Joan Little was born in 1953 to an African-American woman whose trial for the murder of a white prison guard at Beaufort County Prison in Washington, cÃ… © lÃÆ'¨bre of the civil rights movement, feminist, and anti-death penalty. Little is the first woman in US history to be released using her defense that she uses lethal force to withstand sexual assaults. His case has also become a classic among the law as an example of a pioneering application of scientific jury selection.
Video Joan Little
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Slightly born and raised until the age of 15 years in Washington, a city under 10,000 in the North Carolina coastal area. His mother, Jessie Williams is a "religious fanatic" who often consults with "root worker," or traditional hoodoo healers. His father was a security guard in Brooklyn, New York. The eldest of six blood-blooded relatives, he was forced to take care of them and his four half brothers as well. He runs away and hides and soon falls with an older crowd that supports his rebellion. His social worker Jean Nelson, who once called him a "runaway artist", also noted his intelligence, told him "someday you can do many good things." As a teenager, he worked in the tobacco industry and as a waitress. In 1973, he worked with a sheetrock finisher named Julius Rogers, who later escorted him to Greenville and then to Chapel Hill, where he would be caught in the law.
Maps Joan Little
Crime
A minor issue with the law began in 1968, when his mother asked a judge to declare him ditching and handed him to Dobbs Agricultural Training School in Kinston, North Carolina. After a few weeks at Dobbs, Little escapes, walking to the nearest service station where he and a friend ride back to Washington. Her mother realized that she had not been released and tried to legitimize her daughter's situation by holding an official release. He then sent Joan to live with family in Philadelphia. Three weeks after graduating from high school there, Joan developed a thyroid problem and returned to North Carolina for surgery.
In December 1973 and January 1974, Little, now 20, experienced a spate of arrests for theft and ultimately for breaking and entering, with increased legal consequences. In the coastal city of Jacksonville, North Carolina at the end of 1973, he was accused of possessing stolen possessions and possessing a sawed rifle but was not prosecuted. On January 3, 1974, he was arrested in Washington, North Carolina for shoplifting. The allegations, also dismissed. Six days later, he was arrested again for shoplifting, a charge sentenced to six months. Six days after his release, he was arrested again and charged with three counts of different criminal offenses and entry and retraction. His trial was set for June 3 and he left town for a while.
He returned to Washington in time for the trial, accompanied by Julius Rogers and two teenagers. The teenagers end up in jail, where they are sexually harassed by a guard who offers them freedom if one of them will "give him some". Little was convicted on June 4, 1974, and was asked to remain in the county prison rather than being transferred to the Raleigh Women's Correctional Facility, as would be customary. What remains in Washington, he says, will allow him to stay close to home, where he can work to improve his bond.
Testing for killing
Killing the jailer
Almost three months later, before dawn on August 27, 1974, a police officer carrying a drunken prisoner to a Beaufort County prison found the body of a prison slave of Clarence Alligood, 62, in Joan Little's bed, naked from the waist down. Alligood has suffered a stab wound to the temple and the heart area of ​​ice cubes. Cement found in his legs. Little is missing. He surrendered to the authority of North Carolina more than a week later, and said that he had killed Alligood while defending himself against a sexual assault.
Charged with first-degree murder
He was accused of first-degree murder, which carries an automatic death sentence. The capital status of the case, and the fact that North Carolina is home to more than a third of all death penalty cases in the United States, drew the attention of anti-death penalty and supporters of detainee rights. The racial component attracts the attention of civil rights activists, and the gender component attracts the attention of feminists. The combination of these three factors, together with sophisticated fundraising tactics, allowed Joan's Small Defense Committee to raise over $ 350,000. Jerry Paul and Karen Bethea-Shields (Karen Galloway) are his lawyers. The question of whether blacks are treated equally by the criminal justice system in South America attracts the attention of the national media.
Trial
The defense team made important use of applied social sciences, including a new method of scientific jury selection, which just appeared in 1972. The defense commissioned the survey with a view to comparing popular attitudes among whites against blacks between Beaufort and Pitt County, at the northeastern part of the state, and the northern central state. The results show that unfavorable racial stereotypes are stronger in Beaufort County. For example, about two-thirds of respondents in Beaufort and Pitt Counties believe that black women are more than white women and that blacks are more cruel than whites. Armed with this information, Paul successfully petitioned for the trial to be transferred to the state capital of Raleigh.
During the trial, the prosecution argued that Little was an obscene woman who teased Alligood just to kill him so he could escape. Within two days of testimony, Little testified that Alligood, who weighs over 200 pounds nearly twice his size, had come into his cell three times between 10:00 pm and 3:00 am to ask for sex, eventually forcing it to the core. from ice breakers to perform oral sex. He testified that he can snatch an ice breaker when he sits on his bed because he has let his guard down in the moments after orgasm. He stabbed him repeatedly, and he testified he fought hard and wrestled with him, but given his wounded state, he could be free from him. Attorney Jerry Paul made a liberal use of the sympathy of the Southern Christian jury, characterizing his client as a religious woman who found solace in the Bible during difficult times.
The jury of six white men and six African Americans conferred for an hour and 25 minutes and gave an innocent verdict.
Joan Little is returned to prison to serve the remainder of her sentence for breaking and entering. One month before he qualified for parole, he ran away. He was arrested and later convicted and sentenced for escape. He was released in June 1979 and moved to New York City.
Effects
His murder trial focused national attention on women's rights issues to defend themselves against rape, the validity of capital punishment, racial and sexual inequalities in the criminal justice system, and the rights of detainees in general. It also inspired the women's rights movement abroad, including Joan-sÃÆ'¸strene (The Joan nuns) in Denmark.
Little wrote a poem entitled "I Am Somebody", which was incorporated into a mural in San Diego's Chicano Park by female muralists of the Royal Chicano Royal Sacramento Air Force.
The cappella band Sweet Honey in the Rock incorporated a song called "Joanne Little" on their 1976 self-titled album.
Later in life
In 1989, Little was arrested in New York City on charges including driving a stolen car. He called William Kunstler, who had helped him in the past, to ask for help.
See also
- Inez Garcia
- Yvonne Wanrow
Note
References
- Abramson, Jeffrey. 2000. We, the jury: the jury system and the ideals of democracy; with new introduction . Harvard Univ. Press.
- McGuire, Danielle, At The End of the Dark Road: Black Woman, Rape, and Resistance - New History of Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Park to the Rise of Black Power (New York: Knopf, 2010), Chapter 8.
- New York Times . Feb. 26, 1989. Joan Little, Sentenced for Killing Prison In 1974, Arrested in New Jersey.
- Pickard, Toni, Phil Goldman, Renate M. Mohr, and Rosemary Cairns-Way. 2002. Criminal law dimension . 3rd edition. Toronto: Emond Montgomery.
- Reston, James Jr. 1977. The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery . New York Times Book.
- Time . August 25, 1975. Joan Little Story.
External Links
- Joan Little - Survived and Punished, a video made by Barnard Center for Research on Women and Survived and Sentenced
Further study
- Harwell, Fred. True Liberation: The Small Case of Joan (1980) Alfred A. Knopf. ISBNÃ, 0-394-49989-1 (Edgar Allan Poe Award Winner, 1980, This Year's Best Non-Fiction Guidebook)
- The James Reston collection of Joan Little experiments at the University of North Carolina.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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