One other legal eagle in Jax that stands above many is Sam Jacobson (now 86 years old) who successfully won a nationally recognized landmark case before the Supreme Court throwing out Jacksonville's and every other jurisdiction's vagrancy laws 50 years ago.
This intriguing recap from Mark Woods of the story is captivating and worth reading today in light of all the efforts to continue passing similarly vague and discretionary "laws" to oppress those who are already disadvantaged or "different."
Mark Woods: Fifty years ago, Jacksonville lawyer fought city — and won landmark Supreme Court case
....It’s the story of a case about Jacksonville’s vagrancy ordinance and much more. It involved a future mayor, Ed Austin, arguing for the city in front of the Supreme Court. When the city lost — when the court unanimously overturned the law — it was big news.
The New York Times put the ruling atop its front page the next morning. A headline said: “Jacksonville Ordinance Held Too Vague — Broad Ruling Expected to Void Many Similar Statutes Across the Nation.”
Justice William O. Douglas wrote the opinion. It was one of more than 1,000 opinions he wrote in the longest tenure in Supreme Court history. But when he died, and the memorial followed his written requests, the opinion cited at his service — along with the singing of “This Land is Your Land” — was the one he wrote about Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville.
It’s a case that is taught in law school classes. It not only instantly changed laws in 1972, it continues to affect lawmaking in 2022.
But some constitutional experts say it remains a somewhat overlooked case in Supreme Court history.
Risa Goluboff, dean of the University of Virginia School of Law, began her 2016 book, “Vagrant Nation,” with two stories: In 1949 Los Angeles, a police officer arresting Isidore Edelman as he spoke from a park bench; and 20 years later a Jacksonville officer arresting 23-year-old Margaret “Lorraine” Papachristou while she was out for a night on the town.
The story of Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville certainly could start there — in 1969 Jacksonville, a car with two Black men and two white women, all four of them arrested, charged with vagrancy, given the maximum allowable bail by a judge, facing the possibility of 10 days in jail.
But perhaps it really should start with a lawyer they only met briefly: Sam Jacobson....
....When Jacobson began practicing law in Jacksonville — going into private practice in 1965, after working in the U.S. Attorney’s office — he ended up in Municipal Court and noticed how many people were there after being arrested for vagrancy charges.
They were brought from a small room into Judge John Santora Jr.’s courtroom, where the judge would decide whether they were guilty or innocent. And, Jacobson says, Santora almost always found them guilty, typically giving a sentence of 10 days in jail....
....Goluboff, the UVA law school dean and author of “Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s,” says that in the two decades before Papachristou, lawyers all across the country were trying to take vagrancy laws to the Supreme Court.
“One of the things that Sam did that was really smart was to create a case that had multiple petitioners who were differently situated, and were arrested for vagrancy for very different kinds of things,” she said. “He had people who were kind of presumptively thought to be criminals but had not yet engaged in any criminal behavior.”
With that combination of cases, he won the race to the Supreme Court....
.....Jacobson headed to Washington. Dec. 8, 1971, was a grey, drizzly day in the nation’s capital. But when the 35-year-old lawyer stepped into the Supreme Court — well, thanks to the technology available 50 years later, you can sit in front of a computer in Jacksonville, go to a website and listen to what happened then.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger begins by saying: “We will hear arguments next in Number 5030, Papachristou against Jacksonville … Mr. Jacobson, you may proceed.”
During the first 23 minutes, Jacobson presents his case and the justices — mainly Burger, but also occasionally Thurgood Marshall — ask dozens of questions....
....Jacobson returned to Jacksonville. He turned 36. And 10 weeks after oral arguments, on Feb. 24, 1972, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling (a 7-0 vote, with two justices not taking part in the consideration or decision of the case).
It said: “The Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance, under which petitioners were convicted, is void for vagueness, in that it ‘fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute,’ it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions, it makes criminal activities that, by modern standards, are normally innocent, and it places almost unfettered discretion in the hands of the police.”
The opinion concluded: "The Jacksonville ordinance cannot be squared with our constitutional standards, and is plainly unconstitutional.".....
.....Jacobson is 86 now, still practicing out of the Bledsoe, Jacobson & Wright offices off Atlantic Boulevard. He has argued one case in front of the Supreme Court in his life. This, of course, is one more than most lawyers ever do. And he not only can claim to be 1-0, that one victory was a significant and enduring one.
“I'm glad to know that it’s still getting interest,” he said recently. “Because it's as valid as it ever was.”
If anything, it seemed to become even more valid as time passed.
In the 1990s, two decades after the Supreme Court ruling, the Jacksonville judge who had been involved in the Papachristou case from the start — who, to Jacobson, seemed “deeply offended” in 1969 by two white women being out with two Black men — did an interview that led to Jacksonville making national news again.
Judge Santora, at this point chief circuit judge, was removed from his post by the Florida Supreme Court after he said, among other things, that school desegregation had been a mistake; that Blacks couldn't cope with integration "because they had a chip on their shoulder”; and that ″girls are wearing pantyhose and miniskirts that would make a guy my age chase them down the hallway” and “the Blacks are playing with those white girls, with the white girls’ consent.″....
.....And the questions about unequal use of laws continue to appear all across America.
We saw that in Jacksonville when a video went viral of a Jacksonville police officer stopping a 21-year-old Black pedestrian for jaywalking, citing him for not carrying an ID while walking. The incident, which led to the Times-Union/Pro Publica series “Walking While Black,” had echoes of one of Jacobson’s petitioners, Jimmy Lee Smith, being arrested while walking in downtown Jacksonville without identification.....
.....For centuries, Goluboff says, vagrancy laws were “written and used as an infinitely flexible license to arrest.” And although such laws were being chipped away at for decades, it wasn’t until a Jacksonville lawyer took a case to the Supreme Court that they became unconstitutional in America.
Several Supreme Court generations later, they remain unconstitutional.
This is the lasting impact of Sam Jacobson’s quixotic quest.
But as vagrancy laws have faded from public memory, to a certain degree so has the case that erased them. So 50 years later, it’s worth retelling the story of Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville. And not just in law school classrooms and legal history books. In the city of Jacksonville.
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/columns/mark-woods/2022/05/16/1972-jacksonville-lawyer-won-landmark-u-s-supreme-court-case/9699598002/
