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Groveland Four, Falsely Accused Of Raping White Woman, Pardoned By Florida Clemency Board

Groveland Four, Falsely Accused Of Raping White Woman, Pardoned By Florida Clemency Board

Written by Ann Brown

Jan 17, 2019

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Seventy years ago in Florida, four young Black men, now known as the Groveland Four, were falsely accused of raping a white woman.

Finally, last week they were pardoned by a unanimous vote. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who narrowly beat Andrew Gillum, called for the vote. How the men were treated has been called “one of the worst episodes of racism in American history.”


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“The unanimous vote to pardon came almost two years after the state House and Senate voted to formally apologize to relatives of the Groveland Four and to ask then-Gov. Rick Scott to pardon the men. Scott, now a U.S. senator, never took action,” the Miami Herald reported. When DeSantis recently replaced Scott, he made the pardons a priority.

“I don’t know that there’s any way you can look at this case and think that those ideals of justice were satisfied. Indeed, they were perverted time and time again, and I think the way this was carried out was a miscarriage of justice,” DeSantis said. “I believe in the principles of the Constitution. I believe in getting a fair shake,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any way that you can look at this case and see justice was carried out.”

In 1949, a 17-year-old white woman and her estranged husband told police that she’d been kidnapped and raped by four Black men after the couple’s car broke down near Groveland, Lake County.

The four men — Earnest Thomas, Charles Greenlee (then just 16), Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin — were arrested by Sheriff Willis McCall, even though Greenlee had been arrested in a separate incident 20 miles away from where the alleged rape had occurred. Greenlee said he didn’t even know the other three men.

Groveland Four
In this undated image released by the State Library and Archives of Florida, Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, far left, and an unidentified man stand next to Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Charles Greenlee, from left, in Florida. The three men along with a fourth were charged with rape in 1949. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a Cabinet granted posthumous pardons Friday, Jan. 11, 2019, to Shepherd, Irvin, Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas, the four African-American men accused of raping a white woman in 1949 in a case now seen as a racial injustice. (State Library and Archives of Florida via AP)

While being arrested, Thomas fled and was killed by a sheriff’s posse. Greenlee, Shepherd, and Irvin were apprehended. They denied the allegations. Later, their coerced confessions were beaten out of them.

The three were later convicted at trial by an all-white jury. Greenlee, a minor, was given a life sentence. Shepherd and Irvin were sentenced to death. Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first Black Supreme Court Justice and then head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, led the effort of appeals for the three. They were given a retrial, as it ruled they had not received a fair trial because of extreme adverse publicity and because there were no Blacks on the jury.

But in November 1951, Sheriff Willis McCall shot both Shepherd and Irvin while they were in his custody, claiming they had tried to escape. Shepherd died. Irvin survived his wounds and later informed FBI investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood so that they wouldn’t have a retrial.

The second trial went ahead and Irvin was again convicted by an all-white jury. The sentence was death. Around four years later, his sentence was commuted to life and by 1968, he was paroled. In 1969 he died.

In 2016, the City of Groveland and Lake County each apologized to survivors of the four men for the injustice against them. All four men were posthumously exonerated on April 18, 2017 by a resolution of the Florida House of Representatives.

Charges were never brought against any white law enforcement officers or prosecutors who handled the cases.

At the most recent hearing, Wade Greenlee, the younger brother of Charles, attended.

“We all know how things were back then,” he said. “All you had to do was be Black. The reason we’re here today is because Irvin didn’t die. God allowed him to live to tell the story.”

Shepherd’s cousin, Beverly Robinson, called the accuser, Norma Padgett, a liar during an intervention addressed to the Florida Clemency Board. Both were in the audience.

During the meeting, Robinson turned and spoke directly to the accuser, Norma Padgett, the Miami Herald reported.

“It never happened, Miss Padgett,” she said. “You and your family are liars.”

Padgett replied: “I’m the victim of that night. I tell you now, that it’s been on my mind for 70 years. I was 17 years old and it’s never left my mind,” she said, her sons standing behind her. “I’m begging y’all not to give the pardons because they did it. If you do, you’re going to be just like them.”

There has been much publicity around the Groveland Four’s story. It was the focus of a 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Devil in the Grove.” Author Gilbert King testified in front of the board at the last hearing.

The families of the four are happy with the latest outcome.

“Rick Scott didn’t have the guts,” Wade Greenlee said. “He could have done this with a stroke of a pen years ago. Gov. DeSantis didn’t waste any time.”

Greenlee’s brother added, “If I had an opportunity this morning, I would have told (the accuser) that the Greenlee family has forgiven her a long time ago. We have no hate against her because we were taught differently,” the AP reported.

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