Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Scott Peterson was sentenced to death for the murders of his pregnant wife, Laci, and his unborn son named Connor.  The prosecution argued that Scott killed Laci late on Dec. 23, 2002 or early on the morning of Dec. 24.  A neighbor saw Scott in the bed of his truck, which was backed in his driveway, around 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 24.  It was alleged that he was loading Laci's body into it.  Cell phone records establish that he left his Modesto residence at 523 Covena Ave. around 10:08 a.m. to go to a warehouse at 1027 N. Emerald Ave., where his boat was stored.  The warehouse is about 9 minutes away.

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Everett Baily Malloy was convicted of the murder of 25-year-old William Smiddy.  While Smiddy was in a North Houston nightclub, he saw a man, believed to be Malloy, take $20 from a waitress' serving tray and then leave the club.  Smiddy followed the man outside, choked him, and took the stolen money back.  However, the man fatally shot him with a .22 caliber pistol.

Malloy maintained his innocence and had witnesses testify that he was not at the club.  But four prosecution witnesses identified him as the killer.  They also said a woman accompanied him at the nightclub.  Following Malloy's conviction, the woman described by witnesses was located  and her information led to the filing of charges against a different man for the killing.  Malloy was released from prison in 1984.  (Herald-Journal) (Star-News)  [8/10]

Gerald Burge was convicted of the murder of Douglas Frierson.  Frierson had been shot to death and his body was found abandoned beneath a bridge at 4:13 a.m. on Oct. 17, 1980.  It appeared that he had been killed only an hour or so beforehand.  Frierson's mother, Jean Frierson, initially told Detective Gary Hale of the Sheriff's office that at midnight on the night of the murder, Douglas came to her home in Picayune, Mississippi, where she served him a meal of pancakes. She told Hale that after he had finished eating, Douglas was picked up at her house by someone in a car, but that she saw neither the vehicle nor the person or persons who came to pick up her son.  Two early suspects in the murder were Burge and another man, Joe Pearson.  Detective Hale's supervisor, Lt. E. L. Hermann, Jr., questioned Burge about the murder, and then gave Hale a tape recording of the questioning.  Pearson's girlfriend, Jo Ella Prestwood, initially told Hale that Pearson was with her on the night of the murder.  However, about six months later she told him that Pearson admitted to her that he had murdered Douglas Frierson.

After Burge and Pearson were arrested for the murder, Pearson agreed to testify against Burge in exchange for a reduced charge of being an accessory after the fact.  At Burge's 1986 trial, Pearson testified that he witnessed Burge fatally shoot Frierson.  Frierson's mother, Jean Frierson, testified that she saw her son leave with Gerald Burge on the night of the murder.  Since Burge's defense was not given any information to impeach Pearson's testimony or that of the victim's mother, Burge was convicted.

Immediately after Burge's conviction when Lt. Hermann and Hale were leaving the courthouse, Hermann asked Hale why Burge's defense did not have a copy of the tape that he had given Hale after he, Hermann, had questioned Burge.  Hale subsequently showed Hermann certain documents relating to the murder investigation that Hale had stored in the trunk of his car, including certain original documents that Hermann believed should have been delivered to the District Attorney's Office. When Hermann asked Hale why the documents were in his car, Hale reportedly replied, "If I would have turned this in, it would have caused us to lose – it could have caused us to lose the case."

In 1990, after evidence of Jean Frierson's original statement came to light, Burge was granted a retrial on the grounds that Jean Frierson's initial statement was exculpatory evidence that should have been produced for the defense under Brady v. Maryland. When Burge was tried a second time for Douglas Frierson's murder in 1992, he was acquitted of all charges.  (Burge v. STP 2003) (Burge v. STP 1999) (IPNO)  [7/10]

Kenneth Granger was convicted of murder for the shooting death of Edward Harris, a North Philadelphia taproom cook.  Three eyewitnesses, including an off-duty Philadelphia police officer, testified against Granger and he was sentenced in 1982 to life imprisonment.  In 2008, Granger's daughter persuaded a public defender, Karl Schwartz, to take his case.  As Schwartz reviewed the case documents, he was puzzled why another eyewitness, a barmaid, was never called to testify by the prosecution.  Schwartz asked Common Pleas Court Judge Earl W. Trent Jr., who was presiding over Granger's appeal, to grant him access to to the homicide detectives' case file. In an unusual move, the judge approved the request.

