This paper was originally written in January of 2020 for Professor Lawrence Raful’s course “The Scottsboro Boys: Racism and American Law” at Touro Law Center.
By Georgia D. Reid, Online Editor of the Touro Law Review
The Scottsboro case is one that changed the landscape of American jurisprudence forever. It is a case that highlights extreme divides between races, genders, and territories in America. While the events that led to the trials took place in 1931, there are still many pressing issues brought up in Scottsboro that remain important today, nearly a century after the fact. There is still a racial divide in the American justice system, as well as a class divide. And the unique history and culture of the American South creates an environment where this divide exists at its widest.
This paper examines two cases that highlight the racial and cultural divide of the deep South as it exists in a post-Scottsboro America. The first is the story of the disappearance of the Milbrook Twins in Augusta, Georgia, in 1990. This is a story about how law enforcement in the South blatantly ignored the disappearance of two young black females, lied about their investigations, and covered up their inaction, which led to the case going cold for years. The second case is the infamous story of the West Memphis Three, when three teenage boys were convicted in 1993 of a heinous sex crime and murder, which they did not commit. One boy was 18 years old and was sentenced to death three times by the state of Arkansas before new evidence finally set them all free. It is a case that lays bare the incredible bigotry and phobia of the South in modern times, because the defendants were convicted, with no factual evidence, because they were poor “outsiders.”
Before we examine these two cases, it is essential to mention that the feminist issues involved in Scottsboro are especially salient after the recent “Me Too Movement.” The Scottsboro accusers were white women who cried rape. But they lied. While it is true that Ruby Bates recanted her accusation, Victoria Price never did. This paper will not analyze the psychology of the two accusers, nor will it examine the patronizing chivalry of the South regarding protecting the chastity of white women. However, it is important to mention that the feminist issues of the case still preside to this day. More white than black female victims find justice against their attackers, even though sexual assaults dis-proportionately impact women of color more than any other group. Over eighteen percent of black women will be a victim of sexual assault in her lifetime, but only one in fifteen black women who is raped will report it.[i]
Women, in general, have had a very hard time, historically, coming forward after a sexual assault. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVR), rape is the most under-reported crime; 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police.[ii] With the “Me Too” movement, women are finally telling their stories. We are told to “believe women” and not to blame victims. Sometimes, as a defense, men will accuse women of lying (the NSVR states that false reports of rape approximate between 2 percent to 10 percent of all rape reports). After all, getting accused of rape or sexual harassment can ruin a career, a family, and a life. It begs the question of what would happen to the accused if Bates and Price were to cry rape again today? What would happen if they accused not nine black teenagers, but a white male? Or a Brett Kavanaugh? Would they be believed like they were in Scottsboro, or would their case never make it to court? To finally bring Harvey Weinstein to court, it took a class-action suit of 100 women accusers, even after law enforcement had a recording of Weinstein admitting to sexual assault.[iii]
Another issue that the Scottsboro case vividly highlights is what happens when the media gets involved in a case. Scottsboro was a case in which the mainstream media at the time – newspapers – paid attention. In part, there was coverage because of the sensational nature of the crime, and also in part, because the political climate at the time gave the NAACP, the Communist Party, and other various groups a propagandist platform to relate the case to their various causes. No doubt today, politicians on both sides of the party line use crime stories to bolster their political stance. One hopes that because the coverage of Scottsboro was so widespread, the adverse effects the trial had on the community were eclipsed by the national attention it brought to the injustices of the Southern judicial process. It is potentially the media attention that saved the lives of the nine Scottsboro boys. As we will see in the cases of the Milbrook Twins and of the West Memphis Three, the media had a role to play in both hindering and helping the course of justice for the poor outsider in the South.
