Scottsboro Boys

{{ this defendant forcibly ravished a woman. You are not trying lawyers; you are not trying State lines. You are here at home as jurors—a jury of citizens under oath sitting in the jury box taking the evidence and considering it, leaving out any outside influences.

Alabama Supreme Court affirms Decatur convictions

There was grave doubt that the Alabama Supreme Court would even hear the appeal for Haywood Patterson. The first step after conviction is for the defense to file for a new trial. However, delays in the preparation of the trial transcripts forced Leibowitz to ask for and receive two extensions of the time to file his new trial motions, which Callahan granted until January 25, 1934, which later date was later than the filing date Alabama procedure permitted. Even though Callahan had granted the extension until that later date, without objection from the prosecution, he granted the motion of Attorney General Knight to dismiss the motions for new trial. Alabama law still allowed ninety days from the date of conviction to perfect an appeal. Since Patterson had been the first to be convicted and there was some ambiguity whether his conviction date was the date the jury returned its sentence or the date on which Judge Callahan had pronounced his death sentence. So, getting his appeal papers filed right away suddenly and unexpectedly became crucial. To leave nothing to chance, the defense team placed the appeal documents on a plane to Alabama from New York on February 28, 1934. However, the plane crashed and the paperwork was lost. So, the defense did not get the papers to the Alabama Supreme Court until March 5, 1934. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Lawson did urge the Alabama Supreme Court to dismiss Patterson's appeal on the ground that the December 1, 1933 jury verdict date was his conviction date and, as a result, his appeal had not been timely filed. The Alabama Supreme Court heard the arguments in his case but agreed that his appeal had not been timely filed and dismissed it without considering its merits, which meant that it was technically ineligible to be appealed on its merits to the United States Supreme Court. It rescheduled Patterson's execution for August 31, 1934.

The Alabama Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction of Clarence Norris on June 28, 1934, which, while chilling to read today, is an opinion that is very well written and reasoned. This time, Justice Lucien Dunbibben Gardner, writing for a unanimous Court, including previous dissenter Chief Justice John Anderson, did not repeat its earlier assertion that states could select juries any way they wanted. Instead, it quickly acknowledged that African Americans could not be excluded from juries by law or in practice. By acknowledging that principal, they likely thought they had removed the United States constitutional issue from the case, which would insulate their decision from any review by the United States Supreme Court. Justice Gardner found, as a factual issue, however, that there were very few "negroes" in Jackson County, the jury commissioner had an affirmative duty to weed out unsuitable jurors, regardless of race, and there was no credible evidence in the record that "negroes" had been "systematically" excluded. Since there was no guarantee that a person of a given race would be judged by a "mixed race" jury that included one or more persons of that person's race, no error had occurred.

It rescheduled Norris' execution also for August 31, 1934. However, the defense filed for a rehearing in the Alabama Supreme Court, which automatically stayed those executions. This gave the defense time to ask for relief from the United States Supreme Court when it began its new term in October. However, before the Supreme Court acted, ILD representative J.W. Peerson of Huntsville, Alabama had approached Victoria Price offering her money if she would sign an affidavit in which she admitted that she had not been raped. She promptly reported the offer to the Huntsville police, who advised to go along with the offer. The payment to Price was to be made in Nashville, Tennessee. However, the Alabama authorities arrested Peerson who was in his car with Price on their way to Nashville. The Alabama authorities then alerted the police in Nashville, Tennessee who proceeded to arrest ILD New York attorneys Daniel Swift and Sole Kone on October 1, 1934 for trying to bribe Victoria Price to recant. The police confiscated $1,500 from their car. Alabama promptly extradited the two attorneys from Tennessee to Alabama for vigorous prosecution.

