William L. Maxwell Case Summary

The Maxwell Case William L. Maxwell was a 22-year-old black male who, in 1961, was charged with the rape of a white woman in Arkansas. The jury had been given two options to choose from, life imprisonment at hard labor or capital punishment. Maxwell then went through a nine-year span where he filed a series of appeals, two writs of habeas corpus, and a petition for certiorari claiming there was a pattern of racial discrimination in the way Arkansas juries handled rape cases. Throughout those nine years he was denied every single time until 1970 when the supreme court vacated his death sentence on narrow grounds of jurors being because they opposed the death penalty. His case is important because it addressed issues with racial discrimination

The appeal was denied and Maxwell’s attorney along with LDF lawyers then drafted and submitted in 1964 the first writ of habeas corpus for review by the federal courts. The writ was also rejected in the first US District court, then the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and the US Supreme Court. In this writ, he challenged a several points some being the sufficiency of the evidence and the constitutionality in application of the penalty statute. All of Maxwell’s points were discussed with the defense and the judgment of his conviction was confirmed by a unanimous supreme court vote. With more counsel support from New York, an appeal was taken to court for that decision in 1965. They primarily argued three things. First that Maxwell had been denied due process and equal protection because he was sentenced under statutes which are discriminatorily enforced against African Americans. Second, he was denied due process and equal protection because of the Garland County Jury lists revealed race. Third, the taking of Maxwell’s coat. Once again the appeal was

In 1968, he again petitioned the Supreme Court and the Court agreed to hear his arguments about Arkansas’s lack of guidelines in jury sentencing and its single-verdict procedure. What Maxwell didn’t know, was that this appeal would lead to the Supreme court voting 8 to 1 that Arkansas’s death penalty is unconstitutional in 1969. The decision was never publicly announced because of the unexpected resignation of one justice, and the retirement of another. The Court ordered that the Maxwell v. Bishop cases be reargued the beginning of next term on October 13, 1969. It was then postponed until May of 1970 because President Nixon had trouble getting his new nominees affirmed. One of the consequences of the Maxwell case along with two other death penalty cases decided in 1968 (Witherspoon v. Illinois and United States v. Jackson), was the unofficial suspension of all executions until some of the death penalty issues could be