Are Courts More Severe With Black Defendants?

A common complaint among many Negroes--and more than a few whites --is that U.S. justice is all too often far from colorblind. Three recent criminal cases, all involving youthful Negro defendants and all leading to harsh sentences, have prompted black and white citizens alike to protest the severity of the courts.

> In Harrisburg, Pa., three Negro teenagers pleaded guilty to the charge of shooting a 64-year-old man to death during a bank robbery last December. Despite the guilty

plea, which normally enables the accused to avoid the death penalty, Samuel Barlow, 18, Foster Tarver, 17, and Sharon Wiggins, 17, were sentenced to die in the electric chair for first-degree murder. To be sure, the three had not shown any mercy to George Morelock, a bank customer who was shot six times when he advanced toward Sharon after being ordered to stand against a wall. "This was a murder in cold blood," said one of the three judges who handed down the death sentence.

A committee that has been formed to aid the convicted teenagers argues that execution is unjustified in view of the offenders' youth and the fact that they had thrown themselves on the mercy of the court. The Rev. Frank Horton, a Negro minister who heads the committee, asks: "Would three white youths have received the same punishment?"

> On the day Martin Luther King Jr. was buried in April 1968, five young Negroes in Benson, N.C., set fire to a rundown service station that was known as a Ku Klux Klan hangout. Damages came to less than $100, but last October the five youths were sentenced to twelve years apiece in prison. A month ago, Judge William Bickett frankly confessed that he might have been guilty of "bad judgment" in the cases of Percy Valle Barfield, 17, Frederick Lockamy, 18, Leo Stewart Jr., 19, Dubois Scotty Gather, 20, and Jesse Jones, 21. Bickett noted that a race riot had broken out in the Benson area before the time of the trial and admitted that he intended the severe sentences as a "deterrent."

Probably hoping that Bickett himself will recommend a reduction in the sentences, Governor Robert Scott has yet to act on a plea for executive clemency. A biracial group called the "Committee for Equal Justice" is circulating petitions on behalf of the imprisoned youths.

> In a Connecticut court, four Negro boys were convicted by an all-white jury in October of raping a 14-year-old white girl named Donna Papineau. One of them, 16-year-old Gary Palmer, was sent to the state reformatory at Cheshire. His two brothers, 17 and 19, along with a 19-year-old cousin named Arturo Palmer, a college-scholarship winner, were given prison terms ranging from nine to 16 years. The only eyewitness was Donna, who testified that the boys forced her into a car in Stamford and took her to an apartment where all four beat and raped her. Gary did not take the stand, but the other three defendants testified that they had not had intercourse with Donna. One of the brothers said that they had picked Donna up at her request--after she said that she had quarreled with her mother for "fooling around" with Gary. The defense also introduced a letter from Donna inviting Gary to her home and promising that "nobody will be there."

In a petition for a new trial, the Palmers accuse their first lawyer of "inexperience, incompetency and/or neglect" in defending them. Among other points, they charge that the attorney did not file essential pre-trial motions, took no exception to "prejudicial evidence" and failed to contest the composition of the jury. Backing the family in the legal battle is a Connecticut committee formed to "Remember the Palmers."

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