Hamm v. City of Rock Hill

The Court holds that these state trespass convictions, occurring before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, must be set aside by virtue of the federal doctrine of criminal abatement. This remarkable conclusion finds no support in reason or authority.

The common-law rule of abatement is basically a canon of construction conceived by the courts as a yardstick for determining whether a legislature, which has enacted a statute making conduct nohcriminal which was proscribed by an earlier criminal statute, also intended to put an end to nonfinal convictions under the former legislation. In…