Scottsboro Boys: scientific evidence was not persuasive

One idea that we have these days is that DNA evidence and scientific evidence in general is the gold standard for a jury.

One thing I learned The Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us, by Douglas Linder, a professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law, is that the trial of the Scottsboro Boys included excellent scientific evidence.

From Wikipedia:

The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American teenagers, ages 13 to 20, falsely accused in Alabama of raping two White American women on a train in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a miscarriage of justice in the United States legal system.

The U.S. Communist Party took over the defense of these guys. From the course notes:

The star prosecution witness was Victoria Price. Direct examination was brief, lasting only 16 minutes. Price recounted her trip to Chattanooga, a fight that had broken out on the train between white and black youths (the reason the train was stopped in the first place), and the alleged gang rape. Prosecutor Knight’s strategy was to cover the essential facts in a condensed, unadorned way. He wanted to minimize opportunities for defense attorneys to expose contradictions with the more detailed story Price had told in the first trials.

Leibowitz’s cross-examination of Price was merciless. His questions suggested his answers. She never, as she claimed, stayed at Callie Brochie’s boardinghouse in Chattanooga. There was no boardinghouse, no Callie Brochie. Semen that had been found in Price’s vagina came not from rape on a train, but from an adulterous encounter with a man named Jack Tiller two days earlier.

Dr. R. R. Bridges, the Scottsboro doctor who examined the girls less than two hours after the alleged rapes, was the next prosecution witness to take the stand. He turned out to be a better witness for the defense. He confirmed that semen was found in the vaginas of the two women, but observed that the semen contained no live sperm—even though sperm generally survive for 12 to 48 hours after intercourse. On cross-examination, Bridges admitted that the women were both calm, composed, and free of bleeding and vaginal damage when he had examined them two hours after the alleged rape.

Even without modern DNA evidence, therefore, the jury could have acquitted these guys on scientific grounds. There was conflicting evidence from the two women at the second trial:

The defense’s final witness was Ruby Bates, who said that she suffered from a troubled conscience after her testimony in the first trial and had returned to tell the truth about what happened. Bates testified that there was no rape, that none of the defendants touched her or even spoke to her. She said that her allegation had been made up after Price told her “to frame up a story” to avoid morals charges.

(Not as confusing as the first trial, in which one defendant said that the rapes had occurred, but were perpetrated by the other defendants. From Wikipedia: “Defendant Clarence Norris stunned the courtroom by implicating the other defendants. He denied participating in the fight or being in the gondola car where the fight took place. But he said that he saw the alleged rapes by the other blacks from his spot atop the next boxcar”)

So we do have a lot more scientific tools at our disposal these days, but it seems that there was plenty of science back in the 1930s and it wasn’t enough to keep these guys out of jail.