Transcript of Proceedings
Public Court Documents
November 30, 1983

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Case Files, Bozeman & Wilder Working Files. Transcript of Proceedings, 1983. e1ee6353-ed92-ee11-be37-6045bdeb8873. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/137e054f-ad72-488b-89ee-e2f0945c6cc2/transcript-of-proceedings. Accessed May 13, 2025.
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--'.'-- a od EI II'I THE UTIITED STPJ'XS, DISTRTCT COURTI' FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRTCT OF AT.ABAI'TJ\ NORTHERN DIVISION ilrJ! 30 cLER{ ,,nH;srj'8Etf-?UTJ na..'t I I I I I I crvrl AcTroN NO. CV-83-H-579-N MAGGIE BOZE}'AN, Plaintiff, v. LATTBERT, De fendant. D WHEREUPON, the following excerpts were taken down by Elise smith, Registered professional Reporter and Notary Public, state at Larqe, before the Ilonorable clatus Junkin at the Pickens county courthouse, carrolrton, Alabama '1t o e-)(^) .,,: a'raL^) 3(=: *: I (:' 1. od i{R. RUSSELL: I\tay it please the Court, }adies and gentlemen of the jury, in a very few minutes, this case will go to.you. for the ultirnate decisionl And before r discuss it, r would,rike to make a few brief remarks. Then, the defense lawyers wi1l make some remarks to you, and then IvIr- Johnston wilr tark to you one more time. r want to thank you for your patience and attention .throughout the course of this tria1. some of the witnesses that were presented vrere old. They did not speak up. AI1 of you listened and tried to understand, and I think heard their testimony and got the substance of their testimony. rt is an interesting thing to me that durinq the cime that one man, one vote, has become so inportant, that this case would come up in thls county. what rve have got is a case.before us of one man, maybe, but not getting their vote. r mentioned to you in my opening statement that this \"/as a case of stolen votes, and r think there is evidence to that fact. There is -- we presented the state presented ni_ne witnesses who testified to varying degrees that either they never applied for absentee ballots, but yet one was voted in their name. If they applied, some of thern never got the bal-Iotr let it was voted in their name. some of them even voted'at their regular polling place during this election, but an absentee ba]lot was voted in their name. liow, r expect the defense to argue to you, ladies and od gentlemen, that- there is no ties in thi's in this case ties Maggie Bozeman to any And I want to mention to you some things from that witness stand that definitely to these iIlegal voting activities. tt case. Nothing "illega1" voting. that I think came tie I'laggie Bozeman rirst, from Janice Tilrey, you heard her testify that during the week preceding this electi.on, Irr.rs. Bozeman came into her office, and she got a large number of applications for absentee ballots. we1I, that in itself, there is nothing wrong with that, and that is what the defendand -- there is nothing wrong with that. rt is unusual. Usuarry a person would come in and get an application for themserves and not a handful. ,r: that is in itself not il1egaI. But r submit to you that is one tie and that is the initiating tie. That is where this case begins. Now, what else does the evidence shorv r,Irs. Bozeman did? lJel1, after we questioned I,1r. Rolrins, and you heard his testimony. He finally remembers that telephone conversation that l"lrs. Bozernan made to him prior to the group going over on saturday, wherein she said, ',There are going to be barrots presented, and r want you to notari-ze them.', she knew those ballots were going to be present. She intended that they be presented to him. she vrent along with the group of radies- He testified to that, and it is not in dispute that she was there in the group. rt is also not'in dispute that most, if not all those ballots did not have the d oa signatures of the persons that were bottom. Somebody signed them, but people that they purported to be. purported to be on the it sure was not the ' There is ,also evidence that I'laggie Bozeman as a part of that group presented these barlots to Mr. Rorlirrs, represented to Mr. Rollins that those were the correct signatures, and that those were genuine ballots of the . persons whose n ames were signed thereon. she presented them to him. They were given to someone and they were voted. There is no question they were voted. you saw the box opened. you saw them taken out of the box. Those ballots were voted. And r submit to you, radies and gentlemen, that they \4,ere not the votes of the persons they purported to be or whose name appeared thereon. r think there is ample evidence of that. And if this is not their balIots, whose ballots are they? I submit to you that they are Ivlaggie Bozeman,s ballots, that she voted thirty-nine times in the september the 26th, .1978, erection. And she made a mockery of one man, one vote, and viorated that code section r liave read to you when we opened this case. And r trust that once you consider this evidence, and you wilr be given. alr of this evidence. This is physical- evidence. That is what we laywers calr it, And you have had a reason to see some of this as it came around. to you. ( .