To Robert F. Kennedy

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date: May 4, 1961

Location: Atlanta, Ga.

Genre: Letter

Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views

Details

King pleads for Kennedy to grant clemency to Morton Sobell, who was convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of spying for the Soviet Union.¹ King writes that Sobell’s guilt or innocence has no consequence because the Communist hysteria around Sobell’s conviction prevented a “calm and dispassionate” ruling. Sobell was eventually released from prison in 1969.

The Honorable Robert F. Kennedy
Attorney General
Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Kennedy:

Traditionally, American jurisprudence has held the application of justice in the assignment of punishment resulting from violations of law as a most high estate. The rising tide of consciousness of the world’s people to the rights of individuals gives added importance to the application of justice in the affairs of men in relation to their society.

Morton Sobell, now serving the eleventh year of a thirty year sentence on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage, was convicted at a time when a climate of hysteria pervaded the country. At such a moment it was difficult to gain a calm and dispassionate dispensing of justice. The conclusiveness of the evidence which convicted him has been debated many times by notables of the legal profession. Many devoted and patriotic Americans are firmly convinced of Sobell’s innocence.

But whether Sobell was guilty or innocent, I am firmly of the opinion that his thirty year sentence constituted a cruel and unusual punishment. To extend clemency to Morton Sobell would be in keeping with the highest ideals of jurisprudence and justice in America. His continued imprisonment will do a great deal to undermine our constitutional freedoms and safeguards of due process. I would hope that President Kennedy will respond affirmatively to this simple humane plea for clemency.

Respectfully yours,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

^1. In a 26 January 1961 letter, Sobell’s wife, Helen, requested that King write Kennedy on her husband’s behalf. Helen Sobell was the chairman of the Committee to Secure Justice for Morton Sobell. King had earlier signed a national appeal to free Morton Sobell (Peter Braestrup, “Sobell’s Release Is Sought by 1,800,” New York Times, 20 November 1960). Morton Sobell (1917– ) was born in New York and graduated from the College of the City of New York (CCNY) with a degree in electrical engineering (1938). He later earned a master’s degree from the University Michigan (1942). While a student at CCNY, Sobell befriended Julius Rosenberg. The pair were arrested with several others in the spring of 1951, and tried for conspiring to pass atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 for espionage, and Sobell was given a thirty-year sentence for conspiracy of which he served nearly nineteen years. In a 2008 interview with the New York Times, Sobell admitted that he had leaked military but not atomic secrets to the Soviet Union (Sam Roberts, “Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits to Soviet Spying,” 12 September 2008).

Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.