There, Schwartz found that the off-duty officer had failed to identify Granger in a photo spread – an important piece of information that could have been used to discredit the officer's critical testimony.  Prosecutors then turned over from their own file the photos showing that the barmaid had identified someone else in a photo array – more information that could have helped the defense.  In addition, the defense learned that the off-duty officer had problems of his own. He had been suspended for 30 days for an off-duty shooting at a liquor store and later became a suspect in another shooting.

With such information likely to come out in a new trial, the District Attorney's Office offered a deal to Granger – plead guilty to third-degree murder and be released with no parole.  But Granger refused to plead guilty. So, after more negotiation, prosecutors agreed that if he would plead nolo contendere or "no contest," meaning that he was not contesting the charges but not admitting guilt, he could get out of prison. Granger accepted the offer and was released in July 2010 after 28 years of imprisonment.  (Phila Inquirer) (Wash AA)  [07/10]

Johann Gawenda was convicted of the murder of his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Katharina Sroka, also known as Katie.  Katie's mother died in 1867, leaving her two-year-old daughter an estate consisting of three acres of fields and a cottage.  Katie's father, Ignatz Sroka, managed the estate following the death of his wife. He subsequently married Marie Gallus. This marriage did not last long, as Ignatz was convicted of murder and died in prison in 1875.  His widow Marie then married Johann Gawenda, who took over the administration of the estate for the still underage Katie and at the same time pledged to provide for her maintenance and upbringing. Gawenda neglected these obligations in a most unscrupulous manner, as he monopolized the land and treated its owner so badly that she had to work as a maid and also to depend on charity.

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Franz Bratuscha was convicted of the murder of his 12-year-old daughter, Johanna.  On April 16, 1900, she disappeared from her home in Majsperk, Slovenia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Bratuscha reported her disappearance to the police.  About 9 weeks later he read in a newspaper that the body of a dead girl was found in Spielfeld, Austria, a town 26 miles to the north.  Bratuscha went to Spielfeld and when police showed him the dead girl's clothes, he identified the clothes as belonging to his daughter.  He told police he had bought the fabric out of which the clothes were made and offered to bring the leftover portion of the fabric.  Without taking him up on his offer, police were satisfied that the dead girl was his daughter and they gave him the clothes.

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Zhao Zuohai was convicted of murdering his neighbor Zhao Zhenshang.  In June 1997, the two Zhou's, both about 45, had a hatchet fight in their hometown of Zhaolou village in Zhecheng County, Shangqiu City Prefecture, Henan Province, China.  Four months later Zhenshang's nephew reported to police that his uncle was missing.  In May 1999, after a headless body was found in a village well, Zuohai was arrested for the murder of Zhenshang and detained without trial for three years.

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Jamie and Gladys Scott, sisters, were convicted of participating with three teenage boys in the armed robbery of Johnny Ray Hayes and Mitchell Duckworth.  The convictions were based on the testimony of the victims and two of the male robbers even though both groups initially gave police statements that made no mention of the sisters' involvement.  The sisters were sentenced to life imprisonment.

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Barry Gibbs was convicted of murdering Virginia Robertson, a prostitute whose strangled body was found dumped on the Belt Parkway near Mill Basin Bridge.  A witness, Peter Mitchell happened to be jogging on the bike path of the Parkway and said he saw the man who dumped the body.

Ten days later Gibbs was working as a counterman at a deli at the junction of Flatbush and Nostrand Aves.  Police detective Louis Eppolito came in and took a can of soda out of the fridge.  Gibbs told him, "That will be 75 cents."  According to Gibbs, Eppolito got so PO'd that he had asked for money that he took him down to the precinct station and tried to beat him into confessing to Robertson's murder, a murder he had no idea about.  The witness, Mitchell, then identified Gibbs from a lineup as the man who dumped the body.  Mitchell had initially described the dumper as 5-foot, 6-inches tall with a moustache.  Gibbs was was 5-foot, 11-inches tall and had no facial hair.

