The Civil Obedience Act was proposed by Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long and supported by Senators Eastland and Thurmond. Long argued in Senate debate that the law was needed to supplement the other rider to the Civil Rights Act, Title I, which made conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot a federal crime.
Both anti-riot acts have been challenged on constitutional grounds. Rioting which does not involve interstate travel is theoretically beyond Congress's control, though Congress sought to bring it within its control by making a connection between obstructing police officers and federally-protected functions which the police officers may be protecting.
The U.S. Attorney's office in St. Louis was the first to prosecute under the Civil Disobedience Act-which carries maximum penalties of five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Two of the three charged under the act have been convicted so far. Both were charged with throwing a firecracker at a policeman and both received a five-year sentence, though the sentence in the second case will be reviewed after ninety days.
Sabotage in a time of National Emergency has never been used elsewhere against students involved in a campus disorder. It was used once before in St. Louis-in 1969, against a student who was caught trying to destroy the Army ROTC building at Washington University with a firebomb. It carries a maximum thirty-year sentence.
The National Emergency on which this law depends was declared in 1950 by President Truman, on the eye of the Korean War.
In his proclamation of National Emergency, Truman stated that "recent events in Korea and elsewhere constitute a grave threat to the peace of the world and imperil the efforts of this country and those of the United Nations to prevent aggression and armed conflict."
He apparently intended that the word "else-where" be interpreted quite broadly-the conflict in Korea, he said, represented just one part of the threat of "world conquest by communist imperialism."
No president since Truman has issued a National Emergency proclamation but none has repealed Truman's, which therefore still remains in effect.
At the time Truman declared a National Emergency, only acts of sabotage during a time of war carried a thirty-year maximum sentence; in 1954, Congress extended the sabotage law to times of National Emergency.
Though the political context in which the alleged crimes took place gives them political overtones, there may be no basis for charging that the U.S. Attorney's office in St. Louis acted irregularly. After all, Congress makes the laws and the Justice Department is sworn to carry them out. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth R. Heinemen's claim that "these cases are no more political than a case of bank robbery" is not entirely correct.
If someone robs a bank, in most cases it is quite clear what laws he has violated. In these cases, the government had a great deal of discretion in its choice of what charges to bring and could, in fact, have decided to let the cases remain at the state level.
It could have charged the four students indicted for sabotage with destruction of federal property instead. (It charged one student with both-the threat of a thirty-year sentence caused him to plead guilty to destruction of federal property, which carries a ten-year maximum.) Sabotage, after all, implies a threat to national security-and carries a commensurate penalty. The students in St. Louis did not constitute such a threat.
It could have left it to the state to charge them with arson, which has a two-to-five year sentence, or with destruction of federal property which, under Missouri law, has a maximum sentence of one year.
In fact, four of the defendants had already been sentenced to six months in jail by a Missouri district court judge, when they were indicted by the federal Grand Jury. Following their participation in the May 4 demonstration, the judge found them guilty of contempt of a restraining order against obstructive demonstrations, obtained earlier by Washington University. The two students who received five-year sentences for violating the Civil Obedience Act were convicted under the restraining order for the same action-throwing a fire cracker at a policeman.
The punishment hardly fit the crimes, which makes it harder to believe that the government's attorneys in St. Louis are as benign as they say they are.