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Case Analysis: The Scottsboro Trial

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During the 1930’s most of America’s attention was directed to a well-known case taking place in Scottsboro, Alabama. The Scottsboro trials was a set of trials concerning an alleged rape. The case began on March 25, 1931 when two white, working class women stumbled off of the train claiming they had been raped by nine black men. The case went to court four times, spanning for seven years, and eighty-two years until all nine boys were pardon for the charges of rape. “The case had never presented as many tri…..” The Scottsboro trials greatly proved how partial the American government and justice system was, particularly in the south.
After the civil war African Americans were free, but that did not mean they were equal. In the Constitution “All …show more content…
The boys were first defended by a low paid real-estate attorney. During the second set of trials the communists asked Samuel Leibowitz to represent the boys, at first hesitant he accepted the job. Samuel Leibowitz was a well-known New York attorney often called “the new Clarence Darrow,” he was known for his high rate of winning cases. This case had two judges, the first was Judge James E. Horton, like almost all whites at the time thought the nine boys were guilty, but as the case went on and the evidence was given, and seeing the contradictory testimony of Victoria Price he had his own doubts. The biggest contribution that Judge Horton gave to the trial was overturning the guilty convictions for a retrial, saying the jury was partial, giving us an unfair trial. Doing this he lost his political standing in Alabama, and the south, and next year, as he ran the next year, he …show more content…
When asked about the train, Leibowitz used a train model, she just said it wasn’t the real train, it was a toy.” Throughout the trial Price’s testimony contradicted most of the evidence and her early statements after arriving in Scottsboro. Her coworker and friend Ruby Bates was --- of her, shy and failed to match the key points of Victoria Price’s testimony. Nine months after the first original trial, Bates wrote a letter to her current boyfriend, Earl Streetmen, claiming she had never been raped. At the end of 1932 Bates unexpectedly left Alabama and moved to New York, making the only witness in the trials Victoria Price. During Haywood Patterson’s second trial, Bates came back as a surprise witness. She told a story of how Victoria forced her into saying she was raped, during the cross- examination, the prosecutor, Thomas Knight, exposed any flaws in her testimony. He concluded that she was paid by the communists to come tell a false story. This turned the southerners against her, and her testimony only set back

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