Criminal Justice: Lucky Death Sentence

“By your vicious act,” intoned Mary land Judge James H. Pugh, “you are not entitled to any consideration by the court. You were so ravenous that nothing could prevent you from committing this treacherous act. You were determined to satisfy your passionate desires.” He then proceeded to sentence two Negro defendants—James and John Giles—to the gas chamber for the rape of a white girl near Spencerville, Md. In a separate trial, a third defendant, Joseph Johnson, was also convicted and condemned. Though the three hardly thought so then, they were actually lucky to get the death sentence. The punishment was so severe that a group of white citizens began their own investigation.

It was admitted that two of the three defendants had intercourse with the girl. But they contended that she had volunteered. According to John Giles’s testimony, she said that she had had relations with “16 or 17 men that week and three more wouldn’t make any difference.” The jury had rejected that statement, but the committee’s investigation of the girl turned up evidence of mental instability and promiscuity. What’s more, it developed that the prosecutor was aware of some of that evidence. And though it could have had a bearing on the girl’s credibility, he did not give all of the relevant information to the defense.

An appeal was mounted, and last year, for a variety of reasons—among them the prosecutor’s suppression of evidence—the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the conviction. Last week at the new trial, the girl—now married and the mother of two—did not even show up to testify. The prosecution’s case collapsed, and the Giles brothers walked out of court as free men. Strategy is now being mapped to free Johnson as well.

Not everyone whose conviction is thrown out by the Supreme Court has such good fortune. Three years ago, the Supreme Court found that Brooklyn Murderer Nathan Jackson was entitled to consideration of his claim of having been drugged when he confessed. But at a subsequent hearing, Jackson’s confession was found to be untainted by drugs after all. He was retried, reconvicted and, because he had killed a policeman, resentenced to death. Last week the New York Court of Appeals upheld his sentence.