The Martinsville Seven: Race, Rape and Capital Punishment (Constitutionalism and Democracy) - Softcover

Rise, Eric W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813918308 ISBN 13: 9780813918303

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 1998

Synopsis

This text examines the Martinsville case, in 1949, in which a white woman in Martinsville accused seven young black men of raping her. They were found guilty and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out, amid a storm of protest from civil-rights advocates and death-penalty opponents.

About this title

Review:

The story of the Martinsville Seven is a fascinating and important one, and Rise tells it well.... He has written a book that historians as well as lawyers can comprehend and that both ought to read.

--Journal of American History

Rise has produced a model study which reminds us that formalism can serve to defend unfairness. His study also underscores the relationship between law and society.

--American Journal of Legal History

From the Back Cover:

In January 1949 a thirty-two-year-old white woman in Martinsville, Virginia, accused seven young black men of raping her. Within two days state and local police had rounded up all the suspects and extracted confessions from them. In a series of trials that lasted eleven days, all were found guilty and sentenced to death - a sentence that was carried out, amid a storm of protest from civil-rights advocates and death-penalty opponents, in February 1951. Here is the first comprehensive treatment of the Martinsville case. Covering every aspect of the proceedings, from the commission of the crime through two sets of appeals, Eric Rise reexamines common assumptions about the administration of justice in the South. Although racial prejudice undeniably contributed to the outcome of the case, so did concerns for due process, crime control, community stability, judicial restraint, and domestic security. The success of the due process campaign by groups such as the NAACP helped curb the most egregious abuses of authority, but it did little to help defendants who conceded their guilt but protested unusually severe sentences. The author focuses on the efforts of the attorneys for the Martinsville Seven, who, rather than citing procedural errors, directly attacked the discriminatory application of the death penalty. It was the first case in which statistical evidence was used to substantiate systematic discrimination against blacks in capital cases.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0813918308
• ISBN 13: 9780813918303
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232