Battle In Courts Over Death Penalty For Rape

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30724, 13 April 1965, Page 12

Battle In Courts Over Death Penalty For Rape

[From

FRANK OLIVER,

N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent]

WASHINGTON. The recent debate in Britain about capital punishment is now having its counterpart in the American cities and in most of the states. But at this point there does not appear to be much chance of abolition, such as the House of Commons voted. It is not that easy in America, because murder is not a Federal crime and each state sets its own punishment to fit the crime.

In this country in 1963 there were 8500 cases of homicide and 16,400 cases of “forcible” rape. Rape has to come into consideration because in 18 states it remains a capital crime. In the last 35 years those 18 states have executed 43 whites and 402 Negroes convicted of rape. Most of these were in the Southern states—6B Negroes and 13 whites in Texas, 58 Negroes and three whites in Georgia, 35 Negroes and one white in Florida, 41 Negroes and four whites in North Carolina, for example.

By and large the liberal press is in favour of abolition of the death penalty in any crime but a vast number of law enforcement officers want it retained for its deterrent effect.

More effort is being made to get rape off the capital punishment list than to abolish capital punishment. It will be a formidable task. It is not being done entirely by using public opinion and not at all by appeals to Congress to do anything about it. The matter is being fought in the courts.

It is likely that a rape case from Florida will go to the Supreme Court here and the lawyers engaged express confidence that if they can win this case it will outlaw the death penalty in rape cases, not onlji in Florida but throughout the South. No-one knows quite when the case will get to the Supreme Court, in spite of the fact that it is four years since the two Negroes involved were sentenced to death. During that long period they have lived in “death row,” at Raiford Prison in Florida. Both are poor and their legal expenses, which may well be fabulous before the case is over, will be met from the legal defence fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. Another interested organisation is the Florida Civil Liberties Union. Much of the defence case appears to rest on insufficient evidence to convict; but if the defence wins the case will assuredly have repercussions on the state law which prescribes death after conviction for the crime.

The alleged crime occurred in March, 1960, when two Negroes were said to have broken into the house of a single woman.

Two men, Robert Shuler and Jerry Chatman, then 24 and 21, were arrested and charged with rape. Both signed a confession which later was repudiated because, they

alleged, they signed only after a brutal beating. On this point a correspondent of the “Miami Herald” writes. “This fits into Lake County’s history. It has a higher percentage of electrocuting Negro rape suspects than any other county in Florida.”

The first step towards getting the case to the Supreme Court was taken when the Florida Civil Liberties Union filed a petition with a local Circuit Court Judge, asking that life imprisonment be substituted for the death penalty. The “Miami Herald” says the judge is not expected to respond favourably. In Lake County it would not be politically expedient. “And judging from its previous reactions to this case the Florida Supreme

Court probably will turn down the petition too.”

During the last four years the case has gone through the procedures of the Appeals Courts. The new effort is to get the sentence changed. When the case has gone through the Florida courts the lawyers will have to find four Justices of the Supreme Court who will agree to receive the case. That is the number

needed to get a hearing. The defence lawyers feel confident of victory in the Supreme Court. They expect to prove discrimination against Negroes in such cases. Another rather odd feature of the case is that the alleged victim never took the stand to accuse the defendants. Doctors simply gave evidence that there had been sexual intercourse with the mysterious “Miss M.” The only accusation of rape

in the original case was the “self-accusation” of the con-

fessions, which were repudiated. At the trail F. 8.1. agents cast doubts on the authenticity of casts of footprints at Miss M’s cottage. Later the local sheriff, says the “Miami Herald,” sacked two of his deputies “and they subsequently said the casts used at the trail were phony.” But these matters failed to bring the defendants any luck in their visits to Appeal Courts. They were sentenced to death four years ago and they remain under that sentence.

Thanks to the N.A.A.C.P. there is good hope that their case may, during 1965. arrive in the Supreme Court. Neither defendant can be described as an admirable citizen. “As individuals neither has ever done anything constructive for society,” one newspaper said. But if their case gets to Washington and the national spotlight is put on it seems to be a chance that the death sentence in cases of this sort may become a thing of the past.