Almost every one of these stories goes the same way. A white woman is assaulted and the vague description of a Black man results in the misidentification, and oftentimes execution, of an innocent man who never lives to see the day of his exoneration.
According to The Guardian, the latest case to be overturned is that of John Henry James.
On July 11, 1898, a woman named Julia Hotopp was returning home from riding horses in Charlottesville when she was violently assaulted. The report says she gave conflicting accounts of what happened but the consensus is that she was raped by a “heavy-set, Black man” with a mustache and his toes sticking out of his shoes. That description led to the arrest of John Henry James, an ice cream vendor.
The Daily Progress labeled him as a “Black Villain” in the paper and as expected, tensions brewing in the white neighborhoods led to the formation of an angry mob. They rioted outside of the jail causing the jailers to move him in an underground route of various homes and wine cellars to get him on the next train to a town over.
After spending a night at Staunton jail, he hopped back on the train to return to Charlottesville for a grand jury hearing. But when the train stopped, a mob of 150 white men stormed the train car, took James and hung him on a locust tree while riddling his body with bullets.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, local news reported that hundreds of white people gathered to gawk at him and cut off pieces of his clothes and body to keep as souvenirs. About 125 years after the vile act, his indictment was brought into question.
Read more from The Guardian:
The prosecutor’s office, known as the commonwealth’s attorney in Virginia, wrote in court documents filed in May: “The commonwealth believes this was a false accusation.”
Presiding judge Cheryl Higgins underscored this point on Wednesday, telling the court: “The indictment was not an instrument of justice. It was used as a sanction and to approve the lynching of a man simply because he was Black and it was a mockery of the judicial system and abuse of the process.”
Albemarle Commonwealth’s attorney Jim Hingeley brought the request for the dismissal forward. Jalane Schmitt, co-founder of Charlottlesville BLM, said we’re still feeling the damage from this indictment and it’s implications of the corruption of the justice system, per CBS19 News.
“As we saw in 2017, it’s a white supremacist mob attacking people of color,” she said. “And the police [are] standing idly by and allowing this to happen … There’s absolutely a pattern here,” said Schmitt.