Scottsboro Boys Wrongful Conviction
On March 25th, 1931, a freight train traveling through Scottsboro, Alabama, a fight broke out between a group of white and black boys. The boys, ages 12-19, did not know each other but were on the train searching for work during the Great Depression. Due to the fighting, the white boys were forced to exit the train. Angered by this, they fabricated a story about how the black boys were truly at fault. Therefore, by the time the train reached Paint Rock, Alabama, the boys were met with an angry mob, arrested, and charged with assault. Additionally, two white women who were also riding the freight train were charged with vagrancy and illegal sexual activity. In order to avoid the charges, they falsely declared that they had been gang raped by a bunch of black men. Despite claiming their innocence, the boys were convicted and sentenced to death by all white juries on April 9th, 1931. The following couple decades were filled with appeals and one retrial where the victim even admitted the rape was a lie. Yet, the all white juries again returned guilty verdicts despite obvious innocence. Majority of the boys remained behind bars till the last one died in 1989, serving a collection of over 100 years in prison. Two of the Scottsboro boys escaped but were caught and sent back to prison. One was shot by a prison guard. One managed to escape and was in hiding for 30 years until Alabama's governor pardoned him in 1976, and they were ultimately saved from execution.
The cases were appealed and retried three times. The case helped to spur the civil rights movement, and due to protests emerging in the North, the US Supreme Court overturned the convictions in 1932, in Powell v State of Alabama, on the grounds that the men did not have adequate legal representation. Originally, they were entitled to an attorney under Alabama law, but none came forward until the morning of the trial which was 6 days after the incident. One of the attorneys was a real estate lawyer who was unfamiliar with Alabama's courts and another was a local attorney who had not appeared before a jury in decades. Neither had ever spoken to the boys and both admitted to the judge they were not prepared. There was also a national conversation on protests of unfair and unequal court proceedings leading to two supreme court decisions in 1935 on jury diversification: Patterson v State of Alabama and Norris v State of Alabama. The trials drew national attention and the nine boys – Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems, Roy Wright – became known as the Scottsboro boys.
In 2021, the Alabama House of Representatives voted 103-0 in favor of legislation setting up a procedure to posthumously pardon them. The Senate passed the bill 29-0 and Alabama's governor indicated he will sign it. Despite the utter ignorance and racial bias that coerced the case, the newfound justice sends a positive message that the state and South are different then they were years ago.