Squier

Appellant, an inmate of the federal penitentiary at McNeil Island, on August 30, 1948 petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that in 1936 he was tried and convicted on a criminal charge in the district court of the United States for the district of Utah, sitting at Salt Lake City, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Pie claimed the right to discharge from custody on the ground that women had been systematically and intentionally excluded from the grand jury which indicted him and the petit jury which tried him. The court issued a show cause order and after a hearing denied the petition.

The government admits, and the court found, that in the state of Utah in 1936 women were eligible for jury service. The record contains a certificate of the clerk of Salt Lake County, dated August 1948, stating that women were permitted to serve on petit juries in the district court of the state for that county and did serve as such jurors during the period from 1930 to date. Nothing is said of grand juries; and it would seem that in Utah the subject is largely academic since criminal prosecutions there are almost invariably initiated by information. We assume,…