If we are talking about the media portrayal of black men, we cannot ignore that African American men are often cast as villains. It fit the narrative in the South at the time of Scottsboro. “Officers had to point guns at friends . . . to keep them away from the black men they themselves would have been glad to get to,” wrote the editor of the Huntsville Times (as quoted in Stores of Scottsboro).[iv] The “lynching spirit” was evident to Hollace Ransdall when she visited Scottsboro at the time of the first trial in April 1931.[v] Films such as “The Birth of a Nation” had recently helped rekindle the KKK as heroes and black men as “uncouth, intellectually inferior, and predators of white women.”[vi]
Since the time of Scottsboro, the “black male as villain” narrative has spread ubiquitously nationwide. “We need to take these people on, they are often connected to big drug cartels, they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators. No conscience. No empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel,” Hillary Clinton said in 1996.[vii] Clinton was referring to black male gang members, a group that struck fear into the hearts of citizens as they watched riots and gang violence on the evening news in the 1990s. Her comments were fear-mongering and racist.
Even in 2020, after the election of a black president, and after the success of black Americans in all professions, the problem in the media persists. Black Americans, and black males, in particular, are overrepresented as perpetrators of crime in the media:
According to a four-year average of statistics[viii] from the New York City Police Department, African-American suspects were arrested in 54 percent of murder cases, 55 percent of theft cases, and 49 percent of assaults, according to Media Matters, a media watchdog group. Nevertheless, from Aug. 18 through Dec. 31 of 2014, the evening news programs for WCBS, WNBC, WABC, and WNYW identified African-Americans as suspects in 68 percent of murder stories, 80 percent of stories about thefts, and 72 percent of stories about assaults.
These statistics show that since Scottsboro, on a national level, the public imagination has not radically changed regarding the myth that black men are at best dangerous, or at worst, criminals. Whether the media is a reflection of public or opinion or public opinion is over-influenced by the media, is a topic for another paper. Either way, the media plays a role in the criminal justice system, for better or for worse.
Perhaps one of the most pressing issues of our time is the national divide felt between different geographic areas of our country. America is a wonderfully diverse place, but unfortunately, Americans do not always appreciate diversity. When we look at voting trends, there is a significant divide between the east and west coasts and the middle of the country. Just look at any electoral map, and one will see the center of the country trends towards conservative, and the coasts trend liberal.[ix] Furthermore, there is a divide between the North and the South, both culturally and politically. The Scottsboro case highlighted the divide between North and South and further exposes how even in the Southeast itself, there is a further divide between black and white, upper class, and poor. So, too, does the story of the Milbrook Twins.
The disappearance of the Millbrook Twins is an example of a recent case where the racial and class divides of the South affected a police investigation and resulted in what can only be classified as a miscarriage of justice for the victims’ family. The story of the Millbrook twins is Scottsboro turned inside out. In the Scottsboro case, we see two white female victims, who made up a story and a crime and got national media attention. Even after prosecutors knew the story was made up, the case still went back to trial a third time. In the story of the Milbrook twins, we see real victims who were never assisted, real criminals in the community who were never investigated, and a case gone cold. The victims happen to be poor, black, and female. Until recently, the story received little to no attention from the media, and worse, almost no attention from law enforcement at all.
The country first heard of the Milbrook Twins case on the podcast “The Fall Line.” The show is “an investigative, narrative, and revealing show focused on the cold cases of marginalized communities in the Southeast.”[x] Hosted by a professor and licensed therapist, “The Fall Line” gives a “platform to families and victims who have been passed over by mainstream media.”
Danette and Jeanette Milbrook were 15-year-old fraternal twins from Augusta, Georgia. They were described as good kids who went to school and stayed out of trouble. They were also poor and black. They disappeared in 1990 from a city that is one of the most impoverished areas in the state of Georgia, rife with sex trafficking, drugs, and organized crime. Ironically, Augusta hosts the Masters Golf Tournament annually. If there is a part of the country that exposes a cultural and racial divide, it is Augusta. And justice is not evenly distributed there.