-: You could compare the applications where the person o{ signed. Then, compare the ballots are written. Compare those. Look physical evidence. Notice on each they are voted identically down to Every balIot is voted the same way. J/ in script. Their names at it. That is hard, of those ballots that the smallest office. Now, there was some testimony about assistance. I Iam sure they are going to argue to that, that this was assistance in helping to vote. Vote for the Democrats was mentioned. I{e want you to vote for the Democrats. r submit to your everybody in that race was a Democrat. That was a Democratic runoff. There was not any Fepublicans. Ladies and gentlqmen, I have confidence in you. you v/ere selected by the state and by the defense. And r know you have served and served weLr. And r trust that when you have the evidence before you in the jury room, ancl time to reflect, you will find the defendant guilty as charged. And r am not going into the law. The court will charge you on that. And r think the defense attorneys will address you now. MR. SEAY: Ivlay it please the Courtr ds it was at the beginning of this triaI, I am Solomon I represent llaggie Bozeman, together with t4r. It is customary where a jury has been as as this jury has apparently been, for counsel his appreciation for that as well as the indicated Seay, and Chestnut. attentive to express oa appreciation of, the defendant who does not have an opportunity to do it. And I do thank you because I just sort of got the gut feeling that you are interested in your.duties as jurors and that you are going to be persuaded only by lhe facts that were brought out in this case. r believe that. But, you know, when I came in here, first started this case, r looked around, and r thought about the facts. And my first question hras, "I{hat am I doing here? Why am I here?" WeIl, I am here to represent and defend Maggie Bozeman in a charge that the state has brought against her for voting fraud. But why is Maggie Bozeman here? And r have looked at that question in every right of which r am capable, and r cannot,come up withareasonabre, prausible, legarly acceptable reason why is Maggie Bozernan here. There was a concerted effort on the part of black people thr.oughout this state in september to erect to public office persons whom we thought wourd at least be sensitive to the peculiar needs of black folks The State says, "We11, we saw a 1ot of baltpts marked just a1ike. " They sure did, and except for the persons running f?r locar office, she could have gone in any box, anywhere in the state and puI1ed out the votes of black folks. And they wourd have seen a lot more tallots marked exactly alike. There hras a concerted effort to try to elect to public office persons whom we thought will be at least sensitive tothepeculiar needs of black folks. r would like ot to think that we had some success, and maybe we were just a litt1e bit too successful, and maybe that is why I am here. I am not here because the State has any evid"rr.",do support the specific ingredients of this indictment because they ainrt got none. It is just not there. I think it was Joe Louis who once said about an upcoming fight, that he had kiIled the head. Is that why f am here? Am f over here once againr w€ have 1et the race rear its ugly head in Pickens County, Is that why I am here? Is that why Maggie Bozeman is here? The State says that I',laggie did vote more than once. Have they produced any evidence of Maggie casting any vote at all? Have they procuded any evidence of this lady right here casting a single ballot in this erection? Not one. a Have they produced any evidence that Maggie Bozeman deposited a single ballot in any baIlot box at any time in this county during that particular election? Not one. Not one. or that she did vote illegalIy or frar.idurently. Have they produced any evidence that Maggie Bozeman voted at all? 