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Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I was at a CLE last week, and one of the presentations was an hour long, uh, story, I guess is the best way to describe it, about the criminal trial in Tennessee state court, appeal in state court, writ of habeus corpus to federal court and then writ of habeus corpus to the Supreme Court in 1906.

The defendant was a black man accused of raping a white woman. The trial was horrible. At one point a juror had to be restrained from going after the defendant, and said "If I could get at him, I'd tear his heart out right now." Ms. Taylor could never swear that Ed Johnson was the man that did it. There were over a dozen alibi witnesses that say Ed Johnson was at the Last Chance Saloon at the time of the attack. The defendant's own lawyers had an article in the paper before the trial asking the lynch mob not to blame them from defending the guy. And the only person who identified Mr. Johnson as the attacker identified him as being in the area at the time of the attack only after a $350 reward was announced.

Two black attorneys, who were not involved in the criminal trial, took on the appeal, and had less than thirty days to do so. Noah Parden was the first black man to first chair argue a case in the Supreme Court (an ex parte hearing with Justice Harlen). The United States Supreme Court issued a stay of execution and granted the appeal of habus corpus. The sheriff was ordered to secure Mr. Johnson pending appeal.

The night the stay was announced, all other prisoners were moved from the first floor of the jail to the second and third floors; there was only one deputy on duty (there were usually six or seven); and the lynch mob came, dragged Mr. Johnson out of his cell, hung him from a nearby bridge and shot him when it looked like the rope wasn't killing him fast enough. His last words were "Bless you all. I am an innocent man." Someone pinned a note to his corpse: "To Justice Harlan. Come and get your nigger now."

All terrible, terrible stuff, but the remarkable thing is that the story doesn't end there.

The Supreme Court was pissed. They met with TDR, who sent down Secret Service agents to investigate what the hell happened. The Attorney General, instead of filing murder charges, charged the sheriff and parts of the lynch mob with criminal contempt and the court of original jurisdiction was the Supreme Court. It is the first and only criminal trial heard by the Supreme Court.

Two years later, the sheriff and some of his co-conspiritors were found guilty by the United States Supreme Court and served jail time.

Before going to this CLE, I had absolutely no idea that this case existed.

United States v. Shipp

More information on the case:
The Shipp Trial page

the book by the CLE presenter on the case: Contempt of Court : The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism, by Mark Curriden, Leroy Phillips.

So my questions are as follows:

Does anyone else here know about this case and am I just an idiot? (I asked this question to the guy who wrote the book, and he said that he spent 11 years researching the case and surrounding events and he has no idea why it's not a more recognized case.)

If no one has heard of it, why the hell not? It seems that it's remarkable in a lot of ways. First black men to argue in front of the Supreme Court, first writ of habeus from a state criminal trial considered by the Supreme Court, first and only criminal trial actually heard by the Supreme Court, interesting federalism issues.

Why the fuck do they not teach this case in law school and/or history classes?

Dude, that's a lot of words to be writing on October 31. Don't burn yourself out.


[I think we learned about that case briefly in law school; maybe from my hippie, ex-Berkley public defender Crim professor.]