[AicapAifap] Pardon Priorities

[Alliance of Incarcerated Canadians/Foreigners in American Prisons]

Groveland Four pardoned, 70 years onBlack Florida men falsely accused
of rape in ‘miscarriage of justice’

	*Toronto Star	* 12 Jan 2019	*KATIE METTLER
	Seventy years ago in Groveland, Fla., a white teenager named Norma
Padgett accused four Black men of kidnapping and raping her in a car
on a dark road.

	Two of the men would eventually be shot dead by the segregationist
sheriff of Lake County and his angry mob, and the other two would be
wrongfully convicted of crimes on little evidence. The Groveland Four,
as they became known, inspired a Pulitzer-winning book and have been
considered for decades one of Florida’s most grave injustices and a
case study on failed rule of law in the Jim Crow south.

	In 2017, the state of Florida formally apologized for what happened
in the summer of 1949. And on Friday, the state’s clemency board
voted to posthumously pardon all four men — Ernest Thomas, Samuel
Shepherd, Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin.

	After hearing testimony from family members of the men and Padgett
herself, now in her late 80s, newly inaugurated Republican Gov. Ron
DeSantis said this case was a “miscarriage of justice” and that
the “only appropriate thing to do is to grant pardons.”

	“I hope that this will bring peace to the their families and their
communities,” DeSantis said after the formal vote, which took place
after his first cabinet meeting as governor.

	Within days of Padgett’s accusations, Shepherd, Greenlee and Irvin
had been jailed and Thomas was shot and killed by a mob — led by
Sheriff Willis V. McCall — who had chased him 300 kilometres into
the Panhandle.

	Despite the lack of evidence, a jury quickly convicted the three
still alive. Greenlee, just16 at the time, was sent to prison for
life. Shepherd and Irvin, friends and army veterans, were sentenced to
death, but the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned their convictions
and ordered a retrial. Before that could happen, though, McCall shot
them both.

	Charles Greenlee did not appeal his conviction, according to PBS, and
spent 12 years in prison. He died in 2012 at age 78. Shepherd and
Irvin, however, did appeal, and although the Florida Supreme Court
initially upheld their convictions, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously
overturned them.

	They were shot by McCall on their return trip from prison to Lake
County, where a new trial awaited them.
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/toronto-star/20190112/281668256134113
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