'Not any. Not one. Why is Maggie Bozernan here? The State has gone to a Iot of trouble to kiII the head in the hopes that the body wj.II die. You know, ds I listen to L{r. Russell, I wonder realIy if we have been listening to the same evidence at the same trial. But fortunatefy, what t4r. Russell and what I"1r. Johnston says, and what I say is oa not evidence over which you can deliberate. r You can only go by the credible evidence,rnoa comes from that witness stand. And I do not recall a single witness saying that Maggie Bozeman stole their vote. Not one. Not one. The State went out and. seized up a bunch of limited resource, elderly black people, not a single.one of which has said l,laggie Bozeman did any of the specific acts charged in that indictment. And the state knew that long before we got here and we selected this jury to try this case They put this l'Irs. summerville oDr a 93-year-ord wornan, in an effort to shorv that before the primary, she had gone to Maggie. Bozemanrs house and ltaggie had filled out the applicaLion for her at her house. And the State was sitting on a deposition that they took from the old woman on october 18th. And in that conversation, she.tord the state that when r talked to her, r told thern that r wanted to vote for two black men, Mr. Louie, the sheriff, and two other white men whose names I can,t remember now. The state was sitting on that deposition whejn they put her on stand, and they knew it. And you know and r know that that was not a primary runoff election. ft was not. tl," Neither of the people that she was talking even in the pri-mary runoff electj-on. So they confuse d lady and wanted to extract something about was took this from her B. t oa characteristic of this entire trial. If it were not Maggie, would we be here? Age and experience tells me that I arn really headed, probably, in the wrong direction. I"ly experience tells me that I ought to be arguing to you what the evidence was not. Mr. Chestnut was eminently correct when he sai-d that, "Irm old, and Itm tired, and I have been at it a long time, and maybe I have been black a little too long.,, I just know in my heart that if lrtaggie was not b1ack, she would not be here. I know that. MR. CHESTNUT: May it please the Court, Iadies and gentlemen, I personally want to thank you for the attention that you have given t,his case. And r know that it has not been easy for you and which you would tave rather been other places. I have been trying to go back to Selma each d.y, and it has almost ki1led me. But we have some'things we have to do. This is a criminal proceeding, and your. Honor is going to tel1 you that in any criminal proceeding, the defendant is presurned to be j-nnocent, that that is a matter of raw. As a matter of fact, it is one of the cornerstones of our law. I talked about that before you r^rere impaneled as a jury, if you remernberr oD the first day. I asked whether or not either of you had any problem with the proposition that every defendant is presumed by law to be innocent unless and until the State, if it can, proves that oa defendant to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. And you indicated by your silence that you had no problern with that cornerstone of our law. As I said to you, His Honor, the Judge, is going to tell you that that is the law of Alabama and that you are to be governed by it. He is also going to tell you that the indictment is not evidence, that you are not to consider it as evj-dence, that it is merely a vehicle or method by which the case is brought here for your decision. So I'laggie Bozeman, ds any defendant in America, starts out ahead of the game. She starts out with the presumption that she is innocent. The prosecutj-on not only has to catch up with her, it has to pass her because it must.show by evidence, competent, lega1 evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that }taggie Bozeman is guilty. Now, Your Honor is going to charge you, I am sure, on a law which I cannot give you nearly as well as he can. AlI I can do is just try to touch on it in order to lay a basis for some remarks I want to rnake to you as to what that Iaw is, the specific of it. The Judge is going to teII you. He is an expert at it. But the law I am talking about generally is the law which talkes about that the iE f ffc-r:Tf,rl e t-soh:ti t*T' ot-h a ( if that person was in or about of thing. It is what you might call it. When ),ou are drafting involved in and that call a fishnet, some a complaint and you sort lawyers throw r0. oa o' in everything but the kitchen sink, yod cannot get up on these, this is sure to get, them some kind of way. But no law--and r want you to listen carefully as the Judge e>rprains that raw to you--no Iaw in America is so broad that it would entrap or wilr get innocent people or wilr remove the presumption of innocence. There is no way in America that one can accidentarly cornmit a crime. rntent is. a part of every crime, and we in Russia, you commit crimes and don,t know about it, a crime and they pass the law after the act donrt do that in