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

back to her office and begin typing her coverage of the trial, sarcastically comparing the NAACP’s defense to nothing more than fictitious theater. Under the headline “At Long Last, the Groveland Story Is Put into Production,” Mabel lauded “Star Greenlee” and noted that the boy “brought in the finale as would Negro singer Paul Robeson emphasize the crescendo of a song,” so much so that he “would have made a Broadway critic cut the rope of racial prejudice to give him a rave notice in his column.”
    Ted Poston followed Jesse Hunter out of the courtroom, and couldn’t get Norma Padgett out of his mind. “Except for the slender, petulant blonde’s own testimony,” Poston noted, “there was not one bit of evidence placed in the record of the three-day trial at Tavares to support her story that four Negroes raped her successively on the back seat of a 1946 Mercury car in the early morning hours of July 16.” Poston had heard she’d been examined by a doctor, yet no doctor was called to testify. Approaching Hunter, Poston asked why.
    “Not necessary,” Hunter snapped. “She said she was raped, didn’t she?”
    “Mr. Hunter didn’t want to embarrass Mrs. Padgett by bringing out all those details,” an assistant prosecutor added.
    Poston noted that the state did not produce any evidence of “possible stains, spots or any other evidence which must have accompanied a four-way rape in the same corner of the car’s back seat.” One spectator even said so much to Poston while they were in the “Colored” men’s room on the courthouse floor.
    “If that white lady was raped like she said, then it was the cleanest rape in Lake County or the cleanest one anywhere.”
    Heading back into court, Poston spotted bolita dealer and witness for the prosecution Henry Singleton, “bowing and cringing behind a deputy sheriff—more frightened even then of the vengeance of his own people. . . .” He even overheard the deputy discussing Greenlee’s testimony in the corridor. “Too bad that Greenlee nigger got mixed up in this. You know, he’s the kind of nigger you like. It’s a shame Miss Padgett had already said he was there.”
    When court resumed, Jesse Hunter was eager to finish off the defendants. He told Judge Futch, “I won’t take very long, Your Honor,” then leaned into the jury box and assured the jurors that whatever questions they might have about who was where and at what time, they should remember that “a lot can happen with a good fast car and vicious men.” He informed the jury that “no human being ever went through such a terrible night as this girl did,” then reminded them that the defense did not call any witnesses to prove Shepherd and Irvin were in Orlando that night “because those two men were not in Orlando that terrible night—they were out on the road to Center Hill raping this woman!”
    Akerman rose to counter with a reasonable-doubt argument, claiming that the prosecution’s time line defied logic. Greenlee had been apprehended twenty miles away at the same time that Norma Padgett would have been attacked. Without Charles Greenlee on the scene, there was no gun. Akerman closed by telling the jury that in most cases he’d tried, criminals fled after a crime of this nature. Yet these three defendants did nothing of the sort after the alleged crime.
    Williams didn’t think the jury would be out very long. Earlier in the trial, they had requested to see the inside of the car where Padgett was alleged to have been raped. Williams had held out some hope that perhaps they were considering exactly how this “grim game of ‘Musical Chairs’ could take place” in the small backseat of the car. But Futch declined, stating that the request was “a little out of line.” There weren’t going to be any surprises, and Futch had kept a tight rein on the trial.
    Williams thought Akerman’s closing argument was quite good, given the lack of time to prepare this case and the restraints Judge Futch had imposed on them throughout the trial. But Williams’s praise of Akerman did not compare to the praise Judge Futch had heaped on Jesse Hunter.
    “Jesse,” Futch said, shaking the lawyer’s hand, “I have never heard a better argument in all my life.”
    At 7:25 p.m., the twelve white Lake County men were sent out to deliberate and Poston darted down the block to “the one long distance phone booth” in range of the courthouse. He put a call in to the New York Post