Seven decades after they were falsely accused of raping a white teenager, four black men have been exonerated posthumously by a judge in Florida, righting one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice from the state’s segregationist era.
Relatives applauded and wept as the indictments against the Groveland Four — Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin — were dismissed in the same courtroom as they were issued in 1949.
“I have not witnessed a more complete breakdown of the criminal justice system,” said Bill Gladson, a state lawyer, in his motion to have the indictments dismissed and guilty verdicts set aside.
“The evidence strongly suggests that a sheriff, a judge and prosecutor all but guaranteed guilty verdicts in this case. These officials, disguised as keepers of the peace and masquerading as ministers of justice, disregarded their oaths and set in motion a series of events that forever destroyed these men, their families and a community.”
The Groveland Four ranged in age from 16 to 24 when they were accused of raping Norma Padgett, 17, and attacking her husband at gunpoint after the couple’s car broke down on a country road in Groveland, west of Orlando.
The Ku Klux Klan torched black neighbourhoods in “revenge” and a white mob led by the local sheriff hunted down Thomas and shot him more than 400 times, killing him in a swamp.
Greenlee, 16, was sentenced to life in prison. Shepherd and Irvin were sentenced to death. All three were convicted by all-white juries who were led to believe that forensic evidence existed when it did not.
Their convictions were overturned by the US Supreme Court, but a sheriff shot dead Shepherd on route to a new trial in 1951. Irvin was again sentenced to death, though his sentence was later commuted. He died in 1969. Greenlee died in 2012.
Greenlee’s daughter, Carole, 72, said: “All my life, I’ve been waiting to hear those words: ‘Restore presumption of innocence’ . . . My father was a caring, loving, compassionate person that did not rape anybody.”