In 1999, noted attorney Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project took up Gibbs case, but the case evidence file had mysteriously disappeared.  In 2005, agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Eppolito in Las Vegas and charged him with being a hit man for the Lucchese crime family.  In his home the Feds found Gibb's case file and when they contacted Mitchell, he told them Eppolito had coerced him into identifying Gibbs and that he ''believed, and continues to believe, that Barry Gibbs is not the person he saw disposing of the victim's body.''  Gibbs was subsequently exonerated and released after more than 18 years in prison.  Eppolito was convicted of numerous charges including eight counts of murder.  (NY Daily News) (Fox News)  [4/10]

Jonathan Wheeler-Whichard was convicted of the murder of Joseph Foster.  Foster was shot in the lobby of a crime-ridden building at 153 Marcus Garvey Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.  He had attacked Wheeler-Whichard earlier, and a witness said Wheeler-Whichard confessed to shooting Foster for revenge.  Another testified that she heard the two fighting.

Wheeler-Whichard was granted a judicial hearing in 2009 after one witness, now serving life on an unrelated murder, recanted.  The other was proven a liar when the real 911 caller was found.  The hearing judge, Justice Joseph K. McKay, reviewed this evidence and also heard from alibi witnesses not called at trial, including a correction officer.  McKay said there are several suspects in Foster's murder, including a brother of one of the witnesses who implicated Wheeler-Whichard.  He vacated Wheeler-Whichard's conviction on grounds of "actual innocence," a ruling that appeared to be a first in the State of New York.  A Manhattan convict, Fernando Bermudez, also had his conviction overturned on the same grounds later the same year.  The rulings prevent the state from retrying Wheeler-Whichard or Bermudez.  (NY Daily News)  [4/10]

Morgan A. "Tony" Miller was convicted of armed robbery and assault following the robbery of an Arby's restaurant at 1455 Secor Road in Toledo, during which an off-duty police officer named James Snead was shot.  Miller had been in the restaurant minutes before the robbery with two friends and even spoke to an employee who knew him and was leaving work.  Although the robber wore a stocking mask, Miller was charged with the crime after three witnesses identified him as the robber.  One of the witnesses said he got a look at the robber before he put on his mask.  Another claimed that she saw the robber's face when he briefly lifted up his mask.

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Fernando Bermudez was convicted in 1992 of the murder of 16-year-old Raymond Blount.  Prior to the murder Blount had punched another teen named Efrain Lopez, allegedly after Lopez looked at him the wrong way.  This incident occurred in the Marc Ballroom, a Greenwich Village nightclub on Union Square West.  Lopez then approached an acquaintance in the club and told him what had happened.  Later, at 3 a.m., outside the club, Lopez and his friends encountered Blount and his friends.  As the two groups were getting ready to fight, Lopez's acquaintance asked him point out the puncher.  After Lopez pointed to Blount, the acquaintance ran up and fired a bullet into him, severing an artery.  Blount died in a hospital later that morning.

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Dewey Bozella was convicted in 1983 and again in 1990 of the murder of 92-year-old Emma Crapser.  The victim interrupted a burglary after returning to her 15 N. Hamilton Street apartment in Poughkeepsie.  She was beaten, bound with an electrical cord, and suffocated.  At Bozella's trials, the prosecution relied almost entirely on the testimony of two career criminals, Wayne Moseley and Lamar Smith, both of whom repeatedly changed their stories and both of whom got favorable treatment in their own cases in exchange for their testimony.

According to the witnesses' testimony, the two left a park with Bozella about 8 p.m. and arrived outside Crapser's apartment when it was dark.  Then according to Smith, both Mosley and Bozella were on the victim's front porch for five to ten minutes before they went inside.  Not more than five minutes later, a car pulled up and the victim got out. Such testimony placed Crapser's arrival and death around 9 p.m.  However, other evidence indicated with relative certainty that Crapser was dropped off and killed very close to 11 p.m.

