Jerry Summers: The Bravest Judge In Legal History

  • Monday, December 28, 2020
  • Jerry Summers
Jerry Summers
Jerry Summers

Most of the legal decisions that establish new precedents or expansion of civil liberties are usually handed down by appellate judges and not by trial judges.  The reasons for this are numerous:

1. Appellate judges are usually removed from the local notoriety of highly sensational cases.  They normally hear cases at some distance from the actual trial.  The hearings at which attorneys argue the merits of a conviction are usually poorly attended in contrast to the actual trial in the community where the alleged crime took place.

2. The presence of cameras in the courtroom and the competing television stations vying for news coverage often put intense pressure upon the parties participating in a trial.

In 1933 the United States Supreme Court had reversed the death penalty convictions of the nine black teenage males charged with gang rape of two white women on a freight train near Paint Rock, Alabama, outside the county seat of Scottsboro.  The defendants, forever to be known as the “Scottsboro Boys,” had won a new trial on the grounds that their constitutional rights to a competent defense has been denied in their original trial two years earlier.

The second trial would be held in Decatur, Alabama, where 55-year-old Circuit Judge James Edwin Horton, Jr., presided.  Judge Horton had served as circuit judge since 1922 and had overwhelmingly been re-elected for a second term of office.

The new trials would be held in Decatur, Alabama, 15 miles from Judge Horton’s home in Athens.

Known as a fair judge by the attorneys who practiced before him, Judge Horton was determined that the defendants would get a fair trial in spite of the tense public sentiment against them.

Judge Horton initially denied the defense motion to dismiss the charges on the grounds of the systematic exclusion of Negroes from county grand jury rolls.  A similar motion attacking the method of selection in trial jurors that excluded blacks was also made and denied.

In spite of many discrepancies in the testimony of one of the victims, Victoria Price, the lack of specific medical evidence and the surprise favorable testimony for the defense of the other alleged rape victim, Ruby Bates, the jury quickly found the first defendant to be tried, Haywood Patterson, guilty of murder and sentenced him to die in the electric chair. 

Judge Horton took the unusual and highly controversial step of granting Patterson a new trial on the grounds of the jury’s verdict being contrary to the sufficiency of the evidence.

When the motion was called in court Judge Horton did not call for any argument by counsel for either side and digressed into reading a typewritten transcript for 65 minutes.

Horton would later admit that he was told by an emissary from Montgomery, Alabama, that if he should overturn the verdict of the jury and grant a new trial that he would have little or no chance of being re-elected.   Yet Judge Horton demonstrated tremendous courage in spite of intense public pressure when he granted Patterson a new trial.

Following his decision Judge Horton hoped that the prosecution would drop the case against Patterson and the other defendants.  However, the political ambitions of District Attorney General Thomas Knight and the atmosphere against the Scottsboro Boys prevented the request from happening.

Judge Horton granted a continuance of the next trial against Charles Weems in an effort to let things cool down but the only result was to allow DA Knight to effectively have Judge Horton removed from hearing any more of the cases by the Alabama Supreme Court.

In 1934 he was defeated when he ran for re-election by a vote of 9,416 for his opponent while Horton received 6,856 votes.

Subsequent to his defeat he became a successful farmer and cattleman and died in March 1973 at age 95.

Throughout the history of the judiciary in both Alabama and America never has any jurist matched the courage of Judge James Edwin Horton, Jr., in the Scottsboro Boys case of Haywood Patterson.

Judge Horton’s family motto was Justitia Fiat Caelum (“May justice be done, though the Heavens fall”).  He certainly followed its dictates in his judiciary duties in 1933.

* * *

Jerry Summers

(If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact Mr. Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com)

           

           

 

Judge James Edwin Horton
Judge James Edwin Horton
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