Transcript of Proceedings

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II'I THE UTIITED STPJ'XS, DISTRTCT COURTI'
FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRTCT OF AT.ABAI'TJ\

NORTHERN DIVISION

ilrJ! 30
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,,nH;srj'8Etf-?UTJ na..'t

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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

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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



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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

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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 

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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.

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You could compare the applications where the person



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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.

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in script. Their names

at it. That is hard,

of those ballots that

the smallest office.

Now, there was some testimony about assistance.
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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



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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



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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.
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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



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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.

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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

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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



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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

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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

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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

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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



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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

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Maggie Bozeman voted thern. That j-s what the state charged.



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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

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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.



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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?



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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

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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

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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

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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,



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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

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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