There was no physical evidence linking Bozella to the crime.  In 1983 the FBI found that a fingerprint lifted from the inside of Crapser's bathroom window matched a man named Donald Wise.  Wise was convicted of murdering another elderly woman in the same neighborhood as Crapser.  This murder occurred just months after that of Crapser and the victim's sister who was present at the crime said the assailant tried to stuff something down her throat.  Crapser was suffocated with several pieces of cloth stuffed down her throat.

In 2007, the law firm of WilmerHale agreed to handle Bozella's case on a pro bono basis.  Among the people the lawyers interviewed was Arthur Regula, a retired Poughkeepsie police lieutenant, who surprised them by pulling out Bozella's case file.  Regula said it was the only case file he kept after retirement, figuring that the conviction was so problematic lawyers might want it someday.  The file contained statements from Crapser's neighbors that contradicted the two key witnesses against Bozella.  Using Freedom of Information Act filings, the lawyers obtained a tape recording of someone who implicated Wise in the murder. None of this evidence had been turned over to Bozella's trial attorneys.  In 2009, a judge overturned Bozella's conviction, the prosecution dropped charges, and Bozella was released after 26 years of imprisonment.  (NY Daily News) (NY Times) (People v. Bozella)  [4/10]

Dan Lackey was convicted of raping Amber Mundy.  Mundy said she was assaulted near some railroad tracks in Oneida.  At this site Mundy's footprints were visible in the snow, but those of her assailant's were not.  It was alleged that passing trains blew snow into the assailant's footprints, but not into those of his victim.  Mundy said she was assaulted with a stick, and according to her testimony, there should have been much blood on the stick, but there was only a tiny amount of blood on it.  She also said her assailant bit her, but when a DNA test was performed on the bite mark, the results were deemed inconclusive because they failed to show the presence of any male DNA.

Although Mundy was not able to positively identify Lackey as her assailant, police alleged that Lackey gave an unrecorded confession to the crime.  Three months after Lackey's conviction, Mundy reported a similar rape in Oswego County.  For this action she was convicted of making a false report and spent 8 months in jail.  A state police investigator had informed the Oneida Police of the case just three months after Lackey's sentencing.  Lackey first learned of Mundy's false report two years later when a defense investigator interviewed Mundy's boyfriend.

In response to this evidence, a judge overturned Lackey's conviction in July 2007.  The judge said he was not convinced that the alleged confession obtained from Lackey was admissible, because with a 73 IQ, Lackey may not have had the mental capacity to waive his Miranda rights.  Lackey was released without bail.  The D.A., however, appealed the decision to overturn Lackey's conviction, but his appeal was unsuccessful.  (Oneida Dispatch) (Video)  [4/10]

Roy Brown was convicted of murdering 49-year-old social worker Sabina Kulakowski.  Following a fire at her house, firefighters entered the it to see if anyone was inside.  While firefighters were inside, another firefighter, Barry Bench, who happened to be Kulakowski's ex-brother-in-law, found her nude body on a dirt road outside the house.  She had been stabbed and strangled to death.

Brown had been angry at Kulakowski because she had removed his 17-year-old daughter from his home.  After making harassing phone calls and mailing several angry letters about the decision, Brown was arrested.  He served 8 months in jail for his actions and was released less than a week before Kulakowski's murder.

In 2002, after Brown's court documents were destroyed in a fire at his stepfather's house, he learned that under the Freedom of Information Act he could request not only his trial transcripts but also all the information the District Attorney had compiled on his case.  From the documents Brown requested and received, he learned that police had initially suspected Bench of the murder.  The more Brown learned about Bench, the more he wondered why police had not arrested him for the murder.  Brown filed a motion to overturn his conviction based on the new evidence, but it was denied.

Brown then wrote a letter to Bench, accusing him of the murder.  He wrote that with advances in DNA technology, there was no place for Bench to hide anymore.  At the time Brown was not 100% sure that Bench was the killer, but he waited for a response to his letter.  Five days later, Brown learned from the evening news that Bench killed himself by lying in front of an oncoming train.

