Opinion ID: 1721404
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appellant Ruth Perry.

Text: The principal questions which appellant Perry was directed to answer involved interrogations as to: whether she was then vice-president of the Miami chapter of the NAACP; whether she was then the secretary of the Florida Conference of NAACP; whether she knew various specifically named people. One particular question in the latter category should be pointed up in detail. The Committee counsel asked the witness, Do you know a man named Arlington Sands? Counsel thereupon explained to the witness that on the preceding day one of the witnesses before the Committee had testified that Arlington Sands had been seen by him at Communist Party meetings in Miami and that he also knew him as a member of the Miami Branch of NAACP. The witness Perry also refused to produce the membership list of the Miami Branch of NAACP although the subpoena duces tecum served upon her directed her so to do. The trial judge ordered appellant Perry to answer these various questions. Her objections to answering them were incorporated in a written statement which she filed with the Committee. The sum of her objections were that Chapter 57-125, Laws of Florida 1957, which created the Committee and defined its authority, abridged rights guaranteed to her by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Sections 12, 13, 15 and 22 of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of Florida, Article II, and Section 16 of Article III, of the Florida Constitution. She objected further to producing the membership lists of the NAACP on the ground that the demand for this list constituted an invasion of her rights to due process of law, freedom of speech and association, and the corresponding rights of the NA ACP.