Charlie's Peers

As long as anyone could remember, Georgia's Schley County had always dispensed justice Southern style. Its Negroes, who constitute half the population of 3,300, sat in court as prisoners or witnesses but not as jurors. Last month, however, a new jury commission revised the venire and added 100 Negroes to the petit jury list. As a result, a Negro teen-ager charged with killing a white policeman last week faced a 'jury of eleven Negroes and one white man.

The Negro defense attorney, C. B. King, engineered the jury's composition by using 19 of his 20 challenges to eliminate white candidates. He contended that Defendant Charlie Hunter, 15, had committed justifiable homicide last November when he shot John Harden, an Ellaville cop who had arrested Charlie and his brother Willie, 19, for speeding. Charlie testified that Harden had been beating his brother with a club and was about to shoot Willie.

The verdict: guilty of voluntary manslaughter. The judge went along with the jury's recommendation for a six-year sentence. Next day Willie, whose only apparent crime was getting in the way of Harden's club, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received a six-year sentence also.

Said Prosecutor J. Frank Myers, who had sought a murder conviction: "It was a happy ending. The family, the community and court were satisfied."

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