A Legal Lynching...

Kenneth Michael Hoyt

Description

For over four hundred years, African Americans have fought long and hard to become more than second class citizens of this country.  These battles have been fought on many battlegrounds.  Health, education, politics and employment are just a few of the many major battles that have been fought.  A Legal Lynching is not a story of any of these battles.  Instead, this thrilling action-packed account takes place in the criminal justice system.  African Americans have suffered many losses in the criminal justice battle.  This is a true story of one of those losses chronicled by Judge Kenneth Hoyt.

The story is told by Judge Hoyt through the voices of the actual participants.  Beginning with his in chambers meeting with former state court Judge Matthew W. Plummer, Judge Hoyt weaves a thrilling yet truthful story of a total disregard for the constitutional rights of two young undereducated African American men.  This is not a recount of a system guided by mistakes, but instead a true reflection of the intentional display of systemic racism and how it destroyed the lives of two citizens of this country.

With this discourse, Judge Matthew W. Plummer and Judge Kenneth Hoyt give the reader a clear and true view of the constitutional violations in the criminal system suffered by African Americans in this country.  It is a story that many whites in America would desire not to be told.  Judge Hoyt has not only created a ravishing thriller about criminal justice gone wrong, but he has also chronicled a horrendous recount of a legal constitutional abuse.

James M. Douglas

Distinguished Professor of Law

Texas Southern University

Thurgood  Marshall School of Law

Sujets

• Droit privé
• Droit privé
• Droit privé
• Droit privé
• Droit général
• Droit général
• Droit général
• Law
• General
• General officer
• Courts plc
• Droit et juridique
• Courts
• Criminal Law
• Droit pénal
• droit pénal
• Droit pénal
• Droit pénal
• Droit pénal

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 31 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977263476
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

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A Legal Lynching… From Which the Legacies of Three Black Houston Lawyers Blossomed All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Kenneth Michael Hoyt v5.0
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
Cover Photo © 2023 Rev. Dr. Rita Hoyt Jenkins. All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To my loving Wife, Veola Johnson Hoyt, the "inside" editor whose insightful "house detective gloss" added character to this labor of necessity.

In Memory of my parents, Fannie and Earl Hoyt, spiritual and intellectual, cornerstones in my development.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction

Segment I: Prine’s Call
1. The Call That Brought The Lion Up From The Thicket
2. Ruth Is Dead and I Can’t Reach John
3. Mystery Visitors or Yarn Spinning
4. Eyes That Refused To See
5. Without Illumination
6. I Washed My Hands; I Am Innocent of This Blood …
7. The Neighborhood on the Margins
8. He Hatched Adders’ Eggs and Weaved the Spider’s Web
9. They Plotted How They May Entangle Them In Their Own Words

Segment II: The Men Called
10. Time and Providence Call Men to Courage
11. The Alluring Call of Time and Providence

Segment III: The Courtroom Scene [The Motion to Suppress]
12. They Reasoned Among Themselves And Set A Trap
13. Serendipitous: A Mistaken Pick That Rewards
14. Confessions Composed by DA Investigator Walsh
15. "I Swear I Signed It, But It’s Not True"
16. Thirty Pieces of Silver …The Price of Blood
17. Who Will Keep Watch, Protect the Ignorant and Innocent?
18. They Lie In Wait and Set Traps For The Unsuspecting
19. Are You Trying to Put False Charges on Me?
20. They Hung Him On A Tree Off Jack Rabbit Road

Segment IV: A Plea For Justice
21. Shall Not the Judge Do What Is Just?
Epilogue – Cum Multis Allis
Endnotes

Appendix
Acknowledgments
Professor Walter A. Champion and his wife, attorney Tina Champion, are owed a "shout out" for their early and insightful assistance and for providing focus and direction at a critical time. To Richard Ramsay and Gary Gould, former law clerks, are due my utmost gratitude for their phenomenal and over the top editorial comments that brought this labor of love to completion. The cover design by Dr. Rita K. Hoyt-Jenkins reminds us not to forget a foreboding reality.
Foreword
This book does not simply narrate a story about a civil rights issue, although it certainly does that. It casts a keen and unforgiving eye on a scar that none of our sociologic surgery can hide -- prejudice in the highest places in our legal system. We have bleached that as much as possible. This masterful document, written by a masterful federal courts judge who is helping to correct our legal system, is doubly valuable. It takes a classic case of injustice against two black (Afro­ American? Negro? Colored? The "N" word?) boys and shows how we have used classic Caucasian bigotry against minorities, women, people who are not of the Christian persuasion, people who are not of any listed religion, people who are not in either of the two major political parties, people of non-traditional sexual preferences. It is an examination of a society bitterly struggling against its own ultimate fragmentation into a multitude of separate and often hostile pieces, not one nation under God. And such an examination was made possible--no, necessary, because two Houston judges looked into the 1953 case of "The Flower Shop Murder." The judges are Matthew W. Plummer, Sr., and Kenneth M. Hoyt. Judge Plummer was a flight instructor of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, an early fighter for civil rights for Cassius Clay, (now remembered as Muhammad Ali), the first Black lawyer to be named an investigator for the office of the Harris County District Attorney, and a key figure in the naming of Thurgood Marshall to the United States Supreme Court. He is front and center in this story.
Judge Plummer investigated the case for the DA and then defended and protested against the prosecution of the boys. They had been falsely accused – one was executed by the State of Texas, the other mysteriously drowned in his own bathtub shortly after being released from prison in 1967.

