By Erik Ortiz -
NBC News
In the summer of 1949, a 17-year-old named Norma Padgett made an accusation that would plunge Groveland, Florida, a rural community near Orlando, into decades-long turmoil: As she returned home from a dance with her husband, the The couple's car stopped.
Padgett told police they encountered four young black men who attacked her husband and then kidnapped and raped her at gunpoint.
The claims of Padgett, who is white and in her 80s, sparked a manhunt that sparked a wave of violence against black Groveland residents, mobilizing the National Guard and propelling Thurgood Marshall, then lead attorney for the National Association. for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to take up the cause of the men who would become known as the Groveland Four.
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Although the defendants - Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Ernest Thomas - are already dead, it took seven decades for the state of Florida to formally acknowledge how the criminal justice system failed them.
In 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis issued a posthumous pardon.
But on Monday, a Lake County circuit court judge could go further by dismissing the charges against the men, issuing a ruling that would effectively exonerate them of the crime.
This extraordinary measure was put in place last month, when local prosecutor Bill Gladson submitted documentation to dismiss the Thomas and Shepherd charges and overturn the sentences and trials imposed on Greenlee and Irvin.
“My family and I are deeply grateful to State Attorney Bill Gladson and his team for their dedicated efforts to review the case and correct the mistakes made against the Groveland Four more than seven decades ago,” stated Carol Greenlee, daughter of Charles Greenlee. , who was the youngest of the suspects, aged 16.
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Carol Greenlee said in a statement that despite proclamations from the governor and state legislature and a memorial dedicated to the Groveland Four, “full justice depends on the action of the judiciary.
I hope that this motion gives rise to that full justice ”.
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The Groveland Four became a disturbing example of Jim Crow-era racial injustice, preceding the notorious murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Mississippi who was lynched in 1955 by white men after being accused of whistling at a woman. White woman.
These incidents show how the desire to protect white women was used to justify racism and the oppression of black rights, according to author Gilbert King, whose book
Devil in the Grove
, who investigated the Groveland Four case and won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2013.
Gladson's decision to ask a judge to dismiss the charges against the Groveland Four is not based on whether or not Padgett may be lying, but on the misconduct of the prosecutor and the fabrication of evidence at the time, according to King.
In this undated image released by the Florida State Library and Archives, Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall at far left and an unidentified man stand with Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Charles Greenlee, from left , in Florida Florida State Library and Archives via AP
Following Padgett's accusations, Thomas was killed by a mob led by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall.
Meanwhile, Greenlee, Irvin and Shepherd were arrested and subsequently convicted by all-white juries.
Marshall, who years later would become the first black Supreme Court justice, had helped Irvin and Shepherd win appeals to have their case re-tried.
In 1951, while Irvin and Shepherd were being transported, McCall shot the men, claiming they were trying to escape.
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Shepherd, a World War II veteran, died, but Irvin survived and was convicted despite an FBI agent testifying that prosecutors fabricated evidence against the men.
Irvin, also a World War II veteran, was sentenced to death.
His sentence was later commuted to life in prison, and he was finally released on parole in 1968. He died the following year.
Greenlee was paroled in 1962 and died in 2012.
Padgett has rarely spoken publicly about the case.
The last time he appeared before the state clemency board was in January 2019 to ask them not to pardon the men.
"You don't know the kind of horror I've been through all these years," he told the board at the time.
"I don't want to be pardoned, I don't want it, and neither would you," he declared.
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As part of her investigation, Gladson spoke with a deceased grandson of the prosecutor in the case, who said his grandfather and a judge believed there was no rape.
Gladson also had Irvin's pants tested at a crime lab, and the results showed no evidence of semen, although jurors at his trial were led to believe it existed.
"Officials, disguised as peacekeepers and posing 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," Gladson wrote. on your motion.
"I have not witnessed a more complete collapse of the criminal justice system," he added.
If the Groveland Four case is dismissed, it would be a rarity, especially when none of the defendants are still alive, and prosecutors are often reluctant or unable to re-examine old cases because witnesses are no longer alive or documents and the evidence is destroyed or missing.
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This month, other states have taken steps to recognize people detained for crimes in these landmark cases.
A Louisiana state board unanimously granted a posthumous pardon to Homer Plessy, a Creole who refused to leave a white-only train car in the 1890s, leading to the Supreme Court ruling on "separate but equal ”.
In New York, two men who served decades in prison despite proclaiming their innocence in the 1965 murder of civil rights icon Malcolm X had their convictions formally overturned on Thursday.
Only one of the two men is still alive.
Reopening civil rights cases - and a reckoning with the past - are essential, according to King.
"Sometimes going back to the past and correcting a blatant injustice adds more integrity to the current judicial system," he said.