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    Vol.62/No.19           May 18, 1998 
 
 
Letters  
Racist `justice'
"Railroaded again." That's how two Black men from Florida, Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, saw the meager proposal from the state senate to make up for 12 years stolen from their lives. Pitts and Lee were arrested in Port St. Joe, a tiny segregated town in Florida's Panhandle, in the summer of 1963. Two gas station attendants had been killed in a robbery, and the local cops picked up the two men. Pitts and Lee were beaten by the cops, denied legal counsel, and coerced into signing a phony confession. In less than a month, an all-white jury convicted the pair and sentenced them to die in the state electric chair.

This came at a time in the South when police and government agencies would routinely and brazenly spy on, beat, and frame-up Black people, defending the racist Jim Crow system from the civil rights movement. Outfits like the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission stand exposed today because of the victory of this movement.

The frame-up wore thin over the next decade, as evidence mounted that the two men were innocent. Finally, spurred by a detailed confession of the real killer, the governor of the state finally released the men in 1975.

For the past 23 years various state legislatures, all controlled by Democrats, have voted down bills to pay restitution to the two men. This year the Florida senate finally agreed to pay each man $1.5 million for the injustice, but "legislative infighting" reduced the payment in the end to a measley $500,000 a piece, just over $40,000 for each of the years they spent behind bars.

State senator Pat Thomas, whose district includes Port St. Joe, opposed paying the two men anything. "The Constitution of the United States doesn't guarantee that innocent people from time to time won't be convicted," he maintained.

Bill Kalman

Miami, Florida

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of general interest to our readers. Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.

 
 
 
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