Biography
David J. Miller was a 24-year-old Catholic Worker pacifist and the first person prosecuted under the August 1965 amendment to the Selective Service Act criminalizing destruction of a draft card. On October 15, 1965, at a rally outside the Armed Forces Induction Center on Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan, Miller burned his draft card with a borrowed lighter; FBI agents arrested him three days later. He was convicted in February 1966 and sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. The Second Circuit upheld his conviction (367 F.2d 72), and the Supreme Court declined to take the case, instead later upholding the law in United States v. O'Brien (1968). Miller remained free on bail until June 1968, when he began serving and ultimately did 22 months in federal prison.