When the girls’ mother, Mary Sturgis, called the sheriff on Mar. 18, 1990, to report her daughters missing, she was told to wait 24 hours to start a missing person’s report. The next day, she was dismissively told by detectives that “they probably just ran away.”[xi] Soon, the case was closed. No investigations were done in the disappearance of the girls. Their 16th birthday came and went.[xii] Later, law enforcement told the family they closed the case because the twins had turned 17. In 1993, someone called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to report that the twins had been found.[xiii] Sadly, this was a lie and was just a way to get the case file closed for good (the mystery surrounding the girls’ removal from the national registry of missing children remained unsolved).[xiv]
The Augusta Sherriff’s office reopened the case in 2013.[xv] Over twenty years since the original disappearance of the twins, twenty years in which law enforcement did no work to try and find them. Likewise, the media failed to help the Milbrook twins until 2013. Twins rarely go missing. Nevertheless, there was nothing in the news before the cases’ 2013 reopening. Until the podcast series, there was no Wikipedia page about the girls. There was no “48 Hours” expose or “60 Minutes” story. If the media found out about their disappearance at all, then it must not have fit the narrative. One could not help but imagine that the police and media would have reacted differently if the victimology were different – such as, two white women who go missing, or two white women who accuse black men of rape. The injustice felt in the case of the Milbrook twins is gut-wrenching – and sadly, it is sixty years after Scottsboro. This is why it is so important to remember the lessons Scottsboro can teach us relating to new cases.
Another example that highlights a class divide in the South is the infamous West Memphis three case. The similarities between Scottsboro and this case are not apparent at first but are actually disquietingly familiar. While this paper will not analyze every detail about both cases, it does aim to show what can happen to indigent defendants in a bible-belt community in Arkansas over sixty years after Scottsboro.
The Scottsboro defendants had three trials and multiple appeals and lived on death row for an average of twenty years each. The defendants in West Memphis were imprisoned for eighteen years each before they were released (the eldest of them on death row). In Scottsboro, the jury had made up their minds before even coming to court. Likewise, in West Memphis, the jury was comprised of people from a small bible-belt community, who were sure of the defendant’s guilt before the trial began. Both cases were tainted by problems with the jury – in Scottsboro, a violation of the 14th amendment in excluding black jurors, and in West Memphis, what was later uncovered to be jury misconduct when a member of the jury in the second trial illegally included a statement made by a witness in the first trial. Both cases relied on expert testimony, which influenced the jury in the wrong way. And, both cases were heavily covered by the media, which, in all likelihood, helped lead to justice with the eventual release of both sets of defendants.
Other than the color of their skin, the defendants in West Memphis had more in common with the Scottsboro boys than they would ever know. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley were white males, but they were still unwelcome outsiders in their community. They were dirt-poor, white trash from the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. “I grew up extremely poor,” writes Echols. “On a regular basis, my family couldn’t afford food, new clothes, electricity, running water . . . in the winter we froze and in the summer we burned. I was rarely clean and often hungry.”[xvi] Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were further targeted because they “dressed in black, had long hair, and listened to heavy metal music . . . in the pre-internet age, especially in Arkansas, being differentwas sometimes akin to being a criminal.”[xvii]
The police department in West Memphis had a heinous crime to solve. In May of 1993, the bodies of three young boys, all around age eight, were discovered in the woods near a truck stop. They were all nude, hogtied, and dumped in a creek. One of the boys had been castrated post-mortem. All three had been beaten. Because the killings took during a full moon, rumors of Satanic activity began to circulate. It is important to note that the exact location of the murder has never been determined – the lack of blood at the site where the bodies were discovered makes it highly unlikely the boys were killed there, and much more likely they were transported there after being killed. No murder weapon was found. No fingerprints were found. There seemed to be no motive. Many tips came in from as far as Memphis, Tennessee, and leading as far as Oceanside, California. Two suspects who had fled West Memphis after the murders failed polygraph examinations in California.[xviii]
The sort of revulsion felt in Scottsboro in 1931 at the idea of two white women being raped by nine black men is probably comparable to the sort of horror felt in the community of West Memphis in 1993. The police in West Memphis had to find someone to pin this crime on. The parents of the victims, the town itself, and the prosecutor’s office were putting on the pressure. After frustrations with the medical examiner’s office, with an external investigation into the department by the Arkansas State Police, and a rising tide of “Satanic Panic,” months were passing, and there was no suspect in custody.[xix] The three defendants were the perfect scapegoats.
