Litigation: The Champion

• Share

While leading countless assaults against Birmingham's racial barriers, a Baptist preacher named Fred L. Shuttlesworth has suffered four bad beatings, had his home bombed, and been arrested 22 times for everything from speeding to parading without a permit. Shuttlesworth, 43, believes in fighting every case just as far as he can. His belligerence has already taken him to the U.S. Supreme Court eight times—which makes him the most litigious individual in the court's 176-year history.

Last week the court reversed a Shuttlesworth criminal conviction for the fifth time, a record that all but makes him a one-man constitutional textbook. Main chapters:

> 1958: Shuttlesworth lost a challenge to Alabama's pupil-placement law when the Supreme Court declared the law constitutional, even though it seemed designed to perpetuate segregation.

> 1962: The court refused to review an 82-day rap for disorderly conduct. Shuttlesworth got that one during his 1958 effort to desegregate Birmingham buses. His crime: not moving to the rear of a bus.

> 1962: Shuttlesworth sought a writ of habeas corpus in the bus case, won a Supreme Court order that finally led to the voiding of his 1958 conviction.

> 1963: The court tossed out Shuttles-worth's 180-day sentence for aiding and abetting sit-in violations of Birmingham's trespass ordinance.

> 1964: Out went Shuttlesworth's 180-day rap for arguing with Birmingham's police chief while the latter was taking Freedom Riders into "protective custody." Alabama's highest state court had refused to review the case because Shuttlesworth's lawyers petitioned on the wrong-size paper,

> 1964 (same day): In the historic libel decision of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court overturned a judgment against Shuttlesworth and other civil rights leaders for running an ad in the Times that criticized Birmingham public officials.

^ 1965: Out went another 15-day sentence for disorderly conduct while leading Freedom Riders in Montgomery.

Keep Moving. Last week the Supreme Court confronted a loitering conviction that Shuttlesworth earned in 1962 when a Birmingham cop ordered him and his companions to move along. "You mean to say we can't stand here on the sidewalk?" asked Shuttlesworth. "Yes," said the cop. As the others dispersed, Shuttlesworth walked into a store, where the cop arrested him for blocking the sidewalk outside. A nonjury trial netted Shuttlesworth a sentence of 241 days at hard labor.

By a vote of 9 to 0, the Supreme Court upheld the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund argument that Shuttlesworth's conviction denied him his constitutional rights. In a tart concurring opinion, Justice Abe Fortas lambasted the conviction as a "façade" for hounding Shuttlesworth because of his leadership of Negro store boycotts. Shuttlesworth may have annoyed the cop, said Fortas, "but a policeman's lot is not a happy one—and certainly, in context, Shuttlesworth's questions did not rise to the magnitude of an offense against the laws of Alabama."