DNA tests were subsequently performed that showed DNA supplied by Bench's daughter had a 50% match to DNA from a T-shirt found near Kulakowski's body.  After Bench's body was exhumed, DNA was taken from it and tests showed it matched the DNA found on the T-shirt.  In 2007, Brown's conviction was vacated and he was released from prison.  (Crime Library) (Post-Tribune)  [4/10]

Margaret Kelly Michaels was convicted in 1988 of 115 counts of sexual abuse against 20 children and sentenced to 47 years in prison.  After working seven months as a teacher at a Wee Care Day Nursery, her troubles began on April 30, 1985 when when a four-year-old boy who was a student of hers said, when a nurse put a thermometer in his rectum, "That's what my teacher does to me at nap time at school." When asked what he meant, the boy replied, "Her takes my temperature."  That one comment led to a criminal investigation and Michaels being charged with 131 counts of sexual abuse against 20 children.

During Michaels' trial, the judge questioned the children in his chambers while the jury watched on closed circuit TV.  He played ball with them and held them on his lap; sometimes he whispered in their ears and asked them to whisper answers back to him.  The children alleged Michaels raped and assaulted them with knives, spoons, and Lego blocks.  They also contended she licked peanut butter off of the their genitals, played a piano in the nude, and made them drink her urine. All of this abuse allegedly occurred over the many months Michaels worked at Wee Care and went unnoticed by other teachers, parents, or administrators.

Michaels' conviction was overturned on appeal in 1993.  The appeal judges singled out one witness's testimony as being inappropriate, because she was used to tell the jury to believe the children, when it was the jury's job to decide which witnesses to believe.  The judges were also critical about the initial interviews of the children, describing them as coercive, highly suggestive, and inept.  Michaels was subsequently freed on bail, and after a year and a half prosecutors dropped charges against her.  (Famous Trials) (CrimeMagazine) (State v. Michaels)  [4/10]

Robert Lee Stinson was convicted of the murder of a neighbor, 62-year-old Ione Cychosz.  The victim was found beaten and stabbed with eight bite marks on her.  A forensic odontologist, Dr. L. Thomas Johnson, determined that the perpetrator likely had a missing upper front tooth.  Police visited Stinson as part of a neighborhood canvass and he lived in a home adjacent to the yard where Cychosz's body was found.  A detective on the case, James Gauger, recalled, "My partner told him a couple of jokes, and Stinson laughed."  When they saw a missing tooth, "we knew we had our man."

At trial, Johnson and another forensic odontologist, Dr. Raymond Rawson, testified that Stinson's teeth matched bite marks found on the victim's body even though Stinson was missing a tooth in a place where the bite marks indicated a tooth.  Johnson testified that the bite marks "had to have been made by teeth identical" to Stinson's and that there was "no margin for error in this."  Rawson called the bite mark evidence "overwhelming" and said "there was no question there was a match."  Rawson would later give provably erroneous bite mark testimony against an Arizona murder defendant named Ray Krone.

On appeal in 1986, Stinson argued he was convicted solely on inadmissible bite mark evidence, but the appeals court upheld bite mark evidence in their legal decision, Wisconsin v. Stinson.  According to one expert, the decision was the “crown jewel” of legal opinions that forensic odontologists pointed to as validation of bite mark evidence as an approved science.

In 2005, the Wisconsin Innocence Project accepted Stinson's case and developed two kinds of new evidence.  First, DNA testing of saliva found on the victim's sweater revealed a male profile that excluded Stinson.  Second, the WIP arranged for the bite marks to be re-examined by a panel of four nationally-recognized experts, Dr. Gregory Golden, Dr. David Senn, Dr. Norman Sperber, and Dr. Denise Murmann. Using modern methods, the panel unanimously concluded that Stinson's teeth could not have inflicted the bites.  Due to the new evidence, Stinson's conviction was overturned in 2009 and charges against him were dropped.  Stinson was released after serving more than 23 years in prison.  (Chicago Tribune) (Law Review) (AP News)  [3/10]

Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of murdering his three daughters by setting his house on fire.  Under police interrogation, Willingham said that his wife, Stacy, had left the house around 9 a.m.  After she got out of the driveway, he heard his one-year-old twin daughters cry, so he got up and gave them a bottle.  The children’s room had a safety gate across the doorway which his two-year-old daughter, Amber, could climb over but not the twins.  He and Stacy often let the twins nap on the floor after they drank their bottles.  Since Amber was still in bed, he went back into his room to sleep.  Willingham's house was warmed by three space heaters, one of which was in the children's bedroom.  This heater had an internal flame.  Amber had been taught not to play with the heater though she reportedly got "whuppings every once in a while for messing with it."

