Clemency Hearing For Condemned Negro

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28700, 25 September 1958, Page 13

Clemency Hearing For Condemned Negro

MONTGOMERY (Alabama), September 24. The Governor of Alabama (Mr James Folsom) said last nigh’t that he would hold a clemency hearing for a negro farmhand sentenced to'death for a one dollar 45 cent robbery.

But the Governor denied reports that he would call the negro, Jimmy Wilson, to his hospital bedside where he is resting With a mild gastric upset. “I want you to quote me,” Mr Folsom said “I am not calling Wilson to my bedside. L want that emphatically denied. 1 will hold a clemency hearing at the proper time—not before” Mr Folsom said he suffered his gastric upset “when I found out my wife was pregnant. I know it’s odd, but I’m the one that has morning sickness.” The Governor said his wile. Jamelle. was expecting her sixth child. Wilson, who is 55. was convicted of robbing an 82-year-old white woman. Mrs Estelle Barker, of Marion, Alabama Mrs Barker said at the trial that the negro, who had done various chords around her home, had attempted to rape her Wilson was not tried for attempted rape, but for night-time

robbery of an inhabited dwelling, which carries a maximum penalty of death by electrocution in Alabama Only four men have been executed for robbery in Alabama—al] of them negroes. Mr Folsom was obviously angry at reports that he would call Wilson to his bedside. “My legal adviser, the AttorneyGeneral. and other men of my staf are out of town, and I cannot summon Wilson here at the present time. I don’t know how such reports got out,” he said. Mr Folsom hinted that he would hold a clemency hearing this Thursday. Norma] procedure would have Wilson’s lawyers asking for a clemency nearing two or three days before the execution, which is set for October 24. A source close to the Governor said yesterday that Mr Folsom would commute Wilson’s death sentence to life imprisonment as soon as a clemency petition arrived on his desk.