Mardon R. Walker v. State of Georgia

417 F.2d 1, 1969 U.S. App. LEXIS 10631
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedSeptember 29, 1969
Docket26271
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 417 F.2d 1 (Mardon R. Walker v. State of Georgia) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mardon R. Walker v. State of Georgia, 417 F.2d 1, 1969 U.S. App. LEXIS 10631 (5th Cir. 1969).

Opinion

TUTTLE, Circuit Judge:

This case and the case of Walker and Forman v. State of Georgia, 417 F.2d 5, decided today by this court, are consolidated appeals from the remand to the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, of two removal petitions filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, pursuant to Section 1443(1) Title 28, U.S.C.A. 1 The precise issue before this court is whether the trial court applied an improper standard in ruling that the criminal prosecution under the Georgia riot, malicious mischief, and other offenses against public order statutes 2 were not removable to the United States District Court pursuant to Section 1443(1), although the movant alleged that the charges arose out of a peaceful attempt to obtain service at a racially segregated place of public accommodation.

Petitioner-appellant alleges in her petition for removal that the statutes under which she is charged as applied and used against her infringe upon and deny her her equal rights and access to places of public accommodations in violation of the specific grants of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; that the trying of said charges are attempts to “threaten, harass and intimidate” her and that petitioner is denied and/or cannot enforce in the courts of the state of Georgia rights under the law of the United States providing for the equal rights of citizens as guaranteed under Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

*3 Petitioner-appellant, Mardon R. Walker, was a white exchange student from Connecticut College attending Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She was arrested with twelve other known individuals, on January 13, 1964, and charged with trespass as a result of her joint participation in an attempt to obtain service at the Krystal, a hamburger stand in Atlanta, which is covered by Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Miss Walker was tried and convicted of trespass under a Georgia statute enacted after the early effort of Negroes to obtain service at segregated restaurants; the period which is commonly referred to as the “sit-in movement.” 3 She was sentenced to serve 18 months imprisonment and to pay a fine of $1,000 — the maximum sentence for a misdemeanor in Georgia. She was later released on an appeal bond of $15,000 to be secured by unencumbered real property located in Fulton County, Georgia. This conviction and sentence were reversed by the United States Supreme Court on May 24, 1965, on the authority of Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, 379 U.S. 306, 85 S.Ct. 384, 13 L.Ed.2d 300 (1964). See Walker v. Georgia, 381 U.S. 355, 85 S.Ct. 1557, 14 L.Ed.2d 681 (1965). On November 25, 1965, some 22 months after the protest at the Krystal and after the Supreme Court mandate came down, Miss Walker was ordered to stand a new trial and was newly indicted for her role in the same sit-in at the Krystal upon an order initiated by a Fulton County Superior Court Judge directing the Solicitor General (now the district attorney) for the Atlanta Judicial Circuit to seek a grand jury indictment under the Georgia riot, malicious mischief and other offenses against public order statutes.

The petitioner-appellant removed this case to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia; however, upon motion by the State of Georgia, the case was remanded to the Fulton County Superior Court.

On July 26, 1965, pursuant to the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court of Georgia vacated the judgment affirming petitioner’s trespass conviction and reversed the judgment of the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia. However, the trial court construed the order and judgment in remittitur to mean “simply one in which the conviction of defendant, Mardon R. Walker, under the original indictment had been set aside and reversed and the result was that the case stood for trial upon said indictment de novo in the Fulton County Superior Court.” This position nursed back to life the state of Georgia’s original trespass indictment No. 85,028. Therefore, the District Court had before it two indictments against Miss Walker • — one, a violation of Georgia trespass statute and, two, a violation of Georgia’s malicious mischief, riot and other offenses against public order statutes. Both of these indictments arose out of Miss Walker’s attempt to obtain service at the Krystal on January 13, 1964.

The other individuals who participated in the attempt to obtain service at the Krystal were originally charged with violation of the Georgia trespass statute at the same time as Miss Walker on January 28, 1964. They were never indicted under either the Georgia riot, malicious mischief or other offenses against public order statutes. These cases were removed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia before they actually came to trial in Fulton County Superior Court and they were held in abeyance pending *4 the outcome of Rachel v. Georgia, 384 U.S. 780, 86 S.Ct. 1783, 16 L.Ed.2d 925. 4

The district court held the only full evidentiary hearing on the merits of the petition for removal of Miss Walker’s co-demonstrators who were charged under the Georgia trespass statute at the same time it heard the evidence against Miss Walker under the trespass and other statutes on September 28, 1967. As a result of this hearing, the court, in its order of April 2, 1968, found that all of Miss Walker’s co-defendants, as well as Miss Walker, who were arrested on the trespass charges at the Krystal were requested to leave solely because of race. The court concluded that as a matter of law these cases were properly removable under Section 1443(1), Title 28, United States Code and dismissed the indictments with full prejudice. The No. 85,028 trespass indictment against Miss Walker which grew out of the demonstration at the Krystal was thus dismissed with full prejudice. However, the other charges were remanded to the state court.

It must be made plain that Miss Walker’s trespass case, in support of which the state introduced all of its evidence, was held removable and it was dismissed, but her case charging the breach of the other statutes, while not supported, by any additional evidence, was held not removable. In other words, the court held that whatever she did at the Krystal was solely peaceable and removable under Rachel, but the same acts may have been non-peaeeable under some other statute. The court did not make a finding that she committed any such acts, but held the nature of the charge required that the state try her for them.

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Bluebook (online)
417 F.2d 1, 1969 U.S. App. LEXIS 10631, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mardon-r-walker-v-state-of-georgia-ca5-1969.