Warren L. Jones

Warren L. Jones

Warren L. Jones, age 98, died Nov. 11 in the Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla. He was a judge of the United State Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit and heard many cases involving segregation, school integration and minority voting rights in the South.

Before being appointed to the Court of Appeals, Jones had homesteaded in Van Tassell. He was also a charter member of Ferdinand Brandstetter VFW Post #1.

Mr. Jones was appointed to the appeal court in New Orleans, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955 and was almost immediately enmeshed in legal cases intended to end segregation. In 1961, he was a member of a three-judge panel who voted to quash an effort by the State of Alabama to challenge the 1960 Federal Civil Rights Act.

In 1962, he was one of five Federal judges who enjoined the University of Mississippi from taking any action that would prohibit a black student, James H. Meredith, from continuing as a student at the university.

In a noted civil liberties decision, he wrote the majority opinion in a 1964 decision that threw out the Federal conviction of William Worthy, a black journalist, for going to Cuba without a passport, a technical violation of United States law.

Judge Jones, whose home was in Jacksonville, Fla., retired from a full-time seat on the Court of Appeals in 1965, becoming a senior Federal Judge and continued to serve on various panels until recently.

He is survived by three grandchildren, Lauren Shakley of Brooklyn, NY, William W. Shakley of Harrisburg, Pa.; and Susan Keenan of Basalt, Colo.

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