A.nerica. or you commit ar.td try. They Every crime has to be delivered in the sense that the actor, the defendant, must set out to engage in that criminar activity. tio accidentar crimes. we arso don't make criminals of peopre because they happen'to be at a scene or because they happen to be with people who might have been involved in a crir,ie. The law requires somethlng more by the actor. i'ie are talking about Ainerican juris- prudence. we are tarking about the fairness of the Law of this 1and. Now, there is no conflict in this evidence see that Maggie Bozer:.an was nresent in paur Rorlins' of f ice along with four other, I think, females on the night or duy, whichever, that the thrrty-nine ballots were presented to. I"1r. Rollins for his signature. other than that, there r-s no connection on the evii.ence in this case between that 11. a lady and those barrots whatsoever. rs it against the law for Maggie Bozeman to have been present in Mr. Rolrins' office when the ballots were presented? obviously not. And they have not charged her with that, but that is what they have proved. rs there any evidence before you that t{aggie Bozeman brought the ballots to Mr. Rorrins? There is no evidence before you to that effect. The evidence is th.at Maggie Bozeman was one of four other people. you would have to Presume, because there is no evidence, you would have to presume that lady into the pen. rf you are to find her guilty, you are going to have to presume that l,Iaggie Bozeman brought those ,ballots because },laggie Bozeman was there. But the state the .1aw says that the state has the burden of proving, and the only presumption here that you are to engage in is the presumption of her innocence, unless and until they prove. what they want you to presume is a vital fact in this simply no evidence. we do not even knorv who three of those people were because it has not been proved. we know that Julia lalilder was one, and we know that Maggie Bozeman was one. r don't know, and r do not think you do because it has no.t come who the other three people were. For al1 we know, one of those courd have brought it. you will have to presume alr of that. And the law says you are not to od presume. They are to prove because we 'don't put people in the pen in America on the basis of presumptions. we just do not do that. we put them in the pen on the basis of proof There is no evidence that Maggie Bozeman carlecr l,Ir. Rollins about these particular votes. As r reca11 Mr. Rollinsr testimony at first, he was not even sure that Maggie Bozeman caIled hirn. rn fact, r think he emphatically stated that he did not know who it was, that two ladies called him on separate occasions. And then r recarl that the DA refreshed his recolLection with some statement that he had rnade earlier, and r think.he then agreed that t'laggie Bozeman did call him. But it was never estabrished what she ca1led him for. Again, if you are going to put her are going to have to presume that that in the p€D, you call was to arrange presume that, because it sirnply it has not been proved. There is no evidence on it at all. Now, there is no evidence before you that l"laggie Bozeman voted ei-ther of these thirty-nine barlots. Now., my good friend, Ir1r. Russell, says, and quite correctly he says, there is no guestion but they vrere voted. They were in the box. That is right- But that is arl the state proved. The state has to prove that I i ii 4 Maggie Bozeman voted thern. That j-s what the state charged. oa we do not even run into the name hardly of Irraggie Bozeman. And it is not incidental that Juria wilder was in Ro11ins, office, I suggest to you, with those absentee ballots. further suggest to you that it was Julia Wi1der who arranged i-t, that it is consistent vrith the testimony in this case. r wourd suggest to you that it was Julia wilder who called Mr. Rollins. r would suggest to you it was Juria wilder who brought those ballots back and deposited them in the County Clerkrs office. Did you hear Mrs. Janice Tilley's testimony? I said, "lrIrs. Tilley, did I4aggie Bozeman did lrlaggie Bozeman bring any ballots and deposit theri in your office?" And a The state has not charged in this indictment that somebody voted the thirty-nine ballots. The State charges that Ivlaggie Bozeman voted the thirty-nine ballots. They have not proved. They want you to presume it. If you put her in the penr you will have to presume her that. They have failed miserably to prove it to you. Of aI1 the witnesses, all that I can recall who testified in this matter, they all talked abput Julia wilder. And r think r can suggest to you on the evidence that Juria wilder was very, very active in this election. r think r can suggest to you on the evidence that she