Judge Hoyt, the author of this book, was solicited by Judge Plummer, his mentor, to write it so that his struggle for equal justice under the law would not be totally forgotten. Plummer made this request of Hoyt before his own death by Alzheimer’s would make it impossible for him to write it. He needed someone who would know the painful reality by which both of them had been victimized and he knew that Hoyt could tell the unblemished truth without being malignant or bitter. Lest we forget, it was Judge Hoyt who wrote so forcefully and eloquently, in the death penalty case of Ricardo Aldape Guerra v. State of Texas . There, he set free a Mexican National who also had been falsely accused. On the civil case side of the bar, he rejected a meager settlement offer made by the City of Houston to the heirs of Ida Lee Delaney in Tammie Delaney, et. al. v. City of Houston, et. al. Mrs. Delaney was the victim of a killing by HPD Officer Alex Gonzales.

We call Judge Hoyt "the velvet hammer". Ask the plastics giant Formosa, against whom Hoyt quietly approved a $50,000,000 settlement for consistently polluting communities along the middle Texas Gulf Coast, the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history. So, thanks to Judge Hoyt for making so clear to us "an injustice in black and white," underscoring how much has to be done to make us a world model of freedom and justice for all.

Bill Lawson William A. Lawson Institute for Peace and Prosperity (WALIPP) Pastor Emeritus, Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, Houston, Texas
Introduction
The year was 1953. The place was the northside of Houston, Texas. A white woman was murdered and two black boys, residents of Acres Homes, were arrested, but not immediately charged. The events that followed their arrest, however, were in no wise unique to Houston, but emblematic of a recurring theme that was repeated in many states in the nation after the Civil War of the 1860s. On three tepid winter nights in January, two illiterate black boys, Maurice Sampson and Willie Gilbert, who were being held without charges, were secreted away from jail and repeatedly and brutally beaten until they signed confessions that were used to convict them for the murder of Ruth A. McCasland.
At the time, the international landscape was dominated with uncertainty. On the heels of World War II, was the Korean conflict that would end with an Armistice, not a peace treaty. The national front was equally tumultuous. Minds were numb from discord being played out in Congress and the federal courts. America was caught in the throws of a post-war loyalty crisis. Hearings before the United States Senate and trials in federal court resulted in convictions for treason. Before summer’s end, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for traitorous conduct, for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Closer on the home front, the racial divide that was all too familiar to black Houstonians, continued in spite of meaningful advancements for Negroes in criminal and civil rights through federal court cases and the military. However, integration of the armed forces by President Harry Truman, and the dismantling of white primaries at the ballot box, appeared to be simply gestures of change in the landscape of the racial divide that did not manifest in real changes in the lives of blacks at home.
The hardscape, Jim Crow laws designed to enforce white privilege, was firmly in place and served as a daily reminder to blacks of their place. Any euphoria brought home by black soldiers was soon dashed by local sentiments that deliberately ignored America’s age-old promise of racial justice and equality. In spite of that promise, the burdens of slavery continued to play out in the everyday lives of black Houstonians particularly in the courtrooms. Black attorneys joined together to form the Houston Lawyers Association ("HLA") in an effort to combat the second-class treatment that they and their clients often experienced.
Few men earn the label of being legendary. Matthew W. Plummer, Sr., one of the HLA founders, is one of those men in my imagination. He met the resistance to change in the courts and fought to dismantle a form of justice that sought, in substance, to maintain one avenue of justice for whites and another, less judicious, for blacks. He attended the first law school authorized for Negroes in Texas. 3 It opened in the basement of the YMCA in Austin, Texas, where University of Texas Law School faculty taught its first enrollee, Henry E. Doyle. After the school was relocated to Houston, Plummer enrolled and graduated in 1952.
A law license would not create the panacea of freedom he sought. In the hands of a black man, a law license meant swimming in upstream currents against a strange and often perverted form of justice. Nevertheless, Plummer was emboldened by the prospects of the undertaking and met the challenges head on. After winning a cultural battle by way of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he welcomed the opportunity to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his white counterparts in courts of law.
Plummer was the first Negro Investigator hired