Scottsboro Inch

In the famed case of the Scottsboro Boys, the original charge was rape in a freight gondola, the ultimate issue was Alabama justice. Of the nine Negroes accused, four were acquitted, four sentenced to long jail terms, one sentenced to death (TIME, April 20, 1931, et seq.). Last week Alabama justice yielded another inch. Governor Bibb Graves commuted the death sentence of Clarence Norris, now 25, to life imprisonment. In Manhattan, the International Labor Defense, which in 1933 brought in Lawyer Samuel Leibowitz to defend the Boys,* declared: "The boy is innocent. This doesn't close the case. We will go ahead until he and the four remaining boys are free."

*The sparing of Negro Norris last week kept intact the boast of Lawyer Leibowitz that no client of his had ever been executed. Two days later in Manhattan, one Salvatore Gati, 28, was sentenced to die the week of August 15 for murdering a policeman. His lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, was en route to Europe.

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