Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1963-11-14
CIemency In Annapolis


capital crime.
The original campaign for clemency for
the Giles brothers and Johnson had been
organized by group of Montgomery County
residents who assumed the three were guilty
and objected only to the harshness of their
sentence Life would have been simpler for
Governor Tawes if Harold Knapp, Pentagon
mathematician who joined the committee,
had not dedicated four months to investigat-
ing the case. Knapp discovered that Stewart
Foster had police record for fighting and
public drunkenness and made a habit of in
vective against Negroes. His girl had a sexual
history both bizarre and unflagging for at
least two years; she was in fact on proba
ton as delinquent at the time of the in
cident; her unfortunate character had, in
fact been familiar enough to Montgomery
County States Attorney Leonard Hardy for
him to have put her into a home for way
ward girls pending trial of the Giles brothers.
None of these facts were given to the jury;
and States Attorney Hardy had some sport
with the defense attorney who suggested
them
The defendants, Knapp knew, had told
story which did violence to all tradition Still,
how else could the boys have known the girl
was on probation unless as they claimed, she
herself told them. Furthermore, if there
existed white man in the county who would
have insulted three Negroes while alone in
the woods, he would have been Stewart
Foster; and if there was young woman in
the neighborhood who would willingly have
yielded to molestation, she would have been
Stewart Fosters girl. Knapp ended up feel
ing that Maryland owed these defendants not
mercy but an apology.
Hal Witt, counsel for Johnson and the
Giles brothers, began his plea with Knapp's
evidence of the character of the prosecution
witnesses. The ordinary ritual of mercy for
the guilty was turning horribly into a trial
of official Maryland Governor Tawes
struggled to turn it back. You talk, he said
to Witt, about the reputation of the girl but
we have records of the reputation of these
three men. Assault and battery, housebreak-
ing and larceny" he read. Witt interpoSed
that the latter two entries had been part of
one count against one defendant and that
petty. The Governor went back to his sheet:
Hunting without license fined $1750"
He mustered all the sovereign severity
that years of torment had left him. "It
appears that they would have been much
better off if they just went home" and upon
this note of shock at the conduct of two
capital offenders, he recognized Robert
Heeney, the Rockville, Maryland. lawyer who
had defended Johnson in his first trial. 1t
was Heeney who came at once to the reality
which no one before him had mentioned and
which everyone present understood
Your excellency" he said "ff I could
change the color of the skin of one of the
Ino
capital case All this thing can be. called
is population between Negro and white"
Harold Knapp came on to remind the Cover
nor that five of the IL jurors who had con-
victed the Giles brothers had written him say
ing that, if they had known what they knew
now, they would not have voted to convict
II thought there were only four" said the
Governor. Knapp handed him all five letters
''The states attorney knew things he didn't
tell" one juror had written, "the Judge
should have let more come out or at least
have found out for himself before he SEN
fenced the boys" ut looks to me-" another
wrote, as though the states attorney was
out to get a conviction at all costs"
Two of the five Jurors, when they men,
toned the parties in the case, referred to
"the colored boys" and "the white girl" 1t
uOeS HOI ulIIllIllSn THEIR courage III COnIeSSlng
their mistake to notice the habit of a lifetime
which made it so easy to accept the official
version of the inevitabilities of any inter-
racial conflict of the sexes
At the end, the Governor asked If States
Attorney Hardy had anything to offer He
stood up, large, unashamed young man in
a silk suit, and said that he had prosecuted
these cases without fear or favor after
hearing all these facts" he finished, I'VE have
no objection to having you grant clemency
as result of the facts that have been pre-
sented to you" Yet not a solitary fact had
been presented which the states attorney of
Montgomery County did not know, or would
not have been able to find out before the
trial. He had resources superior to Knapp's
in every way-except pertinacity and interest
in justice. Still, he stood there in the assured
virtue of an open mind; Leonard Hardy had
just discovered good will. Willard Tawes
must have envied the ignorance which made
it seem an adequate shield. The case for the
defense had been so strong that it seemed
certain that the Governor would commute
and plausible that he might even reduce the
term to 20 years. That would appear about
20 times what the Giles brothers and Joseph
Johnson deserve and thus an acceptable
compromise between habit and justice
Mote: On Oct. "a, Gov. Tawes committed
the death penalties of all three to life impri.
sOnnent)