Most residents of Arkansas believed that “the devil is very real, the devil has great power, and is vibrantly at work in the world.”[xx] This is not a common view in the North but is quite common in the South. It is a belief system that is at the heart of the injustice in the West Memphis case. Just as in Scottsboro, where the community knew a black man was guilty just by looking at him, in West Memphis, if you didn’t go to church and read Stephen King, you were in consort with the devil. And that makes someone guilty in a hardcore, fundamentalist, bible-belt town.
The police “psychologically tortured” the first defendant, Jessie Misskelley, in coercing a confession from him.[xxi] Misskelley was forced to go without food, water, or sleep for over twelve hours and was encouraged to implicate the second and third defendants, Echols and Baldwin.[xxii] In a report by Dr. William Wilkins, it is stated that Jessie “bordered on being mentally retarded, whose maximum scores for academic achievement were in the third and fourth-grade levels, and who had never passed any of the Arkansas minimum performance tests.”[xxiii] Misskelley was tried first, separate from Echols and Baldwin. The confession, which Misskelley recanted the following day, convicted him of second-degree murder in the killing of the three victims. There was no other evidence tying him to the murders.
The second trial was a joint trial for Echols and his best friend, Baldwin. The jury convicted both of them without any physical evidence tying them to the crime. The prosecution focused on the types of music Echols listened to (heavy metal), the kind of books he liked (horror and the occult), and his interest in Catholicism and Paganism (Echols denies ever being a Satanist). It was spiritual warfare in the court, and the judge allowed “cult activity” to be included as a motive for the killings[xxiv]. The prosecutors also relied on the testimony of an expert witness “Dale W. Griffis, a graduate of Columbia Pacific University and retired police officer, who considered himself an expert in the occult” (note that to earn a PhD. from Columbia Pacific University, a non-accredited school, one need only mail a check and does not have to attend classes).[xxv] When the defense challenged the reliability of Griffis as an expert, the judge denied the motion and allowed him to testify. Griffis said that Echols drew satanic symbols in a notebook. That was all the jury needed to hear.
There was another expert in the second trial, the medical examiner, Dr. Frank Peretti. Peretti was a witness for the prosecution, but on his cross, he gave “surprise testimony” that “flew in the face of the state’s theory of the crime.”[xxvi] The timeline for the killings, according to Peretti, contradicted everything in the state’s theory. It called into question the lack of blood at the scene, where the boys were killed, and when they had been killed.[xxvii] The ambiguity was not enough, however, and the jury found no reasonable doubt. Echols was sentenced to death and his friend Baldwin to life in prison.
One can only be reminded of the testimony of Dr. Bridges in the second Scottsboro trial. A medical expert, Bridges, testified that the timeline for the alleged rape of Bates and Price was impossible. The sperm cells that had been gathered from their bodies were not alive, which meant they had intercourse at least a day before the rapes would have taken place. Nevertheless, the jury in Scottsboro did not consider that, either. It is frightening that sixty years after Scottsboro, the testimony of medical experts, rooted in science, could still mean so little to a Southern jury, and that racism, fear, and superstition reigned high.
In an investigation after the trial, it was determined that the jury foreman illegally told the other jury members about Misskelley’s confession.
Following a 2010 decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court, the West Memphis Three negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors.[xxviii] There was newly discovered DNA evidence from the crime scene, which excluded all three defendants. The defense submitted a writ of habeas corpus. On Aug. 19, 2011, the three defendants reluctantly entered Alford pleas, which allowed them to assert their innocence but also acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them. The defendants were released.
“I spent 18 years in prison under abject conditions,” Echols said in an interview. “Ten years was spent in solitary torture. The brain injury I sustained will always plague me.”[xxix] In a hauntingly chilling account of his time on death row, Echols also recalls hearing executions taking place, much like the Scottsboro boys did.
The cases of Scottsboro, the Milbrook Twins, and the West Memphis Three are not unique. They all expose the racial and class prejudice of the South. It is worth noting that the only thing that makes these cases well known is the media. The family of the Milbrook Twins is finally getting some attention, thanks to a podcast. Because the West Memphis trials were on film, it spurred HBO to create a documentary about the case, which lead to further investigations. Moreover, thanks in part to the politics of the time, the Scottsboro case also garnered national attention. Thankfully, the media saved the nine lives of the Scottsboro boys and the life of Damien Echols.