This incident understandably made Leibowitz furious, believing the incident had done great damage to his cases and that it reflected badly on him personally. He demanded that the Communist Party end its involvement in the cases, which they refused to do. There was much back and forth wrangling as to whether Leibowitz or ILD attorneys would represent Patterson and Norris on their appeals to the United States Supreme Court. Leibowitz helped form the "American Scottsboro Committee", which was composed of prominent New York African Americans to back him in his quest to represent Patterson and Norris. While this battle raged, the Alabama Supreme Court forced their hands by denying the defense motion for a rehearing. To get the appeals filed, Leibowitz and the ILD had to compromise. Under this compromise, Leibowitz represented Clarence Norris and ILD attorneys Osmond Fraenkel and Walter Pollak would represent Haywood Patterson.

United States Supreme Court reverses Decatur convictions

The case went back to the United States Supreme Court for an astonishing second time as Norris v. Alabama, which reversed the convictions for a second time on the basis that people had been excluded from the jury pool because of their race. The defendants had raised the issue of de facto exclusion of African Americans from Alabama juries in the previous case before the United States Supreme Court, but the Court had not needed to address it, since it reversed the convictions on the grounds of "ineffective appointment of counsel". This time the issue was solidly before them — all objections properly made and evidence showing it properly in the record. The Court granted Certiorari to hear the case on January 7, 1935. Attorneys Samuel Liebowitz, Walter H. Pollak and Osmond Frankel argued the case before the Supreme Court from February 15 to February 18 1935. At one point, Liebowitz showed the somewhat skeptical justices where the names of African Americans had been hurriedly added to the Jackson County, Alabama jury rolls. He showed them where the names of African Americans had been added above the red lines in the hefty jury books. The Justices examined the items closely with a magnifying glass. The Justices reacted visibly to what they saw in those books. Thomas Knight, recently elected as the Lieutenant Governor of Alabama, continued to represent the State of Alabama. He conceded to the Court that he did not know whether those names had been forged onto the Jackson County jury rolls. He declared, "I simply take the position that I do not know." However, he maintained that any such forgery, even if it had happened was irrelevant, because the Jury Commissioners of Jackson and Morgan Counties Alabama had merely done their duty under Alabama law to include only capable citizens on the jury rolls, in which they took no account of the race of the persons included and excluded. Because the case of Haywood Patterson had been dismissed due to the technical failure to appeal it on time, it presented different issues. Attorneys Osmond Fraenkel and Walter Pollak argued those.

Thus, six weeks after the arguments to the Court, on April 1, 1935, the United States Supreme Court, eight to nothing, remanded the cases a second time for yet further retrials in Alabama. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Hughes observed the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution clearly forbade the states from excluding citizens from juries due solely to their race. However, he continued, "The question is of application of this established principle to the facts disclosed by the record." Chief Justice Hughes noted that the Court had inspected the jury rolls in question and chastised Judge Callahan and the Alabama Supreme Court for completely accepting their "mere general asseverations" that black citizens had not been excluded from them for many decades. "Something more" was needed. The Court concluded, "The motion to quash the indictment upon that ground should have been granted." Moving on to the case of Haywood Patterson, whose case was not technically before them on any federal ground, the Court ruled that it would be a great injustice to execute him when identically situated Norris would receive a new trial. It deftly reasoned that Alabama should have the opportunity to reexamine his case as well and also remanded it to Alabama. While this ruling was rather clearly improper, there was no higher court to which Alabama could appeal it. So, both Norris and Patterson again escaped the electric chair — for the time being. For the record, at least, Alabama Governor Bib Graves issued a directive to every solicitor and judge in the state, to which he attached a copy of Norris v. Alabama and instructed, "Holdings of the United States Supreme Court are the supreme laws of the land. Whether we like the decisions or not, it is the patriotic duty of every citizen and the sworn duty of every public officer to accept and uphold them in letter and in spirit. . . This decision means that we must put Negroes in jury boxes in every county in the state. Alabama is going to observe the supreme law of America."

Final round of trials

After the case was remanded, on May 1, 1935 Victoria Price swore new Jackson County rape complaints against the defendants as the sole complaining witness, since Ruby Bates had long since withdrawn from the case. On November 13, 1935, an African American, Creed Conyer, became the first post-Reconstruction black person to sit on an Alabama grand jury. However, only a two-thirds vote was needed to indict. So, the whites on the Jackson County Grand Jury easily outvoted him and indicted the defendants again. Although Thomas Knight, Jr. was now Lieutenant Governor of Alabama, serving Alabama Attorney General Albert Carmichael appointed him special prosecutor to continue prosecuting the cases.

