Biography
David Henry Mitchell III was a Connecticut draft resister whose 1965 conviction became a landmark of selective conscientious objection — the legal argument that a citizen may refuse to participate in a particular war (Vietnam) on the grounds that it violates international law, without claiming pacifist objection to all wars. Refusing to fill out conscientious objector forms, Mitchell argued at trial that the Vietnam War constituted a war of aggression under the 1945 London Charter (Nuremberg Principles). U.S. District Judge William H. Timbers rejected his Nuremberg defense in United States v. Mitchell, 246 F. Supp. 874 (D. Conn. 1965). Mitchell was convicted of refusing induction, sentenced to five years in federal prison, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari in 1967 over a famous dissent by Justice William O. Douglas. He served approximately two years.
