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

Curtis Howard identified it), she told Burtoft that her husband had been “hit over the head and she thought maybe that he had been killed.” She also said that she had been kidnapped by four Negroes but made no mention of being raped.
    “Did she make any statement to you as to her ability to identify those men?” Akerman asked for the defense.
    “She told me that she could not identify them, that one was light, and one was extremely dark and that’s all she knew about them,” Burtoft replied.
    Burtoft was the only defense witness who worried Hunter, because the state attorney knew that the testimony of the café owner’s son would not corroborate the story that the state’s witnesses were spinning. Hunter’s aim in cross-examination, then, was to destroy Burtoft’s credibility as a witness.
    “Are you prejudiced against the state of Florida?” Hunter asked.
    “No, sir, I am not prejudiced against anybody.”
    Despite Akerman’s objections, which Futch overruled, Hunter implied that Burtoft was in “bad standing” with the sheriff’s department of Lake County: an implication that the soldier calmly denied. Hunter then insinuated that Burtoft had changed his story since his interview with the state attorney two and a half years back, shortly after the alleged rape: “Didn’t you tell me the first time when I talked to you about this case that you had heard a woman pass by your place in an automobile screaming for help that night?”
    “No, I didn’t,” Burtoft said emphatically. “I don’t even know when they went by.”
    “Didn’t you tell me you heard a woman screaming for help going by your place?”
    “No, sir, I did, I did not hear anything of the kind, and I don’t know where you got any such information as that.”
    Hunter pressed harder. He told Burtoft that he had decided not to call the Okahumpka boy as a witness for the state in the first trial because he knew the boy’s testimony was not true, and he repeated what he had said to Burtoft in their 1949 interview, that “we were not going to use any liars in that trial,” so as to ask, “You don’t remember me telling you that?”
    “No, I don’t,” Burtoft answered, unwavering. “You did not say that. You cannot fool me. I know what you said.”
    Hunter then addressed again Burtoft’s supposed prejudice by suggesting that he “was trying to get even” with the state of Florida for its occasioning of a rift within the Burtoft family. At this point, as at any number of others in the state attorney’s cross-examination, Marshall and Akerman could have objected, but they were thus far pleased, and surprised, by the equanimity Burtoft was displaying in response to Hunter’s questions. And Burtoft remained unrattled by Hunter’s suggestion, even though young Lawrence, according to one reporter, had struggled with the fact that there was “at least one Ku Klux Klan member in the Burtoft circle” and that “regional tradition” might dictate adverse actions against his father’s business if Lawrence were to testify for the defense of a black man charged with a white woman’s rape. Charlotte Burtoft, Lawrence’s mother, had a “genuine fear of reprisals from some of the extremists around Groveland” were her son to testify. Her other children did not want Lawrence to return. But Mrs. Burtoft also believed that Walter Irvin was innocent, and she supported her son’s desire to tell the truth under oath. Lawrence had discussed his concerns at length with his family, who had ultimately “wanted him to let his conscience be his guide”—whereupon he had applied to the Pentagon for a special pass so that he could travel to Ocala and testify.
    Hunter proceeded to Burtoft’s testimony, which he strove to discredit. “Now, as a matter of fact, Mr. Burtoft, that girl was hurt when you saw her, was she not?”
    “No, she was not hurt,” Burtoft answered.
    “And you took your own time about getting a car, did you not?”
    “Well, I was not going to carry her on my back,” Burtoft noted. “The car was up at the house.”
    “Was there any reason why she would put any confidence in you?”
    “I didn’t ask. It was not my place to ask her. I just asked her if she thought she would recognize them, and she told me she didn’t think she could,” Burtoft said. “She just told me the rest of her story voluntarily, and she just told me that she had been kidnapped by four Negroes, and I asked her if she thought she