Biography
Lee Otis Johnson was a Houston civil-rights organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who became a nationally known symbol of selective prosecution after he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for giving a single marijuana cigarette to an undercover narcotics agent. The arrest came in 1968, days after Johnson had denounced Houston's mayor at a memorial rally for the assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. An all-white jury convicted him and imposed the 30-year term — a sentence so disproportionate to the alleged offense that "Free Lee Otis Johnson" became a rallying cry on Texas campuses and beyond. In 1972 a federal court overturned the conviction (Johnson v. Beto, 337 F. Supp. 1371), finding constitutional violations in his prosecution, and Johnson was freed after roughly four years behind bars.