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Bobby Ray Hopkins was convicted of the murders of Jennifer Weston, 19, and Sandy Marbut, 18.  He was sentenced to death.  The murders occurred at the victims' apartment at 601-B South First St. in Grandview, TX.  On the night of the murders the victims threw a party at which 30 to 35 people attended.

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Ralph Rodney Earnest was convicted of murdering 31-year-old David Eastman, an oil field worker who was killed near Carlsbad, NM.  Eastman's body was found on Feb. 12, 1982 in a ditch beside N.M. 31.  At Earnest's trial, his two co-defendants, Perry Conner and Phillip Boeglin, were called to testify.  Conner testified that while he and Boeglin committed the crime, Earnest was not involved.  Boeglin refused to testify, even though he was given immunity from the use of his testimony and was held in contempt of court for his refusal to testify.  The prosecution then introduced into evidence a taped recoding and a transcript of a unsworn statement made by Boeglin to police on the day of his arrest.  In the statement Boeglin admitted that he attempted to cut Eastman's throat, but he implicated both Conner and Earnest, stating Earnest shot Eastman in the head.

In 2007, the New Mexico Supreme Court overturned Earnest's conviction because he was denied the opportunity to cross-examine Boeglin regarding the taped statement and was thereby deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to confront an accuser.  The prosecution had to drop charges against Eastman because Boeglin again refused to testify.  (Albuquerque Journal) (AJ2) (Earnest v. Dorsey)  [2/10]

Henry Vincent Keogh was convicted of the murder of his 29-year-old fiancée, Anna-Jane Cheney.  Cheney was found dead in the bathtub of the home that the two shared on Homes Ave. in Magill, an Adelaide suburb.  On the day of her death, Cheney finished work and met Keogh in a local hotel where the two had wine and potato wedges. Both of them went home to Anna's house, but drove there in separate cars.  Cheney then took her dog to her sister-in-law's house and the two women walked their dogs in a local park.  After Cheney returned home, Keogh went to visit his mother.  Keogh returned home around 9:30 p.m. and found Cheney slumped in her bathtub with her face underwater.  He claimed he tried to resuscitate her, but neither he nor paramedics were successful.  Cheney's blood alcohol level was later determined to be .08%, a moderate level of intoxication.

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Samuel L. Burton and Sylvanus Conquest were twice convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of John Topping.  Prior to the crime a man named John M. Fosque secured a financial judgment against Conquest, which was levied against Conquest's horse, then in the possession of Burton.  There reportedly was offensive behavior on the part of Burton and Conquest towards a constable who was sent to collect the debt.  Burton subsequently paid the debt and Conquest was fined $50 for resisting the constable.  This evidence was used to assert that Burton and Conquest had a grievance against Fosque.

On the night of Aug. 10, 1907, a horse drawn carriage owned by Fosque was carrying passengers from an Onancock hotel to the train station.  About 30 feet after it passed a store owned by Burton, a man on the street reportedly stood up from a crouched position and yelled "blaze away," after which 20 to 25 bullets were fired at the carriage.  No one in the carriage was killed, but an outsider, John Topping received a gunshot wound in the shoulder from which he died 12 days later.

Although Fosque, a white man, sometimes drove the carriage, on the night in question it was driven by a colored man, who was unlikely to be mistaken for Fosque.  At trial the prosecution alleged that Burton and Conquest, along with confederates, lied in wait for Fosque and opened fire on the carriage because of the grievance they had against him.  It was alleged that Topping was the lookout man for the shooters, the man who yelled "blaze away."

