PART III: INNOCENT OR GUILTY?
Now,
something happened during the consideration of this Motion. The Judge Horton met
Dr. Marvin Lynch, who had been excused from testifying. The meeting had
happened in the Court house, gents’ washroom as the Dr. Lynch did not want to
be seen having a conversation with the Judge. Dr. Lynch told the judge that as
per his personal examination the two women were not raped. That he had informed
the prosecution that the alleged rape was a fabrication but they were adamant
to press the charges against the Scottsboro boys. And it was because of this he
had been excluded as a witness by the Prosecutor.
Judge
Hurton became even more concern when considering the application and wondered:
why is it that when the Scottsboro boys where engaging in a fight with the
white boys there was no evidence to show they were armed with knives or pistol
and neither of the white boys thrown out of the train had knife injuries? Where
was the head wound inflicted by the pistol as alleged by Victoria Price? Victoria
priced was forced to lay down on jagged rocks on the gondola car train and each
boy lay on top of her to forcefully penetrate her vagina. Where was the
evidence to show a lacerated vagina or bleeding back? Why was the semen in their
pubic hair dry and starchy yet it was examined about one hour thirty minutes
after the incidence? Why was there no evidence to show that her cloths were
spattered with semen and blood? There was no evidence to show blood flowing
from her vagina? Why were the white girls when presented to the doctors for
examination were neither hysteria or nervous or depressed in spirit after being
raped by nine men? Why were the spermatozoa non-motile or dead? Why is the
evidence of Victoria Price not being corroborated by any witness given that the
rape happen on top of an open train on a sunny day on a slow moving train.
Now
Judge Hurton was faced with this concerning questions on one hand.
On
the other hand, Judgeship was an elective position. Judge Hurton had been
elected unopposed in the previous election as judge. The election being around
the corner, if he set the sentence aside he may lose the election since the
masses and his voters will be annoyed and in fact an emissary had been sent to
him informing him that if he set the sentence aside it will destroy him
politically and he should be sure he shall lose the election. He wondered
should he sell his birthright position as a defender and administrator of
justice for an elective position.
On
22nd June, 1933, the judge called the court into order. He held four
sheets of paper, on it lay the fate of the Scottsboro boys and the fate of his career as a judge.
On
his opening statements he said, “Social order is based on law, and its
perpetuity on its fair and impartial administration. Deliberate injustice is
more fatal to the one who impose than to the one whom it is imposed. The victim
may die quickly and his suffering cease, but teachings of Christianity and the
uniform lessons of all history illustrate without exception that its
perpetrators not only pay the penalty themselves, but their children through
endless generations… the court must be faithful in the exercise of the power
which it believes it possesses as it must be careful to abstain from the
assumption of those not within its proper sphere” he went on to demonstrate the
lack of corroboration in the evidence against the Scottsboro boys.
In
conclusion Judge Hurton said, “History, sacred and
profane, and the common experience of mankind teach us that women of the
character shown in this case are prone for selfish reasons to make false
accusations both of rape and of insult upon the slightest provocation for
ulterior purposes…. It is therefore ordered and adjudged by the Court that the
motion be granted; that the verdict of the jury in this case and the judgment of
the Court sentencing this defendant to death be set aside and that a new trial
be and the same is hereby ordered.”
Judge Hurton firmly believed
that the truth will always set you free and that justice had to be done though
the heavens fall. When the Judgeship election were held, he was defeated but the
truth he stood for kept marching on. In 2017 A statue of Judge Horton, made of
bronze, was erected outside a courthouse in Limestone County to
immortalize his words during the trial when he said, “So far as the law is concerned
it knows neither native nor alien, Jew nor Gentile, neither black nor white.
This case is no different from any other. We have only to do our duty without
fear or favor.”
The trial was done
before another judge before an all-white jury but this time they were found
guilty and sentenced to the electric chair. The case was appealed all the way
to the Supreme Court for the second time. The ground of appeal to the Supreme
Court was that “the jury selection had systematically excluded black members
due to racial prejudice.”
In a land mark
decision in the case of Norris V.
Alabama the Supreme Court held that “the systematic and
purposeful exclusion of African-Americans from service on the grand and trial
juries denied African-American defendants in the state courts the equal
protection of law guaranteed under the due process clause
in the constitution”. The conviction was reversed and retrial ordered saving the
boys from the Electric Chair.
The Supreme Court
judgment in Norris V. Alabama played
a great role in having the African-American people on the jury and helped in
the civil right movement cases that started a few years later. This judgment
acted as a seed of change and sparked civil rights movements.
THE AFTERMATH
The Scottsboro Boys
case dragged on for years. It ended tragically with young productive lives of
boys who were out to look for brighter days being wrecked and wasted. Some of
them were released, others pardon and others run out of prison.
In 2013 the boys
were granted posthumous pardons. The Governor of Albama stated, “While we could
not take back what happened to the Scottsboro Boys 80 years ago, we found a way
to make it right moving forward. The pardons granted to the Scottsboro Boys
today are long overdue. The legislation that led to today's pardons was the
result of a bipartisan, cooperative effort. I appreciate the Pardons and Parole
Board for continuing our progress today and officially granting these pardons. Today, the Scottsboro Boys have finally
received justice.”
This shameful case
of injustice is not limited to the United States of America; Never
underestimate the power of history, it repeats itself anywhere anytime. It repeats
itself daily in different forms. For instance in our court rooms; when judges
are compromised by corruption, politics, sex, racism, tribalism, economic and cultural factors and justice is aborted and innocent lives suffer. The society is denied
the birth of affirmed human rights; this becomes the tragedy of justice.
In life we may find
ourselves in any shoe of the Scottsboro story. Maybe as the White Girls, in our
effort to save ourselves we accuse others falsely, as Doctors who need to
testify the truth, as prosecutors who need to objective and not giving in to
mob justice, as Lawyers like Samuel Leibowitz, to be determined to protect the
rights and freedoms and fight for what we believe in, and maybe as Scottsboro
Boy, in our daily life trying to make a brighter lives for ourselves we find
ourselves as victims of circumstances in an unjust and corrupted system; where you are guilty until proven
innocent ; but I hope we or at least our judiciary shall be like Judge James E.
Horton that we shall do justice though the heavens fall and even if they fall
they shall fall on a just land.
In the words of
Howard Zinn I conclude by saying, “Perhaps the most important thing I learned
was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution,
our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy. Certainly this
was the experience of African-Americans in this country for two hundred years.
With the government failing to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
to the Constitution, black men, women, and children decided to do that on their
own. They organized, demonstrated, protested, challenged the law, were beaten,
went to prison, some killed—and thereby reached the conscience of the nation
and the world. And things changed. That’s when democracy comes alive.” That’s the
price we pay for democracy, for justice.
