Word: conviction
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...John M. Harlan worriedly pointed to the case of Lee E. A. Parker, who devised a novel gambit for getting out of Oregon State Penitentiary, where he was serving a life sentence for murder. Parker sent his wife to find which of his jurors had been most hesitant to convict...
Nothing would so delight some Southern sheriffs as "an official sanction to keep utterly silent," adds the Washington Post's Associate Editor Alfred Friendly. "It would help immeasurably to harass, if not frame and convict, a civil rights activist, and it would help a segregationist bully slide through court to an acquittal...
...bill as a search for truth. In U.S. criminal trials, however, the search can be more of a game of bluff, suspense and surprise, with both sides trying to spring unexpected evidence that can demolish the unwary. Among many examples was the recent Candy Mossier murder case: a Texas convict testified that Candy had given him $7,000 to kill her husband-whereupon Defense Lawyer Percy Foreman dramatically produced the man's wife to swear that he was a dope addict and a compulsive liar...
...Convict William Howard, 39, tells it, he asked the chaplain at Virginia State Prison back in 1962 if he and any of his fellow prisoners who were Black Muslims could hold their own religious services. Howard's request was bucked up to Prison Superintendent W. K. Cunningham Jr., who responded by demanding the names of the other Black Muslims. When Howard refused to give them, he was packed off to the maximum-security ward, where prisoners get only two meals a day, are not permitted to work or earn money, are deprived of radio, TV and movies, denied access...
...House Un-American Activities Committee can survive and even prosper without the full thrust of nationwide McCarthyism. Congressmen are scared to oppose the committee because they know such a move would cost them ten-fold the number of votes they might gain. The courts, while increasingly unwilling to convict uncooperative HUAC witnesses of contempt, are even less willing to pass judgment on HUAC constitutionality -- for fear that in so doing they would spur a major confrontation between Congress and the judiciary over the separation-of-powers issue...