Two trial juries acquitted Burton and Conquest of murder, but convicted them of manslaughter on the grounds that they encouraged or aided the shooting.  The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals later vacated the convictions after finding that there was insufficient evidence that to two engaged in the shooting.  The Court also noted that apart from committing the shooting themselves, there was not a scintilla of evidence presented that Burton or Conquest encouraged or aided the shooting.  (ISI) (B & C v. Commonwealth)  [2/10]

Note:  Accomac County was renamed Accomack County in 1940.

Kevin Cooper was sentenced to death for the murders of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their daughter, Jessica, 10, and a houseguest Christopher Hughes, 11.  Another child, Joshua Ryen, 8, suffered a slashed throat and a skull fracture, but survived.  Two days before the murders Cooper, then 25, had escaped from a minimum security prison in Chino where he had been sent a month earlier on a burglary conviction.

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On Sept. 30, 1919, black sharecroppers held a meeting at a church in Hoop Spur, outside Elaine, Arkansas.  The purpose was to obtain better payments for cotton crops in the face of patently unfair practices of white landowners.  After two deputized white men and a black trustee arrived, shots rang out.  One of the white men was killed and the other was wounded.  Who fired first is not clear.  In any event, a posse of hundreds of white men was dispatched to put down an alleged black rebellion.  Five whites and between 100 and 200 blacks were killed in the days that followed.

Following the "rebellion," 12 blacks were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.  Ten were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 21 years of imprisonment.  Another 29 were convicted of second-degree-murder and sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment.  None of the defendants were executed and in 1925 the state governor granted indefinite furloughs to those that remained imprisoned.  (PCR) (EA) (Moore v. Dempsey) (Blood in their Eyes) (On the Laps of Gods)  [1/10]

Richard Phillips, a negro prizefighter, was indicted along Grant Watts, another negro, for the shooting murder of Joseph New, a white artilleryman.  Both Phillips and Watts contended the other had fired the fatal shot.  Phillips was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death.  Watts was subsequently acquitted of the murder.  In 1901 a special jury found that Phillips was insane, consequently he was transferred to a mental asylum and his execution was postponed pending his recovery.  Following Phillips' transfer, his attorney learned that the fatal shot could not have been fired from Phillips' weapon and that Watts was indeed the murderer.  However, the attorney believed that Phillips was hopelessly insane and made no effort to correct the record.  In 1930, the attorney, then a state attorney, was contacted by Phillips' sister.  The attorney then informed the state governor of the case facts.  A month later the governor released Phillips from his asylum after an examination found he had no traces of insanity.  (Afro American) (Daily Star) (MOJIPCC)  [1/10]

*Elizabeth City County and the town of Phoebus merged with the City of Hampton in 1952.

Henry J. Lambert, a French Canadian, was indicted for the murders of J. Wesley Allen, his wife, Mary, and his 15-year-old daughter, Carrie Louise.  Allen's farmhouse and barn were burned to the ground and all that remained of the family were charred bones.  Authorities did not believe the fire was an accident because it appeared unlikely that the fire could have spread between the house and the barn.  Also witnesses reportedly had seen the fire from a distance prior to 10 p.m., before the family was likely to be sleeping.  However, no one visited the scene until the next day.  Allen's remains were allegedly found in the barn, although it was never completely clear that these remains were human.

Lambert was tried for the murder of Allen only, presumably to allow the prosecution a chance to convict him of the other alleged murders should he be acquitted of Allen's murder.  The prosecution alleged as motive for the crime that Lambert was in love with Allen's daughter who it asserted was raped.  Lambert had cut a square piece of cloth from an area of one of his shirts that was normally tucked in his trousers.  He said he used the cloth to bandage his foot.  The prosecution alleged a charred piece of cloth found at the murder scene came from this cut in Lambert's shirt.  It is not clear how good the match was or why such a piece of cloth would be used or left behind at a murder scene.  All other presented evidence against Lambert consisted of attempts to cast suspicion on him, but these attempts were largely refuted.  Nevertheless, Lambert was convicted of Allen's murder.

In 1923, after serving more than 20 years in prison, Lambert was granted a pardon based on innocence.  It was felt that Lambert was convicted on insufficient evidence and that other evidence showed Allen had had a dispute with a tramp who may have committed the alleged murders.  (News Articles 1900s)  (News Articles 1920s) (MOJIPCC)  [1/10]