Word: meltsner
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...Michael Meltsner, a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund which is initiating the action, yesterday called the suit "novel, to say the least." If successful, the suit will establish an important legal precedent to be used against public officials throughout the South who continue to suppress civil rights activity...
...Meltsner explained that the suit is based on the contention that officials are making "punitive and arbitrary use of state criminal laws." He said that states have an interest in keeping order, and the ordinary procedure is to appeal a criminal conviction after an initial judgment has been made by the lowest court...
...this instance, Meltsner said, Georgia is interested not in the prosecution of criminals, but in the suppression of civil rights agitation. The suit, therefore, asks the immediate release of the four students, three of whom are charged with incitement to insurrection under a state statute whose constitutionality is widely questioned...
...action initiated today is entirely separate from attempts to secure a writ of habeas corpus from the Georgia Supreme Court. "It is another way of doing the same thing," Meltsner said. He noted that the five defendants have already spent two months in jail, on extremely suspicious evidence. The state grand jury will not meet until November, and if indicted, the students will not stand trial until several months after that...
...Every day they spend in jail is punishment without any kind of probable cause," Meltsner said. He said that if the students were out on ball, their lawyers would wait until the trial to attack the enforcement of the insurrection statute. Unusual measures are being taken because local officials show no dispensation to issue a writ of habeas corpus, or set reasonable bail for the prisoners, Meltsner said...