Court Opinion

ID: 9451373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:15:56.531993+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:28.963087
License: Public Domain

SOBELOFF and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges
(dissenting):
This case arises out of what could have been a commonplace visit to the Prince Edward County court house. Appellant Wallace was a young Negro student at Harvard Law School who during the summer months was assisting a firm of Negro lawyers serving as counsel for Negroes arrested in civil rights demonstrations. On the day in question appellant entered the court house intending to visit one of the firm’s clients. He was intercepted by a deputy sheriff and other officers. After a scuffle Wallace was locked up. One of the officers sustained a bruised shin and a cut finger. Wallace was fined $25 for resisting arrest and he paid the fine.
This was only the beginning. The officers lodged seven additional charges, proliferated from this episode, one of which was assaulting the deputy sheriff. Wallace alleges that when the Commonwealth’s Attorney discovered his association with a Negro civil rights law firm, this minor “assault” was raised to a charge of “malicious maiming,” a felony carrying a permissible penalty of twenty years in the penitentiary, and incidentally a possible bar to admission to the practice of law.
The petition for removal alleges the local prejudice in Prince Edward County and the improbability of securing a fair trial, particularly for one associated with the movement to terminate racial discrimination. The tenor of his petition is that the prosecutions against him are a part of the community plan to frustrate the movement. This was to be achieved by suppressing persons willing to assist those arrested for protesting existing conditions and seeking equal civil rights. He cites, by way of illustration, the fact that lawyers in Prince Edward County *107and neighboring counties have consistently declined to participate in the defense of civil rights cases on the ground that local sentiment would prove harmful to any lawyer who did so.1
We think that the circumstances and the atmosphere represented in the petition for removal, if established, constitute a “denial and inability to enforce” the equal civil rights of both Wallace and the Negro defendants he was attempting to assist. He is within section 1443 for the reasons more fully discussed in our dissent in Baines v. City of Danville, 4 Cir., 357 F.2d 756.

. The difficulty of securing legal representation in civil rights cases in Prince Edward County was highlighted by the award recently given to George E. Allen, Sr., of the Richmond Bar, who was prevailed upon to enter this case. The “Award for Courageous Advocacy” was given him by the College of American Trial Lawyers. American Bar Association News, vol. 10, No. 9 (September 15, 1965).