PSC 308; Devil in the Grove PDF

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Book- Devil the the Grove...

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Devil in The Grove pgs 148-219 Author-Gilbert King Chapter 11, the bad egg= Miss Willie (Norma) Padget  Alleged rape case, Willis McCall= sherif  Dr. Binneveld could not say for sure if Padget was raped.  On july 16, Padget accused a black man of raping her, although no sperm was found  Padget did not testify- to restrict an atempt to raise doubt on the identification of the atacker, rather than deny an atack had happened at all August 1949  Trial of the groveland boys “Litle Scotsboro”  William Paterson= lawyer and civil rights activist.  Defender- newspaper  Deputy james yate- testified about tire tracks on the boys truck as an exact match  Jesse Hunter- atorney for Padget against the groveland boys  Akerman-used a reasonable doubt argument. Defense atorney 180, chapter 12, Atom Smasher  Willis Mccall tried to have the groveland boys give a statement of confession, he wanted to boys to be killed via the electric chair.  Boys names= Charles GreenLee, Irvin and Shepherd The Groveland Case refers to events that took place in Groveland, Florida, from 1949 to 1951 and the resulting prosecutions related to four African-American men being accused of rape of a young white woman in 1949. One man was shot by a posse after having fled the area; the other three were quickly arrested but denied being in the area of the alleged rape. They were convicted by an all-white jury; one was sentenced to life as he was 16 years old; the other two were sentenced to death by electric chair. In 1949, Harry T. Moore, the executive director of the Florida NAACP, organized a campaign against the wrongful conviction of three African Americans, including a 16-year-old, for the rape of a young white woman in Groveland. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial. Soon afterward, Sherif Willis V. McCall of Lake County, Florida, shot two of the men while they were in his custody, killing one and seriously wounding Irvin. At the second trial, Irvin was represented by Thurgood Marshall as special counsel, of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Irvin was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. In 1955 his sentence was commuted to life by the Florida governor, and in 1968 he was paroled. A grand jury indicted the three remaining rape suspects. Shepherd and Greenlee separately later told FBI investigators that the deputies beat them until they confessed. Irvin refused to confess, despite also being severely beaten. An FBI investigation concluded that Lake County Sherif's Department deputies James Yates and Leroy Campbell were responsible for the beatings, and agents documented the physical abuse with photographs. The Justice Department urged the U.S. Atorney in Tampa to file charges, but U.S. Atorney Herbert Phillips was reluctant, and failed to return indictments. Once the trial began, the prosecution did not bring the alleged confessions into evidence, fearing that a higher court would overturn guilty verdicts on the grounds of coerce After promising Irvin's mother that he would not let her boy die in the electric chair, Thurgood Marshall continued to seek relief outside the courts. He organized a commitee of religious leaders to

apply pressure on newly elected Governor LeRoy Collins, who in 1955 personally reviewed the case. He commuted Irvin's sentence to life in prison. After conducting his own investigation, Collins stated that "the State did not walk that extra mile--did not establish the guilt of Walter Lee Irvin in an absolute and conclusive manner...