Since the Scottsboro case, there still exists a divide felt between the upper class and the marginalized communities of the Southeast in America. This is not something we can continue to ignore if we are to ensure liberty and justice for all Americans. As long as juries believe that a group is guilty until proven innocent, the justice system will have to work even harder to ensure fair trials. While these cases are tragedies in their own rights, we can learn from them and strive to do better. At the end of the day, we have to believe that the justice system, while imperfect, does work. Scottsboro is a case that sets a precedent for ensuring that black Americans are allowed on juries. One can hope that we eventually stop repeating the same mistakes in our communities.
Modern-day witch trials and racially motivated verdicts have no place in America, but yet, they continue. Police officers still ignore violence against black youth, or worse, perpetuate that violence in some instances. The media portrays stories that sell, not the stories of kids who go missing in the poor black communities of the South. The greatest equalizer we have is our court system. That is why Scottsboro still has many lessons to teach us, and still matters today.
[i] “Black Women and Sexual Violence,” https://now.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Black-Women-and-Sexual-Violence-6.pdf
[ii] National Sexual Violence Resource Center, https://www.nsvrc.org/node/4737
[iii] Irin Carmon, New York Magazine, “100 Women vs. Harvey Weinstein,” https://www.thecut.com/2020/01/harvey-weinstein-case-finally-comes-to-court.html (January 2020).
[iv] James Goodman, “Stories of Scottsboro” at 17.
[v] Id. At 20.
[vi] Alexis Clark, History.com. “How ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Revived the Ku Klux Klan,” http://www.history.com/news/kkk-birth-of-a-nation-film (Jul 2019).
[vii] Heidi Gillstron, The Hill, “Clinton’s ‘Superpredator’ Comment Most Damaging By Either Candidate,” https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/crime/298693-hillary-clintons-superpredators-still-the-most-damaging-insult-by (Sep 2016).
[viii] NYC.GOV Crime and Enforcement Activity Reports. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/crime-enf.page.
[ix] Two Seventy To Win, https://www.270towin.com/
[x] The Fall Line https://www.exactlyrightmedia.com/the-fall-line
[xi] Jordan Julian, The Daily Beast, “Twins Dannette and Jeannette Millbrook Went Missing 30 Years Ago. Their Family Still Wants Answers.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/twins-dannette-and-jeannette-millbrook-went-missing-30-years-ago-their-family-still-wants-answers (Nov 2019).
[xii] Natalie Finn, E-Online, “The Devastating Story Behind the Disappearance of the Milbrook Twins,” http://www.eonline.com/news/1095861/the-devastating-story-behind-the-disappearance-of-the-millbrook-twins (Nov 2019)
[xiii] Id.
[xiv] Id.
[xv] Nefeteria Brewster, The Augusta Chronicle, “Family Of Augusta Twins Missing Since 1990 Announce Reward Into Case,” http://www.augustachronicle.com/news/2017-12-07/family-augusta-twins-missing-1990-announce-reward-case (Dec 2017).
[xvi] Damien Echols, “High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices the Saved My Life on Death Row” at xvii.
[xvii] Matt Gilligan, ID Crimefeed, “The West Memphis Three Case: An Evolving Story of Doubt & Misinformation,” https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/murder/the-west-memphis-three-case-an-evolving-story-of-doubt-misinformation (May 2018).
[xviii] Mara Leveritt, “Devils Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three” at 25 – 27.
[xix] Id. At 39
[xx] Id. At 52
[xxi] Echols at xix.
[xxii] Id.
[xxiii] Leveritt at 175.
[xxiv] Id. at 220.
[xxv] The West Memphis Three https://www.bizarrepedia.com/west-memphis-three/
[xxvi] Leveritt at 226.
[xxvii] Id.
[xxviii] The West Memphis Three https://www.bizarrepedia.com/west-memphis-three/
[xxix] “Echols says he suffered brain injuries on death row, his wife calls for end to executions” katv.com/news/local/echols-says-he-suffered-brain-injuries-on-death row-his-wife-calls-for-end-to-executions (Aug 2017)
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