I just finished reading Contempt of Court by Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips, Jr. It’s a very good book about the fascinating Supreme Court case United States v. Shipp, (three reported decisions) the only criminal trial ever held by the United States Supreme Court. The book has some minor flaws, but overall it’s very interesting.
The story takes place from 1906 to 1910. A black man named Ed Johnson was tried and convicted of raping a white woman, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s almost certain that he was innocent, but the kangaroo court sentenced him to death for the crime, after a trial full of due process violations. (At one point, a juror even leaped from his seat and tried to attack Johnson, and had to be restrained by other jurors.) When Johnson’s attorneys appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, the appeal was denied, so they asked Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan to stay the execution pending an appeal. Harlan granted the stay, and in an emergency meeting the Supreme Court granted the appeal. That night, though, a mob led by the county sheriff broke into the jail and lynched Johnson on a nearby bridge. One member of the mob pinned a note to Johnson’s corpse saying “To Justice Harlan. Come get your nigger now.”
Justice Harlan was, of course, infuriated, as were the other justices. They asked the Attorney General to institute contempt-of-court proceedings against the sheriff and other locals. The trial was national news because it was the first time that the federal government seriously attacked lynch-law. Amazingly,
[e]ven as the Court debated the issues and facts a telegram arrived from Oxford, Mississippi, detailing how U.S. Senator W.V. Sullivan had led a lynch mob to kill a black man accused of cutting a white woman’s throat. “I led the mob which lynched Nelse Patton and I’m proud of it,” Sullivan told newspaper reporters. “I directed every movement of the mob. I wanted him lynched. I saw his body dangling from a tree this morning and I am glad of it. I aroused the mob and directed them to storm the jail. I had my revolver but did not use it. I gave it to a deputy sheriff and told him to shoot Patton and shoot to kill. I suppose the bullets form my gun were some of those that killed the Negro.” The article went on to say that no charges were being brought against any person who had participated in the lynching….
In the end, Sheriff Shipp’s conviction was a pretty meek response to the southern reign of terror. But it was a first step, and I very much enjoyed reading about it.
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