Scottsboro case trial

By the time the train reached Paint Rock, Alabama, the Scottsboro Boys were met with an angry mob and charged with assault. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two white women who were also riding the freight train, faced charges of vagrancy and illegal sexual activity. In order to avoid these charges, they falsely accused the Scottsboro Boys of rape. The original cases were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama. Only four of the young African American men knew each other prior to the incident on the freight train, but as the trials drew increasing regional and national attention they became known as the Scottsboro Boys.

On April 9, , eight of the nine young men were convicted and sentenced to death. The judge granted Roy Wright, the youngest of the group, a mistrial because of age—despite the recommendation of the all-white jury. Nine young black Alabama youths — ranging in age from 12 to 19 — were charged with raping two white women near the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama. Alabama ,the Supreme Court unanimously overturned another conviction on the grounds that African-Americans had been systematically excluded from jury pools, violating the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial as well as the Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.

Ruby Bates was, like Victoria Price, a poor Huntsville millworker who became one of the two accusers of the Scottsboro Boys. But, unlike Price, Bates later recanted her story of rape aboard a Chattanooga to Memphis freight train, and went on to actively campaign for the release of the jailed black defendants.

How did the defense attorneys show their lack of experience? The defense offered only the defendants themselves as witnesses. The trial of the Scottsboro Boys is perhaps one of the proudest moments of American radicalism, in which a mass movement of blacks and whites—led by Communists and radicals—successfully beat the Jim Crow legal system.

The Scottsboro Boys were nine African-American teenagers, ages 12 to 19, accused in Alabama of raping two white women in Lawyers for the state, however, continued to pursue the case, this time under a judge sympathetic to the prosecution. In December , Haywood Patterson and Clarence Norris were convicted of rape and sentenced to death for a third time by another all-white jury. Five other defendants remained in prison, awaiting new trials, while the remaining two were removed to juvenile court and later convicted.

Scottsboro Defendants Following this latest round of guilty verdicts, ILD attorneys attempted to bribe Victoria Price in a foolish act of desperation. When the bribe came to light, Liebowitz, whose relationship with the ILD was always tenuous, severed ties with the group and established his own rival defense organization, the American Scottsboro Committee ASC.

The attempted bribe and the departure of Liebowitz marked the beginning of the end for the ILD as the leader of the Scottsboro legal defense. In January of , the U. Supreme Court agreed to review the third convictions of Patterson and Norris. Three months later, the court once again overturned the guilty verdicts and ordered new trials, ruling in Patterson v.

Alabama and Norris v. Alabama that the defendants were denied a fair trial because African Americans had been systematically excluded from Jackson County jury rolls.

The landmark decision paved the way for the integration of juries across the nation. Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center Patterson was convicted of rape for a fourth time in January , but this time his sentence was set at 75 years in prison.

Following the verdict, another of the defendants, Ozzie Powell, was shot in the head after attacking a deputy sheriff in an apparent escape attempt. After Patterson's conviction was upheld in the Alabama Supreme Court, the prosecution and the Scottsboro Defense Committee agreed to a strange compromise in an effort to end the long ordeal.

Clarence Norris was convicted of rape and sentenced to death; Norris' sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment by Alabama governor Bibb Graves. Andy Wright and Charlie Weems also were convicted of rape and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Rape charges were dropped against Powell, but he was convicted of assaulting the deputy sheriff and sentenced to 20 years.

Thus, on the basis of the same body of evidence, four defendants were freed and four convicted. In , a final attempt to win the remaining prisoners' freedom failed when both the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Graves denied pardon applications.

Charlie Weems was paroled in ; Clarence Norris and Andy Wright were paroled a year later but both were sent back to prison shortly thereafter for violating the terms of their probation; Ozzie Powell was paroled in ; Haywood Patterson escaped from prison in Norris, the last surviving defendant, was finally pardoned in On April 19, , Alabama governor Robert Bentley signed historic legislation exonerating the nine men of all guilt in the case at the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center in Scottsboro.

Clarence Norris Jr. On November 21, , the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to pardon Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright, the last of the accused to still have convictions in their records.

In human terms, the Scottsboro trials were an unmitigated tragedy. The defendants' lives were shattered by the long legal battle and the horrific conditions in the Alabama prison system. Most of the so-called Scottsboro Boys struggled to adapt to life as free men. In legal terms, the case was likewise a gross miscarriage of justice, despite the important precedents established by the U.