Alabama grants posthumous pardons to Scottsboro Boys

Brian Lyman | Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser

Show Caption Hide Caption Alabama extends pardons to Scottsboro Boys The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles on Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013, extended pardons to three of the Scottsboro Boys who had outstanding convictions.

An Alabama law passed in the spring allowed the board to grant posthumous pardons

The three pardoned were the last of the accused to have convictions on their records

The convictions of the others in the rape case were previously overturned

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama's parole board voted Thursday to grant posthumous pardons to men known as the Scottsboro Boys from a 1931 rape case.

The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles granted full and unconditional pardons to three of the nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in northeast Alabama in 1931.

The board unanimously approved the pardons for Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems and Andy Wright after a short hearing in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday. The three men were the last of the accused to have convictions from the case on their records.

"This decision will give them a final peace in their graves, wherever they are," said Sheila Washington, director of the Scottsboro Museum and Cultural Center in Scottsboro, who helped initiate the petition.

Patterson, Weems and Wright, along with defendant Clarence Norris, were convicted on rape charges in 1937, after a six-year ordeal that included three trials, the recantation of one of the accusers and two landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions on legal representation and the racial make-up of jury pools. Eight of the nine men were initially convicted by all-white juries; one, Roy Wright, was considered too young to receive the death penalty.

Alabama ultimately dropped rape charges against five of the accused. Norris received a pardon from then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1976.

Last spring, the Alabama Legislature unanimously passed a law to allow the parole board to issue posthumous pardons for convictions at least 80 years old. The law was specifically designed to allow the pardon of the Scottsboro Boys to go forward.

In October, a group of scholars petitioned the Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant pardons to the men. The petition was endorsed by the judges and district attorneys of the counties where the initial trials took place.

"This is a different state than it was 80 years ago, and thank God for that," said state Sen. Arthur Orr, a Republican from Decatur where the second and third round of trials took place. "It's an important step for our state to take."

Under Alabama law, pardons can only be granted to those who have felony convictions on their record. The petitioners had initially hoped the board would review the status of each of the defendants.

In a statement Thursday, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley praised the parole board's decision.

"While we could not take back what happened to the Scottsboro Boys 80 years ago, we found a way to make it right moving forward," the statement said. "The pardons granted to the Scottsboro Boys today are long overdue."

The board's decision led to a round of applause Thursday morning, but many of those who worked on the pardon called the news bittersweet. Patterson died of cancer in 1952, and many of the other defendants, including Weems and Wright, moved out of Alabama and kept a low profile after their release from prison.

University of Alabama professor John Miller, who helped prepare the petition, said at the time of his pardon, Norris was living in New York under his brother's name.

"With some of them, we really don't know if they died with their right name, or a different name," Washington said. "They no longer wanted to be known."

Most of the Scottsboro Boys vanished from history after their releases from prison. Weems moved to the Atlanta area after his release, but like all but three of the Scottsboro Boys, his date of death is unknown.

"It's tragic in that those young men's lives were destroyed, all by a very biased and unfair judicial process," Orr said. "The place where you seek justice did not dispense justice for these young men. It ruined their lives, some more than others, and it affected them to their graves."

James Miller, a professor of English and American Studies at George Washington University and author of Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial, said in a phone interview Thursday that the pardon was "long overdue," but added that "retrospective indignation" did nothing to alleviate the suffering of the Scottsboro Boys.

"I'm very cautious about hailing this as a significant stride," said Miller, who contributed to the pardon petition. "I think it provides an opportunity for deep reflection on the vagaries of race in the criminal justice system, especially in United States and in the South. I'm very happy this occurred, but the people who would benefit from it are no longer with us, and they have very few descendants left."