Criminal injustice
Subtitle: slaves and free Blacks in Georgia's criminal justice system
By: Glenn McNair.
Series: Carter G. Woodson Institute series
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 234
ISBN-13: 9780813927930
Subjects: Criminal justice, Administration of -- Georgia -- History -- 18th century; Criminal justice, Administration of -- Georgia -- History -- 19th century; Discrimination in criminal justice administration -- Georgia -- History; African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Georgia -- History -- 18th century; African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Georgia -- History -- 19th century; Slaves -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Georgia -- History; Free African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Georgia -- History; Crime and race -- Georgia -- History; Georgia -- Race relations -- History -- 18th century; Georgia -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century
Description: Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia's Criminal Justice System is the most comprehensive study of the criminal justice system of a slave state to date. McNair traces the evolution of Georgia's legal culture by examining its use of slave codes and slave patrols, as well as presenting data on crimes prosecuted, trial procedures and practices, conviction rates, the appellate process, and punishment. Based on more than four hundred capital cases, McNair's study deploys both narrative and quantitative analysis to get at both the theory and the reality of the criminal procedure for slaves in the century leading up to the Civil War. He shows how whites moved from the utopian innocence of the colony's original Trustees, who envisioned a society free of slavery and the depravity it inculcated in masters, to one where slave-holders became the enforcers of laws and informal rules, the severity of which was limited only by the increasing economic value of their slaves as property. The slaves themselves, regarded under the law both as moveable property and - for the purposes of punishment - as moral agents, had, inevitably, a radically different view of Georgia's slave criminal justice system. Although the rules and procedures were largely the same for both races, the state charged and convicted blacks more frequently and punished them more severely than whites for the same crimes. Courts were also more punitive in their judgment and punishment of black defendants when their victims were white, a pattern of disparate treatment based on race that persists to this day. Informal systems of control in urban household and on rural plantations and farms complemented the formal system and enhanced the power of slaveowners. Criminal Injustice shows how the prerogatives of slavery and white racial domination trumped any hope for legal justice for blacks. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "My Lord, they are stark mad after Negroes" : slavery and the corruption of Georgia's legal culture; title: "For the better ordering and governing Negroes" : Blacks and the law; title: "Negroes might cut the throats of our people" : Black crime and its causes; title: "Some convenient method and form of tryal" : the trial process; title: "The slave should look to his master and the courts to avenge his wrongs" : the appellate process; title: "May the Lord have mercy on his soul" : punishment.