He arrived at Legal Defense Fund headquarters 10:15 p.m. 

where Nabrit, Assistant Counsel Melvyn Zarr and Secretary Doris 

Hendricks had been preparing an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court 

since morning. 

Nabrit, in the meanwhile, summoned Professor Anthony 
Amsterdam of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, 

Pennsylvania, who arrived at Legal Defense Fund,New York City head- 

quarters at 2 a.m. 

The application for a stay had to show the high court a 

complex array of facts in concise form; it had to clearly indicate 

that the matter fell within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court; 

and it had to show that the issues raised, presented substantial 

federal questions. 

The attorneys and Mrs. Hendricks, joined by Secretary 

Frances Johnson and Leon Hall, Mail Room Clerk, worked on the Supreme 
Court Appeal until 8:30 a.m, Wednesday morning, August SEs 

The attorneys took brief naps and then boarded the 11 a.m. 

shuttle flight to Washington, arriving at the Supreme Court at 

12:30. The papers were filed and Attorneys Nabrit, Amsterdam 
and Amaker went to a nearby hotel to rest and wait. 

Meanwhile, Cooperating Attorney George Howard of Little 

Rock, Arkansas had arranged an appointment with Governor Orval 

Faubus. Mr. Howard was in midst of explaining the case to the 

Governor when the executive's phone rang. 
(more) 

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

®
 



LDF LAWYERS BEAT -2- September 3, 1966 
DEATH DEADLINE 
IN ARKANSAS 

Nabrit had called to say that Justice White had signed 
the life-giving papers. Attorney Howard thanked the Governor, 
and shortly thereafter departed for his own office. 

Attorney Howard reported that ten of the twelve Garland 
Country (Ark.) jurors who had convicted young Maxwell signed a 
petition for commutation of his sentence from death to life in 
prison. 

Another juror had died and the 12th had moved away. 

-The prosecuting attorney and numercus other Garland County 
citizens also signed the petition, according to Howard, who added 
that the victim, through her priest asked that death be spared. 

Former Chapter 

Actually, the first steps of litigation took place when 
the Garland county Circuit Court handed down the death sentence 
in April, 1962. 

The L 1 Defense Fund took the case to the Arkansas 
Supreme Court ay of 1963 without success; then, to the U.S. 
District Court in January of 1964, without success. 

The lawyers filed a second ition for habeas corpus 
in the U.S. District Court on July 21, 1966. That Court held a 
hearing on August 22, 1966. 

Professor Marvin Wolfgang of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania who supervised, along with Professcr Amsterdam, the Fund's 
capital punishment survey, testified. 

Dr. Wolfgang stated “that the association between being 
a Negro convicted for rape of a white victim and receiving the 
death sentence, as observed in the Arkansas data, could have 
occurred merely by chance in fewer than two times out of one 
hundred. ' 

Attorney Amaker joined in pointing out that Arkansas 
juries “habitually practice racial discrimination in application 
o£ capital punishment for rape, imposing the death penalty for 
racial reasons upon Negro defendants convicted of rape of white 
women. 

The Fund's survey was conducted in 225 counties in ll 
southern states by 25 law students last summer. They filled out 
comprehensive 28-page questionnaires, in the first survey of its 
kind in America. 

Fund attorneys are currently representing more than 20 
Negroes, sentenced to death for rape of white women, in the the 
South. 

The Maxwell case will continue. 

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