was particularly active in regards to the absentee baIlots. She was the one who talked to each, I think, just about, if not everyone, almost every one of them; Julia Wi1der. o5 the act of another. The mere fact that John is there when Jim does an ilregar ac! does not mean that John and Jim are equally quilty in and of itself. rt takes more, and the Judge is going to charge you to that. And you do not have more. in this case. A11 you have got is that lady in that man Ro1lins, office Now, radies and gentlemen, r am going to sit down, but r do want to say this. rn these kinds of cases, and r have been at it a long time, been at it longer than I1r. seay, r sometimes get apprehensive about race and about racism because it always lurks just beneath the surface. But r have a good feering about you. r mean, r do. r am going to say this to you. rf youwere to convict I"laggie Bozeman, r would not feel good about it, and r would not understand how you did it. .But r do not think r v,rould att.g,ibute it to the young lady said, "r don't remember.i' Mr. se.ay pushed her on that because that was critical. He said, ,,Are you saying that she did not, or are you saying that you simply do not remember?" And she was honest. she said she simply doesn't remember. You will have to presume she.did. The crosest the state came to it was the testimony of }trs. Tilrey. r don,t remember. can we "r dontt remember', this lady into the pen? Have we come to that? Do we still deal in proof or can we just put them avlay, even though the evidence is not that? oa a that alone and make your decision. And I think when you come to the inevitabre concrusion that the state has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and to a rnoral certainty, that you are going to say that with a not guilty verdict. And the fact that Maggie Bozernan is black and I arn black and the DA is not will not have one thing to do t,'ith the whore matter. r have enjoyed trying this case before you, and f thank you once again for the attention t3a-; you have given this case and Maggie, too. I\,IR. JOHNSTON: I,lay it please the Court, ladies and gentlemenr ds you probably know, I am the last lawyer that is going to talk to you today except for the Judge, s charge. And I am sure you are thankful for that, and the fact that you will be headed for home for the weekend. And, of course, .the State does appreciate the F_ttention you have given. Some of.you rnay have heard me say this beio=e, and on the chance that you have not, I want to explair a few things to you about the way a case, and particularly --iits case, race. I don't know. It is something about you and everybody in courtrooms a long time. I think I could just. about feel, racism. f have not felt it in this jury. I believe in my heart that you are going to go in the jury room. You are going to look at this evidence that you swore before you 9ot, not so much to this court, before you got it, that you were going to look at the e-.zidence and 16 of develops. The DA does not choose their crients. once my office was informed that there was an inordinate number of ba}lot applications being mailed to one address, more than a-t ffidffiEwas my duty to investigate that fact and see whether or not some illegar act was being committed in connection with that fact. Now, dt that po.intr w€ did not know whose address it was. lve did not know whether this defendant rived there or not. we did not know whether the votes had been cast or not. we did not know whether, in fact, dny votes had been cast or which appricati-ons had been mailed to that address. we did not know vrhether they had been notarized here, Tuscaloosa, or elsewhqre. All we knew was that it could not be that many voters living at that one place or that two or three places. : Now, when you start an investigation for a criminal act in the DA's officer lou cannot choose realry who to prosecute. Now, of course, r have known most of the people 1,invoLved in this case for a long time, known the defendant, her family. .And it is no pleasure to me that when it finally canne down to it, that the evidence indicated that a criminal act had been committed by her. rt wi1] not be any pleasure to me if, in factr 1lou do convict, and I .believe that you wirr, and she receives a sentence. But as I say, it is not up to me to choose. It comes with the territory. And it has to be that L7. ot way because if the evidence had developed, for exampler that the circuit clerk himserf had fraudulentry cast ballots, r would have had no choice about it. The evidence is what determines who is prosecuted. The color does noL determine it. The position of the individual, whether or not they are a candidate, does not determine it. As a matter of fact, r do