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

against a pretty tough proposition, but the guarantee of a fair and impartial trial to every man accused of crime stands just as securely in this case and cases of this type as it does in every other case. But there are times when violent crimes are committed, when all good Americans are shocked and revolted, and resent such crimes, and criminals of the type who commit such crimes. . . . And when the crime of rape involves a white lady and a colored man, then there is a great amount of ill feeling and ill will against the alleged defendant.”
    Marshall explained that the Constitution and further statutes appertaining to the rights of individuals as defendants “fill up pages and pages of law books, but they can easily be summed up to this one thing, that every defendant is assured and guaranteed a fair and impartial trial, and is assured and guaranteed equal justice under the law, equally . . . no matter whether or not he is white, black or yellow, and our government is the finest Government in the world . . . and our great United States government is built on that principle . . . and that is the reason that our government has survived through the ages. . . .”
    First glorifying the law as being derived from “basic precepts set down by God himself in heaven” and “written lovingly and painstakingly, through the hundreds of years,” Marshall then brought law as a divine abstraction into the concrete reality of the Marion County courtroom, where constitutional safeguards continued to protect the rule of courts and the power of juries, as in the matter of the defendant seated before them. “Walter Lee Irvin is charged with the crime of rape and he is now on trial before you gentlemen as his jurymen, and in cases of this kind, I have heard judges make the remark, that cases of this kind are the kind that will try the souls of men.” Yet by their tried souls would the soul of Walter Lee Irvin be tried, and by them would his life or death be determined, for, as Marshall reminded them, “when this government was founded, and the old Magna Carta says that the final say of whether a man is to live or die is left solely in the hands of twelve representative fellow men of the area where the case is being tried, and that is why you are here today.”
    Marshall’s objective, however, was less to inspire the jurors with awe at their mission than to appeal to their common sense in its execution. “Now I will tell you that I myself have never been on a jury, but to my mind there are certain things that strike me about the testimony in this case . . . and the thing that struck me the most, and still is in my mind, is this. When they carried Walter Irvin out there to the scene of where this thing is supposed to have happened, and when they were tracking his footsteps there in the ground, and they asked Irvin if those were the shoes he had on the night before, and he told them no. He told them that his shoes he had on the night before were at home. Now, gentlemen, if those were Irvin’s footprints out there on that ground, and Irvin knew what a serious charge was hanging over his head, and when Mr. Yates asked him if those shoes he had on the night before, now, remember gentlemen, Walter Irvin is an intelligent young boy. Now he understood what Mr. Yates was charging him with . . . and what did Irvin tell him? He told him, no, that they were at home. . . . Now, gentlemen, it seems to me that if Walter Irvin had been guilty of that crime, when he realized that the shoes that he had on were not fitting in those imprints there on that ground, that any guilty man would have instantly said to Mr. Yates, ‘Yes, these are the shoes I had on last night.’ He would not have told Mr. Yates that the shoes were at home.”
    Outmatching the masterly Jesse Hunter in the arena of common sense, Marshall asked the jurors to consider, too, if Irvin’s actions the morning after the alleged rape suggested those of a guilty man. “I don’t believe that anybody who has just committed such a crime as that would be willing and able to go to work the next morning and to lead a perfectly normal life.” Indeed, even in the face of his arrest, he demonstrated no hint of guilt; he was “not even nervous or excited” and “when his mother told him the police were there looking for him, he told her to tell them to come right on in, that he had not done anything.”
    Marshall reasoned with the jurors in conversational tones; he