Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

several counts, including the failure of the prosecution to notify defense counsel of witness Lawrence Burtoft, and its dissemination to the press of the defendants’ alleged confessions, which would clearly have then become inadmissible as evidence. The probability of success in the removal of Hunter as prosecutor was slim, but the possibility for a change of venue was strong, given the Supreme Court ruling and Justice Robert Jackson’s concurring opinion citing the original Lake County trial of the case as “one of the worst menaces to American justice.” In another county, at the very least, the Groveland Boys would be relieved of any further court-ordered interactions with their greatest menace of all, Sheriff Willis V. McCall.
    Just after sundown on November 6, one hundred fifty miles north of Orlando, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin were expecting soon to be leaving the Flat Top—the windowless, white-concrete maximum-security facility enclosed by a wall inside the Florida State Prison in Raiford—where they’d spent the last two years in their individual cells. The Flat Top, built in 1935, housed only the most violent offenders, and a small room in the middle of the rectangular structure housed the electric chair. It had been used ten times since the two Groveland boys had been incarcerated there. Shepherd and Irvin could at least hope that they would not be facing electrocution now that the Supreme Court had overturned their convictions and Thurgood Marshall was handling their case. Both men were wearing their prison-issue pants with a dark stripe down the side. Shepherd had thrown on a sweatshirt and a baseball cap as well, and Irvin had put on a light jacket for the drive down to Tavares. They waited in their separate cells for the prison transfer that would take them back to Lake County for their hearing in the morning.
    That evening a black prisoner in handcuffs had been delivered to Raiford from Lake County by Sheriff Willis McCall and Deputy James Yates. Killing two birds with one stone, they’d dropped off the new inmate and were now picking up the two Groveland boys on death row. They escorted the two prisoners, cuffed together at their wrists, to McCall’s brand-new 1951 Oldsmobile 98 with the Rocket V8 engine. McCall ordered both men to sit in the front seat; Irvin entered first. Yates got in the back. Once they had driven outside the main gate, the law officers voiced some thinly veiled threats and made a show of drawing and aiming their pistols. “I am ready now for anything,” McCall boasted, but the two prisoners had become so accustomed to the sheriff’s ways that “we didn’t pay much attention to them,” Irvin said.
    The sedan smoothly rode the pavement on the long, quiet drive down U.S. 441. It was a cool evening, and McCall had turned on the car’s heater. He turned east off 441, toward Weirsdale in Marion County, and at the intersection of Weirsdale and Umatilla roads, he pulled up next to a car at the roadside. It was Yates’s car; the deputy had met the sheriff at the intersection for the drive up to Raiford. The deputy asked McCall to wait until he made sure his engine started, and when it did, Yates headed east on County Road 42, which ran through the Florida scrub and longleaf pines of Ocala National Forest. McCall followed slowly behind. Several miles on, both cars turned south on County Road 450, a little-traveled, unlit clay road. It wasn’t the quickest route to the Lake County jail, Irvin knew, and he knew, too, he’d get nowhere asking McCall questions. They had crossed into Lake County; they were not far from Umatilla and Willis McCall’s house in Eustis. The sheriff knew the back roads well.
    Over the radio, McCall told Yates, “Go on ahead.” Yates answered okay, and the two prisoners watched the taillights of the deputy’s car flicker as it sped away and, taking a curve, disappeared. McCall hit his siren briefly, then began to rattle the steering wheel.
    “Something is wrong with my left front tire,” the sheriff said as he pulled off to the side of the road. He reached under his seat for a large metal flashlight with a red band around it and got out of the car. After checking the tires on all sides, he slid back into the driver’s seat and continued down the same dark road. Yates was nowhere to be seen. The Oldsmobile had gone maybe two miles when McCall rattled the wheel again, and again he stopped the car and got out. He kicked the right front