Leibowitz reluctantly recognized that he was viewed by Southerners as an outsider. In fact, the New York newspapers had quoted him as calling Morgan County citizens "tobacco chewing ignoramuses or worse", which quotation was repeated in the Decatur newspaper. Thus, he allowed local attorney Charles Watts to be the lead attorney, while Leibowitz assisted from the sidelines. Judge Callahan arraigned all the defendants, except the two juveniles, in Decatur, Alabama from January 6 through January 8, 1936. They all pled not guilty and Attorney Watts moved to have the case to the United States Court as a civil rights case, which motion Judge Callahan promptly denied. He set the retrials to being in his court on January 20, 1936.

Alabama Governor David Bibb Graves

On January 23, 1936, in this retrial, Haywood Patterson was again convicted of rape but was sentenced to 75 years in prison rather than the death penalty—the first time a black man had been sentenced to anything other than death in the rape of a white woman in Alabama. There was a Methodist minister on the jury who persuaded the others to agree to this sentence as a "compromise." Victoria Price expressed her extreme disappointment that Patterson escaped the death sentence this time, pronouncing bitterly that it was extremely unfair that he would get off with only 75 years. Haywood Patterson escaped in 1948 and fled to Detroit, Michigan. In June 1950, although he personally could not read or write, with the help of journalist Earl Conrad he published a book called The Scottsboro Boy about his ordeal; shortly afterwards was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, Governor of Michigan G. Mennen Williams would not allow him to be extradited to Alabama. However, Patterson stabbed and killed another man in a bar fight. As a result, after two hung jury mistrials, he was convicted of manslaughter in December 1950 and sentenced to six to fifteen years. Patterson died of cancer in prison in Michigan on August 24, 1952, after having served only one year of his sentence.

In 1937, Thomas Knight approached Samuel Leibowitz secretly in New York with a plea bargain offer while Patterson's appeal was pending and while the other defendants were waiting in jail for their trials. He told Leibowitz that the case was costing Alabama a lot of money and was giving it a bad name. He said he would drop the charges against three and let the others off with guilty pleas of rape or assault with sentences of no more than ten years. Leibowitz was loath to plead clients guilty whom he believed to be innocent, but there was little doubt that Knight could continue convicting all of them as often as he wanted, so Leibowitz reluctantly agreed to take the deal. However, that deal went astray when Knight died unexpectedly in May 1937. A week after Knight's death, Judge Callahan announced that the trials would resume in July. Alabama Attorney General Thomas Lawson replaced Knight as the Prosecutor on the case.

On July 15,1937, Clarence Norris was again convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to death. Governor of Alabama Bibb Graves later reduced Clarence Norris' death sentence to life in prison. He was paroled in 1946. He jumped parole but showed up in Brooklyn, New York City in 1976, married with two children. Alabama prison officials in Alabama still considered him a fugitive. However, the NAACP and Alabama's attorney general urged Alabama Governor George Wallace to grant Norris a pardon. Wallace finally granted a full pardon in October 1976. Norris went back to Alabama to receive his pardon. In 1979 his autobiography The Last of the Scottsboro Boys was published in which he described his ordeal. The last living Scottsboro Boy wanted to clear his name. Norris died January 23, 1989 when at 76.

On July 22, 1937, Andrew Wright was again convicted of rape and sentenced to 99 years. He was paroled, but returned to prison after violating his parole. He was finally released for good in 1950 by paroling him to New York.

On July 24, 1937, Charlie Weems was convicted of rape and sentenced to 105 years in prison. He was paroled in 1943, having served 12 years in some of the worst prisons in the nation.

