After 91 years, Black teen exonerated by defense lawyer's great-grandson
Source: Washington Post
After 91 years, Black teen exonerated by defense lawyer’s great-grandson
By James Bikales
Updated June 18, 2022 at 8:04 p.m. EDT | Published June 18, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
As the first Black attorney in Delaware County, Pa., William Ridley was used to the odds being stacked against him. His parents escaped slavery, and he once faced down a Ku Klux Klan mob in his yard. But in 1930, he was handed a case he couldn’t win.
A 16-year-old Black student, Alexander McClay Williams, was accused of brutally killing an attractive White matron at his reform school. Ridley received $10 and 10 weeks to build a defense alone, pitted against a team of 15 prosecution investigators.
During the two-day trial, prosecutors omitted evidence they knew might have cleared Williams. An all-White jury convicted the teenager in under four hours, and sent him to the electric chair, the youngest person put to death in the state’s history.
This week, in the same courthouse where the ruling was passed down 91 years earlier, Ridley’s great-grandson, Sam Lemon, finally won justice for Williams.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/18/pennsylvania-teen-exonerated/
Non-paywalled link: https://wapo.st/3zOi0WS
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