Memorandum on Preston Cobb v. Georgia - LDF Challenges Practice of Excluding from Jury Death Penalty Opponents

    cu 

President 
Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEASE Director Counsel 
egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

Sj Director, Patlic Relations 
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Joss DeVore, Te: 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 ‘ NIGHT NOMBER 212-749-8487 

FOR RELEASE 
FRIDAY 
April 21, 1967 # 

MEMORANDUM 

TO: WASHINGTON AND ATLANTA REPORTERS 

FROM: Jesse DeVore, Director of Public Information 

RES LDF CHALLENGES PRACTICE 
OF EXCLUDING. FROM JURY 
DEATH PENALTY OPPONENTS 

CASE TITLE: Freston Cobb v. State of Georgia 

DATE OF FILING: April 21, 1967 

QUESTION Does the practice of questioning prospective jurors 
PRESENTED: as to their opposition to capital punishment, and 

not seating those who answer yes, create a panel 
biased in favor of capital punishment? 

NATIONAL NEWS All states with the exception of Iowa and South 
ANGLE: Dakota practice some form of this line of questioniro 

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

The High Court is being asked to outlaw a custom, practiced in 
some variation in all states except Iowa and South Dakota, of asking 
 2rospective jurors if they are “conscientiously opposed to capital 
punishment." 

Cobb aroused international concern when he was first sentenced to 
death in Jasper County, Georgia, in 1961 at the age of 15. 

LDF attorneys argue that: 

* Mr. Cobb was denied his rights under the 14th Amendment when per- 
sons, otherwise eligible for jury service, were excused from the 
jury which tried him solely because they were conscientiously 
opposed to capital punishment, 

* Mr. Cobb was tried and indicted by juries from which Negroes were 
systematically excluded, or only tokenly included, from Jasper 
and Bibb counties. The jury lists, they assert, contained racial 
identifications. 

Young Cobb was originally indicted on the charge of murder by the 
Jasper County, Ga,, grand jury in 1961. 

He was tried in the Superior Court of Jasper County that year, 
found guilty, and sentenced to death. 

That ruling was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia. 

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled in 1964 on the ground 
that Negroes had been systematically excluded from the grand jury that 
indicted Mr. Cobb and from the petit jury that tried him. PF q 

5 
He was reindicted by the Jasper County grand jurfJin February of 

1263. “A motion for change of venue was granted and petitioner was tried 
be Fore a petit jury in Bibb County. He was found guilty,.but the jury 
returned a recommendation of mercy; petitioner was sentenced to life 
‘imprisonment. On appeal the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed petitioner's 
conviction, 

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