A judge could right a 72-year-old wrong today in the notorious rape case of the Groveland Four
A 72-year-old racial injustice could be corrected this morning when a judge in Lake County hears a prosecutor’s extraordinary petition to set aside the 1949 rape indictment and convictions which destroyed the lives of four young Black men who came to be known to the nation as the “Groveland Four.”
If granted, the motion by State Attorney William Gladson could finally clear the names of Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Ernest Thomas, fulfilling life-long wishes of their families, who have fought decades for the innocence of the four to be officially recognized — even if posthumously.
All four died decades ago, including Thomas shot to death July 26, 1949, by an armed posse before he was arrested.
The Groveland Four’s alleged crimes of kidnapping and raping a 17-year-old white girl were pardoned in 2019 by the Florida Clemency Board, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who stopped short of exonerating the men as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement looked into the notorious case.
It’s unclear if the alleged victim, Norma Lee Padgett, now 89, will attend today’s hearing.
Prosecutors said Padgett and her sons were given notice and extended an offer to participate in the proceedings by video conferencing.
Seated in a wheelchair, she told the clemency board in 2019, “I’m begging you all not to give them pardon because they done it.”
The board nonetheless granted pardons based on apparent misdeeds by law enforcement and the justice system.
“I really believe in the principles of the constitution and getting a fair shake,” DeSantis said at the time.
The pardons excused or forgave the Groveland Four rather than exonerate them as the families wanted.
Citing Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, which allows for post-conviction relief, Gladson filed a 104-page motion in October seeking to set aside the judgments and sentences and to correct the record with “newly discovered evidence.” Gladson received the FDLE’s probe of the case in July.
According to the state attorney’s petition, the FDLE investigation “did not identify or develop any new verifiable and substantial evidence to corroborate or contradict the established information pertaining to the Groveland Four’s innocence or their alleged participation in ‘The Incident.’ “
But he did.
As part of his review, Gladson interviewed author Gilbert King, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America” provided a detailed historical account of the case regarded among worst racial injustices in U.S. history.
King said he got an email after the book was published from Broward Hunter, grandson of Jesse Hunter, the Groveland Four’s prosecutor.
In the email, Hunter said his grandfather and the trial Judge Truman Futch both knew there was no rape, according to Gladson’s motion.
In his petition, Gladson also said a sheriff’s detective likely fabricated evidence and prosecutors had failed to tell defense lawyers of statements made by a Leesburg doctor who examined the 17-year-old girl the morning after the alleged rape and did not find evidence supporting her claim.
“I have not witnessed a more complete breakdown of the criminal justice system,” Gladson wrote.
“Absent compelling new evidence, final judgments cannot and should not be disturbed. There are times, however, when the past merges with the present, and we are forced to confront our sins. This is one of those moments,” he wrote, concluding with a Bible verse. “For in the end, it is ‘Justice, and only justice we shall seek.’ "
A career prosecutor with more than two decades of trial experience, Gladson was elected state attorney of the Fifth Judicial Circuit in 2020.
He succeeded long-time state attorney Brad King, who announced last year that he wouldn’t seek re-election.
Gladson, a Republican, was King’s executive director, overseeing the office’s $20 million budget.
The circuit spans Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion and Sumter counties.
In February 2020, Lake County unveiled a 4-foot-tall granite memorial on the front lawn of the county’s historic courthouse that features a bronzed photograph of the Groveland Four and an account of the ordeal they endured in Lake County’s justice system. The governor attended.
The location was appropriate. The original trial was held in the historic courthouse, where the county once held its prisoners.