Ozie Powell in hospital

Powell pleaded guilty to assaulting a Deputy Sheriff named Edgar Blaylock with intent to murder him during a previous alleged escape attempt and was sentenced to 20 years. Judge Callahan did not give him any credit for the six years he had already served on the rape charge. However, the state did drop the rape charges against him as part of this plea bargain. The incident happened on January 24, 1936, while Powell, Wright and Norris were being transported in a sheriff's cruiser to Birmingham Prison. They later alleged that the transporting officers in the front seat, Sheriff J. Street Sandlin and Deputy Braylock, called them names, goaded them and threatened them to the point they made a futile escape attempt from the locked cruiser. Powell pulled a pocket knife from his pocket, which he had allegedly found in the jail, and cut Deputy Edgar Blaylock's face and neck with it, with the other two allegedly pulling him away with their manacled hands. They stated that Sheriff Sandlin then got out of the car, went back, took careful aim and shot Powell in the face, who allegedly had his hands raised in surrender. They took Powell to the hospital where surgery saved his life, but he did suffer permanent brain damage. Alabama Governor Bibb Graves extended his congratulations to Sheriff Sandlin for the shooting. Powell was finally released for good in 1946.

• On July 24, 1937, Roy Wright had all charges against him dropped; the state said that they felt that given his age, and time served, he should now be released. After Alabama freed him, he told Leibowitz that he wanted to become a teacher or even a lawyer like him. The Scottsboro Defense Committee took him on a national tour. Afterward, he joined the United States Army. When he got out of the Army, he married and joined the Merchant Marine. After Wright came back from a lengthy time at sea in 1959, he came to believe that his wife had been unfaithful to him during his absence. As a result, he shot his wife to death and then took his own life.

• On July 24, 1937, Eugene Williams had all charges against him dropped, for the same reasons given for Wright.

• On July 24, 1937, Olen Montgomery had all charges against him dropped, as the state announced that after consideration, it now believed him to be not guilty.

• On July 24, 1937, Willie Roberson had all charges against him dropped, for the same reasons given for Montgomery.

The four who had charges dropped had spent over 6 years in prison, the adults on death row. On July 26, 1937, all the remaining "Scottsboro Boys" were sent to Kilby Prison, except Haywood Patterson, who was sent to Atmore State Prison Farm.

Governor Bibb Graves had planned to pardon all the defendants before leaving office in 1938. However, during the customary pre-pardon interview, Graves was angered by their hostility toward him and refusal to admit their guilt, so he did not issue pardons.

In media

Literature

After escaping from prison, Haywood Patterson wrote a book about his experiences, Scottsboro Boy. While attempting to sell copies of the book one night in a Detroit bar, Patterson got into a fight with a man and stabbed him. Patterson was arrested, convicted, and died in prison from emphysema two years later.

In Richard Wright's Native Son, Jan brings up the Scottsboro boys case, commenting on the case by saying, "don't you think we [the Communist Party] did a good job in helping to keep 'em from killing those boys?" Bigger responds by saying, "it was all right."

While it has sometimes been suggested that the case inspired Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee denied this, claiming it was a far less sensational case that moved her to write the novel.

Allen Ginsberg in his poem "America", written at Berkeley on January 17, 1956, mentioned the Scottsboro boys. Author Kelly Covin published a book about the case in 1972 titled "Hear That Train Blow." In 2008, Ellen Feldman wrote Scottsboro: A Novel, based on the events of the Scottsboro trial.

Regino Pedraso (Cuban mestizo poet, b. 1896, of African and Chinese lineages) in his poem "Hermano Negro" (Black Brother) published in Antología Poética (1938) makes a direct reference to the Scottsboro trials in two instances. The poetic voice urges the black individuals to "hush the 'maracas' so that they can learn, look and listen in Scottsboro to the clamoring of enslaved anguish".

Music

Leadbelly commemorated the incident in his song "The Scottsboro Boys". In the song, he warns colored people to watch out if they go to Alabama, saying that "the man gonna get ya", and that the "Scottsboro boys [will] tell ya what it's all about".

