Decision Reversed

The courtroom was hushed. The crowd of Texans watched the prisoner in grim silence. He was a Negro, named Bob White. The charge: raping a white woman. It was the third time he had been on trial.

Three years ago White had been sentenced. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction. He was tried again, convicted again. His case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the verdict was reversed. Texas officials applied for a rehearing but the court turned them down. Onetime Ku Kluxer Justice Hugo Black* angrily rehashed White's story of beatings and violence used to force a confession out of him, declared: "Due process of law, preserved for all by our Constitution, commands that no such practice as that . . . shall send any accused to his death."

Last week a third trial was just getting under way; the jury was still being picked. Into Conroe courthouse, into the courtroom strode W. S. Cochran, landowner, husband of the woman White was accused of raping. Up to the prisoner's dock marched Rancher Cochran. He aimed a pistol at White's head, fired. The Negro dropped dead.

Calmly Cochran handed his gun to the special prosecutor, calmly surrendered to a deputy sheriff. He was formally charged with murder, formally released on $500 bail. Then Rancher Cochran drove home with his wife.

This week, after a two-and-a-half-hour trial, a jury acquitted Cochran in ten minutes. He was still pretty calm for a man who had reversed a decision of the Supreme Court.

* Who last week had to make a trip to the Alexandria, Va. police station; like many a Southerner before him pay a fine ($10) for his Negro servant (Chauffeur Spencer Campbell; speeding).

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