When was the scottsboro trials

Credit: AP Photo. Three of the alleged assailants left the train. The nine young Black men who remained on the train were seized by an armed posse at Paint Rock, a town roughly 20 miles outside of Scottsboro. Neither girl showed evidence of rough treatment, although they did show signs of sexual intercourse, testified a doctor at the trial.

In this May 1, file photo, attorney Samuel Leibowitz from New York, second left, meets with seven of the Scottsboro defendants at the jail in Scottsboro, Ala. The black youths were charged with an attack on two white women on March 25, It is very much a matter of the ordinary routine of life to her, known in both Huntsville and Chattanooga a prostitute herself.

Like Price, Bates lived with her mother. Of the five children in the family, two are married and three are living at home. Both organizations had sent representatives to Scottsboro. Both had engaged lawyers.

They therefore preferred a sentence of death by a judge to a sentence of death by a mob, but they desired the same result. Hays and Darrow instead offered to work on the case without formally affiliating themselves with either organization. Meanwhile, a letter surfaced from Bates to a lover admitting the Black youths had not attacked the women.

The others were to be executed that May. Supreme Court. Pollak made several points to the Supreme Court: that his clients had not received a fair trial; that they had been denied the right to counsel and an opportunity to prepare a defense; and that because Black people were systematically excluded they had not been tried by a jury of their peers. Writing for the majority, Justice George Sutherland pointed out that the boys had been denied the right to hire their own counsel.

But that was not to be. Clarence Norris, one of nine Black men involved in the Scottsboro case of 15 years, walks through the main cell gate at Kilby Prison in Montgomery, Ala.

March The Alabama Supreme Court, voting , upholds the convictions of seven of the defendants, granting Eugene Williams a new trial because he was a juvenile at the time of his conviction.

November 7: In Powell v. Alabama, the U. Supreme Court rules that the defendants were denied the right to counsel, which violated their right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The cases are remanded to the lower court. He agrees. April 6: Ruby Bates appears as a surprise witness for the defense, denying that any rape occurred and testifying that she was with Victoria Price for the whole train ride. Her assertion that she and Price were with boyfriends the night before explains the presence of semen in their vaginas.

On the stand, Dr. Bridges admits that the sperm found in his examination were non-motile, and indicates that Victoria Price showed few physical signs of having been forcibly raped by six men, as she claimed, but he refuses to say how old the semen could have been. April Judge Horton sets the sentence of death for Patterson, and then suspends it on a motion for a new trial. Then, the judge postpones the trials of the other defendants because tensions in town are running too high to expect a "just and impartial verdict.

November Seven of the defendants appear in Callahan's court. November-December: The trials of Patterson and Norris end in death sentences for both.

Judge Callahan's bias might be exemplified by his omissions: he forgets to explain to Patterson's jury how to render a not guilty verdict Leibowitz reminds him before the jury goes out and neglects to ask the mercy of God upon Norris's soul.

But when deputies questioned two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, they accused the boys of raping them while onboard the train. Only four of them had known each other before their arrest. As news spread of the alleged rape a highly inflammatory charge given the Jim Crow laws in the South , an angry white mob surrounded the jail, leading the local sheriff to call in the Alabama National Guard to prevent a lynching.

In the first set of trials in April , an all-white, all-male jury quickly convicted the Scottsboro Boys and sentenced eight of them to death.

The trial of the youngest, year-old Leroy Wright, ended in a hung jury when one juror favored life imprisonment rather than death. A mistrial was declared, and Leroy Wright would remain in prison until awaiting the final verdict on his co-defendants. That June, the court granted the boys a stay of execution pending an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court. The ILD spearheaded a national campaign to help free the nine young men, including rallies, speeches, parades and demonstrations.

Letters streamed in from people—Communists and non-Communists, white and black—protesting the guilty verdicts. But in March , the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions of seven of the defendants; it granted Williams a new trial, as he was a minor at the time of his conviction.

In November , the U. Supreme Court ruled in Powell v. Alabama that the Scottsboro defendants had been denied the right to counsel, which violated their right to due process under the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court overturned the Alabama verdicts, setting an important legal precedent for enforcing the right of African Americans to adequate counsel, and remanded the cases to the lower courts.

The second round of trials began in the circuit court in Decatur, Alabama, 50 miles west of Scottsboro, under Judge James Horton. But even with her testimony and evidence from the initial medical examination of the women that refuted the rape charge, another all-white jury convicted the first defendant, Patterson, and recommended the death penalty. Alabama Supreme Court, by a vote of , affirms the convictions of seven of the boys.

The conviction of Eugene Williams is reversed on the grounds that he was a juvenile under state law in The U. Supreme Court announces that it will review the Scottsboro cases. The Supreme Court, by a vote of , reverses the convictions of the Scottsboro boys in Powell vs. Grounds for reversal are that Alabama failed to provide adequate assistance of counsel as required by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

Samuel S. Haywood Patterson's second trial begins in Decatur before judge James Horton. Haywood Patterson found guilty by jury and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Judge Horton postpones the trials of the other Scottsboro boys because of dangerously high local tensions. In one of many protests around the nation, thousands march in Washington protesting the Alabama trials.

Judge Horton sets aside Haywood Patterson's conviction and grants a new trial.