Court Opinion

ID: 9451006
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:02:45.990832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:31.473867
License: Public Domain

JONES, Circuit Judge.
The appellant, Jan Hillegas, brought a habeas corpus proceeding in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi claiming she was detained by the appellees unlawfully and in violation of Federally guaranteed rights. The facts herein recited are as set forth in her petition and, for the purposes of the case, are assumed to be true. The appellant is a white woman, twenty-one years of age, and went to Lowndes County, Mississippi from Syracuse, New York. In Mississippi she was associated with the Congress of Federated Organizations (COFO) in assisting Negroes in their efforts to register to vote. COFO arranged for her meals and lodging. Such money as she needed was supplied by her mother. While in the county courthouse of Lowndes County at Columbus, Mississippi, sitting on a bench with two other COFO workers, the appellant and her companions were told by a deputy of the appellee, Sheriff Taylor, to leave the courthouse and that if they did not leave he would arrest them. They did not leave and he arrested them, took them to the Sheriff’s office where they were told they were charged with vagrancy. Appellant and her companions attempted, by a show of currency and other means, to persuade the deputy sheriff that they were not vagrants. Their efforts produced no results and they were confined in the county jail. Other efforts, equally unavailing, were made to procure appellant’s release. She then filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court which was denied. This appeal is from the order of the district court, which based its order upon failure to exhaust available state remedies. No effort was made to obtain relief in the courts of Mississippi. Nothing is here shown to call for the application of a different rule than was announced and applied in Brown v. Rayfield, 5th Cir. 1963, 320 F.2d 96, cert. den. 375 U.S. 902, 84 S.Ct. 191, 11 L.Ed.2d 143, and *860in the case of In re Wykcoff, 6 Race Rel.L.Rep. 786, 793, which is discussed in Brown v. Rayfield. The principles announced in those cases sustain the decision of the district court and its judgment is
Affirmed.