The four Black Florida men tortured following a rape accusation from a white woman in 1949, was pardoned posthumously after 70 years.
Samuel Shepherd, Walter Irvin and Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas were known as the Groveland Four, according to NBC News. Shepherd, Irvin and Greenlee were beaten following the accusation. Shepherd was then sentenced to death, while the other two were given life sentences. The fourth man, Ernest Thomas, was killed by a mob of 1,000 men.
The so-called Groveland Four were falsely accused of rape in 1949. Years later, their accuser recanted.
In 2017, their families received apologies.
Today, a Florida clemency board and Gov. Ron DeSantis have granted them a long-sought posthumous pardon.https://t.co/p5roJ8cBOK
— The Marshall Project (@MarshallProj) January 11, 2019
The accuser, Norma Padgett, and her husband claimed she was kidnapped and raped by the four men after the pair's car broke down in Groveland, reports the Miami Herald.
Shepherd and Irvin told the police they had only stopped to help the couple. After being beaten while in police custody, they confessed. Following the trials, all of which had all-white juries, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a retrial in 1951.
A few months later, Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall shot Shepherd and Irvin. Shepherd was killed. Irvin, however, survived. He was again convicted despite overwhelming evidence that he was innocent. Even a former FBI agent testified that prosecutors had falsified evidence. Irvin was released on parole in 1968, and a year later, he was found dead in his car.
Seven decades later, the families of the accused are finally getting some semblance of justice. In an angry Clemency Board meeting, the families argued their now-deceased loved ones had been unjustly convicted of raping the then 17-year-old.
“It never happened. You and your family are liars,” Beverly Robinson, a family member of Samuel Shepherd, told Norma Padgett.
“You can hold the truth down for so long, but eventually it will come out,” added Carol Greenlee, daughter of Charles Greenlee. “My father used to tell me all the time that you may get tired, but don’t quit. He said that is what kept him going.”
Greenlee was pardoned in 1960 and passed away in 2012.
Padgett still maintained her accusation.
“Y'all just don't know what kind of horror I've been through for all these many years,” she said.
Despite the harrowing consequences faced by Black men when falsely accused of rape by white women, the fabrications continue today. In October 2016, a white college student falsely accused a Black football player of rape. In 2018, a fully grown white woman in Brooklyn falsely claimed a 9-year-old Black boy groped her after his backpack brushed against her.
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