The Nation - News from Oct. 17, 1985

An all-white federal jury in Tuscaloosa, Ala., convicted a black voting rights activist on four counts of abusing the absentee voting process. It was the Justice Department’s first conviction in its voter fraud crackdown in mostly black Alabama counties. The jury convicted Eutaw City Councilman Spiver Gordon, 46, a national board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, after first recommending that Gordon be granted clemency. But U.S. District Judge E.B. Haltom Jr. refused to accept a verdict with that stipulation, saying: “I am the one who will determine the appropriate punishment . . . .”