Biography
Former Yale philosophy student from Pasadena who wrote letters to government officials publicly announcing his refusal to register; the letters were placed in a Selective Service file used by DOJ to select "vocal" nonregistrants for prosecution. Indicted July 22, 1982. U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter dismissed the indictment on selective-prosecution grounds; the Supreme Court reversed in Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598 (1985), 7-2, holding that DOJ's selective prosecution did not violate the First or Fifth Amendments. Wayte then pleaded guilty in June 1985 and Hatter sentenced him on Sept. 10, 1985 to six months under house arrest at his grandmother's home — far below the 5-year statutory maximum.
House arrest distinguished from prison custody
The contemporary AP report printed September 11, 1985 establishes sentencing on Tuesday September 10, not September 9. Wayte was confined to his grandmother Helen Wayte's home in Whittier for six months, not admitted to prison. The unsupported prison-admission and March 9 prison-release fields are removed. A later report anticipated a March 9 house-arrest endpoint, but anticipation is not confirmation of actual discharge. The pretrial July 21, 1982 arrest remains explicitly uncorroborated; the July 22 indictment is not substituted for an arrest. No duration of actual prison custody is established.
Source: Associated Press, Orange Coast Daily Pilot, September 11, 1985, printed page A5. Complete original page visually checked, including explicitly captioned David Wayte photograph. The photograph is embedded in the newspaper scan; no unrelated portrait is substituted.
The September 11, 1985 AP newspaper account individually reports David Wayte pleaded guilty on June 13 to failing to register for the draft. His September 10 sentence was six months of house arrest at his grandmother’s home, not a prison term. The blank plea field is filled; no prison admission, actual completion or discharge date is inferred.
