Tom C. Clark

“ Throughout the centuries the Great Writ has been the shield of personal freedom insuring liberty to persons illegally detained. Respecting the State's grant of a right to test their detention, the Fourteenth Amendment weighs the interests of rich and poor criminals in equal scale, and its hand extends as far to each. In failing to extend the privilege of the Great Writ to its indigent prisoners, Iowa denies them equal protection of the laws. ”

“ It has long been available in the federal courts to indigent prisoners of both the State and Federal Governments to test the validity of their detention. Over the centuries it has been the common law world's 'freedom writ' by whose orderly processes the production of a prisoner in court may be required and the legality of the grounds for his incarceration inquired into, failing which the prisoner is set free. ”

“ While habeas corpus may, of course, be found to be a civil action for procedural purposes, Ex parte Tom Tong, 1883, 108 U.S. 556, 2 S.Ct. 871, 27 L.Ed. 826, it does not follow that its availability in testing the State's right to detain an indigent prisoner may be subject to the payment of a filing fee. The State admits that each petitioner here is an indigent and that its requirement as to the $4 fee payment has effectively denied them the use of the writ. ”