not even care who the voters are. rt does not make a bit of difference to me who they voted for. r voted for Bill Baxley myself. r would do it today. And the reason r did that is that he prosecuted during the time he was attorney general. He not o,n1y prosecuted a black legislator from down in South Alabama, he prosecuted the Birmingham church bomhing. And he dld that in spite of opposition, whomever it might influence or how many voters there were on th.is side of that particular issuE. And r rea11y do not care who they voted. The fact of the business is, if arr of these people had cast i-denticar ballots on their own, we v.,ourd not be here. That is not the point. The point is not whether they wanted to vote in any particular way or what they would have done or that now they do not care what was done. The guestion is whether or not these ballots were their balrots and whether or not they were fraudulent and whether they were cast by this defendant. A11 right. Another why. Why are we trying this defendant now, and we have already tried one defendant ( oo oo ^-\_ \\ .. .\ \-._ \_\r _) a before? Juries a lot of times wonder about that. It is the law in this state that every defendant is entitled to a trial. They are entitled to a separate trial. If there had been half a dozen people participating in this act, each defendant would be entitled to a separate trial. That is not true in the federal criminal court. They try in federal criminal courts, they tried the whole group of : people together. We did not do that. Now, in the process of doing thatr w€ sacrifice things along the way. Since another case was tried in this same series, one of these defendants one of the Uitnesses, the voter, has died. One of them -- t{R. CHESTNUT: Judge, I am going to have b object to that as improper closing argument. He is not talking about the evidence in this case. He is referring to another case which has no relationship to this Iitigation. He is nohr talking about witnesses who were not called in this case and implying what the effect of th.eir testimony would have been. That is highly prejudicial. We move for a mistrial. THE COURT: I am going to sustain the objection. l.lotion for rnistrial will be denied. I,IR. JOHNSTON: As we go IlR. CHESTNUT: Could we get an instruction, Judge, ot to the jury, that they are to disregard his remarks as to these other ritroesses in some other trial he had reference to? THE COURT: The jury should disregard ment concerning any witnesses in case. Is that sufficient? MR. .CHESTNUT: Yes, sir. state- other MR. .fOUWSTON: As we go along trying cases, witnesses' memories become hazy. They are subject to pressure and influences. And this brings ne to another why. why did we go to the trouble to take depositions, written sworn testimony from all these voters and jrom t,lr. RoIIins .and other witnesses? ,*r,y did we do that? .ei.l right. At the time this problem came to rny attention, it uas shortly after the 26th primary. A11 right. At that tirie, the general elections had not been herd. There -r-as another .lelection coming a1ong. so in order to avo; d any confusion, it was impossible, assuming that criminal ac-_s h.ere dis_ covered, it was irnpossibre to bring those ra:ters before a grand jury and to trial before the general election. rn order to avoid any confusion about what tir.e $re are tarking about and whether or not we are tarking abcu-- generar or runoff primaryr w€ took written sworn statements. We did that -- wel], to begin with, tl-e el_ection we are talking about is September 26th. The deposi:ions, the written sworn statements of these witnesses, voters, and !1=. Rollins any any 20. oa were taken, I think it is right, October 18th. The other significant date is that they were notarized on September 23rd. We did that to avoid confusion. Vile knew that the people that we trad subpoenaed at that point were elderly and that in order to avoid any confusion and avoid any messup in vrhat we would Iearn about it, we took these statements down in written forrn while the memory was fresh, while they had not been subjected to pressure, while they could remember what had taken pIace. All right. Now, what evidence do we get that is important from I'1r. RoIIins? There are a number of things about his testimony that are very i,mportant. One, of course, is that all of the witnesses all of the votgrs that he notarized ballots for were unknown to him. Not a single one does he remember knowing or ever seeing befcre. This defendant was there. She participated in the request. that he notarize those ballots there. I{R. CHESTNUT: Now, we obj ect to that, Judge . There is no evidence in that reqard to that effect. THE COURT: Overrule. MR. JOHNSTON: We went over and over