RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — Virginia Governor Ralph Northam issued posthumous pardons Tuesday for the Martinsville Seven, a group of Black men sentenced to death for rape 70 years ago under dubious circumstances, bringing his administration's pardon total to the highest in the state's history.
Northam, a Democrat who faced calls to resign over a Blackface scandal linked to his years in college, has since prioritized addressing the state’s criminal justice system, long marred with Jim Crow-era rulings and other problems linked to Richmond's past as the capital of the Confederacy.
Speaking Tuesday morning before a civil rights monument at the state Capitol, Northam said that addressing the infamous executions had long been a priority for his administration.
The 1951 case of the Martinsville Seven is considered an example of racism in Virginia's Jim Crow-era legal system. The defendants – all Black men, some intoxicated when they were arrested and interrogated, few able to read the confessions they were forced to sign – were killed by the state for the rape of a white woman.
While a jury convicted them, it was made up entirely of white men years before the civil rights era would begin, illuminating the desperate treatment faced by minority communities in the courts.
“It’s been proven over the years that the punishment has to fit the crime and it didn’t in this case,” Northam said, touting some of the other progressive legislation he’s signed as his four-year term comes to an end this year. “Today was a step in the right direction.”
Tuesday’s announcement was welcome news to elected officials who had fought for such changes alongside Northam, including state Delegate Cia Price, D-Newport News.
Price entered the Virginia Legislature a term before the 2017 blue wave election which saw the young official joined by other young, Black and brown progressive lawmakers in taking control of the previously Republican-controlled body.
She pointed to Tuesday’s pardons as well as other reforms such as marijuana legalization and changes to civil rights laws over the last two years, as proof of the Democratic majority's priorities and successes.
“Democrats have consistently been fighting for justice and I’m proud of the work we’ve done,” she said before stressing they are far from done. ”It’s going to take time, but days like today show that commitment.”
Northam also brought family members of the Martinsville Seven to the state Capitol for a private meeting where he signed the posthumous pardon document.
Among those in attendance was Rudolph McCollum Jr, a relative of two members of the group. He said the story of the Martinsville Seven was one of “injustice and Jim Crow, racism in its barest and inequality in a country called the United States of America.”
The convictions and executions were undertaken in about two years, a breakneck speed despite appeals to the state and national high courts.
At the time, Virginia Supreme Court Justice Edward Wren Hudgins called the group's claim of racial bias in their trial "an abortive attempt to inject into the proceedings racial prejudice, which the trail court was extremely careful to avoid," before quoting extensively from the trial hearings and affirming their death sentences.
A second habeas claim also failed. While the second effort included more details about disproportionate sentences for Black men, including mention of the 45 Black men who were executed for the rape of white women from 1908 to 1950 while no white man faced the same punishment, Justice John W. Eggleston reportedly said during oral arguments that such an argument would require “no Negroes could be executed unless a certain number of white people” were also sentenced to death.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the group's appeal following that loss. Over 20 years later, the nation's highest court outlawed the death penalty for rape in the 1977 case Coker v. Georgia, finding the punishment violated the Eighth Circuit Amendment as "grossly disproportionate" for the crime.
The decision came two decades too late for the Martinsville Seven, who remain a reminder of how the justice system treated minorities at the time.
“But that was then and this is now,” McCollum said of Northam’s pardons Tuesday, speaking before a press gathering with other members of his group that has long advocated for the pardons. “This is a day where we’ll go back to our family members, young and old, and tell them a story of injustice, but also tell them to never give up the fight for justice.”
Northam has issued a total of 604 pardons issued since he took office in 2017, more than the last nine governors combined.
Kelly Thomasson, Northam’s secretary of the commonwealth, said the effort was the result of brining on more staff to comb through thousands of pardon applications. She said the work wasn’t done, with thousands of applications waiting for Northam or the next governor to handle, and promised each case would be thoroughly reviewed.
“We’re not just taking what people send us, we’re investigating and making sure we have a full and accurate look at the case before we grant them,” Thomasson said.
Price echoed Thomasson's sentiments as she watched the family of the Martinsville Seven leave Northam's office: “It’s powerful but its also inspiring for the work that is left.”
Follow @@BradKutner
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
