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

Futch charged the jury. As the twelve white men exited the courtroom, the NAACP attorney approached the bench, where the judge, his everyday brown tropical business suit dappled with cedar shavings, remained slumped in his swivel chair. He wore a Masonic signet ring; so did Marshall, and earlier in the trial the judge and the lawyer had compared their rings and amicably shared some of their experiences in Freemasonry. At the moment, however, Marshall was feeling neither cordial nor fraternal. He was livid with Jesse Hunter.
    “Judge Futch, I’m quite serious about this,” Marshall said. “I’m going to make him lose. Every one of those jurors has got a Shriner’s pin, did you notice that?”
    “Sure, I noticed it,” Futch replied.
    “Did you also notice that the state’s attorney, three different times gave the Masonic distress signal to that jury?”
    “Yeah,” Futch said, “as a matter of fact, it was four.”
    “Well, I’m going to make an objection,” Marshall told him.
    “I wouldn’t do it,” Futch answered.
    “Why not?”
    “There’s nothing racial about that,” Futch said. “He does it all the time whether you’re white, black, or green. He gives the distress signal all the time.”
    Greenberg, Akerman, and Perkins felt no better about the prospects for the defendant than did Marshall. The whole trial, it seemed, had proceeded by the ordainment of the state, which apparently enjoyed the grace of Judge Futch. Predetermined though the verdict appeared to be, Marshall had Akerman request that the court submit additional instructions to the jury, urging that deliberations not be influenced by public sentiment and that the testimony of Norma Padgett be “rigidly scrutinized,” since there were no other witnesses to the alleged act. Futch refused.
    Marshall retreated to the hallway for a cigarette. He kept a wary eye out for Deputy Yates; he had no inclination to be chased out of Marion County by a band of Klan riders after the verdict—not in a hearse, anyway. The Marion County Sheriff’s Department was well represented at the courthouse, but even in their Stetsons, with their guns holstered on their hips, they projected none of the menace of their Lake County counterparts.
    A white man sidled over to Marshall. “How long’s the jury going to be out?” he asked.
    “Damned if I know,” Marshall said. “I can’t tell.”
    Both men puffed on their cigarettes in silence, the white man staring down the corridor. “I can tell,” he said.
    Marshall waited for an explanation. The man was pleased to offer one. “You see that man over there just lit up a cigar?”
    Marshall spotted him, said yeah, and the man remarked, it seemed to Marshall, with undue confidence, “When he’s finished that cigar, the jury will come back.”
    Marshall furrowed his brow. “What the hell you talking about?” the lawyer asked.
    When the man pointed out that the cigar smoker was a juror, Marshall recognized him, as well as a second juryman who appeared and also lit up a cigar.
    “They’re not gonna waste that cigar,” the man told Marshall. “They’re going to finish the cigar before they come in.”
    Marshall observed the two jurors. He detected no nervousness in their gestures, no tension in their body language, as they casually smoked their cigars. It was not a good sign. Marshall would have preferred to be seeing them uneasy, on edge, ready to skip the courthouse as soon as they had, contrary to popular demand, acquitted Walter Irvin. Instead, the two jurymen looked as if they might have been passing time outside a barbershop on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Not a good sign at all. Marshall lit another cigarette.
    The cigar smoke billowed around the heads of the two jurors. A few more minutes ticked slowly by. Then, one juror stamped out his cigar; he lingered for a moment, and with a nod to his companion, he disappeared from the hallway. With no apparent urgency, the second juror followed. Marshall butted his cigarette.
    He was just stepping toward the courtroom when word came out that the jury had reached a verdict, after one hour and twenty-three minutes of deliberation. Marshall’s team gathered at the defense table. Walter Irvin was brought back from his cell. His family along with the black spectators, curious and hopeful, packed themselves into the balcony. The main floor buzzed. The press corps waited, alert. Jesse Hunter took a seat next to Sam Buie at the prosecutor’s table. Judge