that poin*, about Mr. Rollins' testimony about that. And al-l he woulc do was say that "they asked me to notarize. They handed me the ballots. f gave them back to them, and they tooJt them away." I concede that, but I remind you that after 2L- o fact. And if it has not done anything else, it obviously in the general electionr ds you can see from t{r. Rollins' testimony, the change of proceeding, that he came over here in the general election as he said, and he went around and did it as it should be done. And if he did' that, then he knows and they know that this was improperly done at the time they did it and that these ballots that are cast were fraudulent ballots and that they intended that they be cast. All right. Now, one thing that I wonder about is of all these thirty-nine voters, every one of them -- all of them available to the defendant, atr of them as avairable to them as to us, why, if any of these ballots were their ballots, why d.idn't they come up here and say so? Now, it would appear to me that out of thirty-nine ballots cast, someone,.if the contention of the defense is to be believed, someone among those voters vrould come up here and say, "Yes, this is my baIIot. I know Ittr. Rollins. I took it over there, and this is my balIot. " Not a single one came up here and said that was their ballot, not one. Now, of course, I can argue about it all day. There is no way in the world I am ever going to convince this defendant or any of her relatives or friends. that she is being prosecuted for any other reason than she is b1ack. On the other hand, and I could deny it as it is not true as far as f am concerned. It is not true, but be that as 24. it may, there 5.s no way r am going Lo cbnvince. her of that. But r do not want you ladies and gentremen of the jury.to do sor to judge the evidence and think that just because you judge it to the letter and with conrmonsense and with insight into what is the truth, do not feel guirty if you come to the conclusion that she is guilty and think that you can be rationarized into belief that you did that just because she is bIack. r do not want you to do that. r wourd rather turn her loose, really would. Rather she get a fair trial and you let her go than that you convict her because she is black. The other thing I want to point out about the case is.this r do not berieve r will get into that. Let me just say this. r think that the evidence is sufficient for a.con- viction- And one thing that the Judge is going to charge you about is a common scheme or design to do sgmething. Now, it is the law in this state that everyone who participates in a crime is charged as having conunitted that crime. I{e no longer have the raw of what is carred an accessory to a crime. For example, by way of anal0gy, if this were a robbery case, for exampre, and someone had gone into a bank and held it up and someone was out in the car with the motor running and somebody held the door open, all of those people wourd be tried as having conunitted a robbery. This is a similar situation in that it is a contention 25. oa of the State that each one who participated in the process by which these ballots were voted is guilty of having them voted if they assisted in any manner in the process by which these fraudulent ballots trere put.'in. there. And there is no question but vrhat they ri,ere fraudulent. They were voted and they were not notarized, and they were not the ballots of the persons who they purported to be. Otherwise, they would not have got up here and said so. Now, I realize in order to convict, you must believe from the evidence that this defendant parti-ci-pated in that process, and it takes a lot of commonsense to do it. Her relation=f,ip and influence and activities with Lou Somerville and Sophia,spann are the only two specific references we have to specific ballots, other than the group that was taken to Tuscaloosa. But I ask you to consider the evidence in the light of the fact that she participa.ted in the process by which they were cast. And, again, I thank you for i'our attention. However you decidethiscase, I feel like that she got a fair trial and your verdict is fair. Tnank you. a ao CERTIFICATE STATE OF ALABAMA COUNTY OF TUSCAIOOSA I do hereby certify that the above and foregoing transcription of proceedings in the matter aforementioned was taken down by me in machine shorthand, and was rater reduced to wrj-ting under my personal supervision, and that the foregoing represents a true and correct transcript of the proceedi-ngs had upon said hearing I further certify that f am neither of counsel nor related to the parties to the action., nor am I in anywise interested in the result of said cause. s 5 ea* \*I\ Elise Smith, Court Reporter