POWELL V. ALABAMA (1932)

PATTERSON V. ALABAMA (1935)

In 1931, nine black American teenagers hopped on an Alabama train headed toward Chattanooga, Tennessee. Later called the Scottsboro Boys, their names were Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Charlie Weems, Andy Wright, Roy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, and Eugene Williams. When two white women falsely accused these black men of rape, all men were arrested and imprisoned.

What followed was a quintessential example of American injustice. The Scottsboro Boys were not allowed to speak with an attorney prior to trial, and a lynch mob encircled the jail that held them. When they finally met their two court-appointed lawyers, the Scottsboro Boys discovered them to be ill prepared for trial and completely unfamiliar with the case. One was actually an intoxicated volunteer from the trial’s audience. Unnerved by the publicity and thousands of potentially violent onlookers, the trial judge rushed the cases through his docket. Over the course of two and a half days, a series of all-white juries sentenced all nine teenagers to death, despite the clear ineffectiveness of their counsel, the frenetic proceedings, and the complete lack of evidence that any rape had occurred, much less been committed by the Scottsboro Boys. The mere allegation of sexual relations with a white woman was sufficient to condemn them.

The Communist Party USA sponsored the appeal and provided counsel in what would become Powell v. Alabama. Recognizing the need for experienced counsel, the ACLU’s Walter Pollak was retained to argue that the Scottsboro Boys’ hasty trial and nominal legal counsel violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. The US Supreme Court agreed. Justice George Sutherland wrote that criminal defendants in capital cases are constitutionally entitled to legal counsel. However, mere presence of counsel is not enough. Due process demanded that court-appointed counsel be effective, well versed in the case, and prepared to protect the defendant’s freedom. After this initial victory, two additional appeals were required, Norris v. Alabama and Patterson v. Alabama. In both, Pollak and the ACLU contested Alabama’s systematic exclusion of black Americans from the jury pool based solely on their race. In a major victory, the Court agreed that such discrimination was unconstitutional.

This legal triumph, however, has a bittersweet ending. Charges were eventually dropped against four of the Scottsboro Boys, and they returned home after years of incarceration. The remaining five were convicted, despite one of the white women recanting her testimony and admitting the entire story of rape was a lie. Including pretrial detention, each served at least a decade in prison for a crime that never even existed.