Film and television

In 1976, NBC aired a TV movie called Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys, apparently under the impression that Victoria Price was no longer living. Price emerged to file a defamation and invasion of privacy suit against the network; the case was dismissed. Price died in 1982.

In 1998, Court TV produced a television documentary on the Scottsboro trials for its Greatest Trials of All Time series. Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman produced the story of the Scottsboro Boys in the 2001 documentary Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, which received an Oscar nomination. Timothy Hutton starred in a 2006 film adaptation titled Heavens Fall.

Aftermath

Ruby Bates toured for a short while as an ILD speaker. She said "she was sorry for all the trouble that I caused them," and claimed she did it because she was "frightened by the ruling class of Scottsboro." She went to Washington where she met with the Speaker of the House and Vice President John Garner. Later, she worked in a New York state spinning factory until 1938, then returned to Huntsville. Victoria Price worked in a Huntsville cotton mill until it closed in 1938, then moved to Flintsville, Tennessee. The women emerged from obscurity almost 40 years later to sue over their portrayals in a 1975 National Broadcasting Company documentary on the Scottsboro case entitled "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys". Shortly thereafter, both Bates and Price, who had both assumed different names, filed lawsuits against NBC for libel, slander, and invasion of privacy. Price's case was tried in 1977, but Ruby Bates died October 27, 1976 at age sixty-three. The trial relitigated many of the issues of the original case, focusing on Price's reliability and the physician's examination of her. NBC's lawyer read Judge Horton's 1933 decision granting a new trial during his summation to the jury. Judge Charles G. Neese dismissed the case before the jury began considering it, ruling that there were insufficient grounds to continue. Victoria Price died in 1982.

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A marker commemorating the trial

Most current residents of Scottsboro acknowledge the injustice that started in their community. In January 2004, the town dedicated a historical marker in commemoration of the case at the Jackson County Court House. "An 87-year-old black man who attended the ceremony recalled that the mob scene following the Boys' arrest was frightening and that death threats were leveled against the jailed suspects. Speaking of the decision to install the marker, he said, "I think it will bring the races closer together, to understand each other better."

References

• Acker, James R., Scottsboro and Its Legacy, Praeger Publishing, Westport, Ct., 2008.
• Aretha, David, The Trial of the Scottsboro Boys, Morgan Reynolds Publishing, Greensboro, North Carolina, 2008.
• Alschuler, Albert W. (1995). "Racial Quotas and the Jury". Duke Law Journal. 44 (4): 704–743. doi:10.2307/1372922. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Bienen, Leigh (1998). Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O. J. Simpson (PDF). Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 9781555533601. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
• Goodman, James, Stories of Scottsboro, Pantheon Books, New York, N.Y., 1994.
• Haskins, James. The Scottsboro Boys. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.
• Jameson, Eric, The Scottsboro Tragedy, Why, 1993.
• Linder, Douglas O., Without Fear or Favor: Judge James Edwin Horton and the Trial of the "Scottsville Boys"., Vol. 68 UMKC Law Review 549.
• Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587 (1935)
• Norris v. State, (1934)156 So. 556.
• Patterson, Haywood. Scottsboro Boy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1950.
• Patterson v. State, 1932, 141 So. 195.
• Powell v. State, 1932, 141 So. 201.
• Weems et al. v. State, 1932, 141 So. 215.

External links

• 1931 Scottsboro Boys Video Part I
• 1931 Scottsboro Boys Video Part II
• Biographies of Key Figures in "The Scottsboro Boys" Trials
• Famous American Trials. "The Scottsboro Boys" Trials 1931-1937
• I Was Framed At Scottsboro Video
• Heavens Fall movie website
• John Henry Hammond, Jr., The South Speaks.
• Michael J. Clarman, Scottsboro
• Scottsboro Trials article in the Encyclopedia of Alabama
• Scottsboro Trial Collection, Cornell Law Library.
• A Scottsboro Chronology.
• Scottsboro Boys Trial
• Scottsboro Trial Video
• Without Fear or Favor: Judge James Edwin Horton and the Trial of the "Scottsboro Boys" By Douglas O. Linder