Odell Waller
Odell Waller | |
---|---|
First degree murder | |
Criminal penalty | Death |
Odell Waller (March 6, 1917
The
Killing of Oscar Davis
Background
Odell Waller was born in 1917 to Dollie Jones and an unknown father, who died shortly after his birth. Jones gave the boy to her sister Annie Waller and Annie's husband, Willis Waller, to adopt, and Odell considered Annie his mother.[1] Odell completed three years of high school, but was forced to leave school to work on the farm.[1] From 1935 to 1938, he was convicted of seven offenses, including assault, reckless driving, bootlegging, and carrying a concealed razor.[2] In January 1939, he married a woman named Mollie.[2]
During the
Shooting
At 6:30 AM on July 15, 1940, Odell drove to Davis's farm to get the wheat with Annie, relatives Archie Waller and Thomas Younger, and a friend named Buck Fitzgerald. He brought a .32 caliber pistol.[6]
The subsequent events remain in dispute. Henry Davis, a teenage black employee of Oscar Davis, maintained that Odell Waller had fired at Oscar Davis without provocation or warning, hitting him four times.[8] Oscar Davis' sons testified that their father had stated before he died that Waller had shot him without cause.[9] One son added that Davis had said Waller had continued to shoot after Davis had already fallen to the ground.[10] The testimony of other witnesses, including Waller's relatives, was inconclusive, as they were too distant to hear the conversation between Waller and Davis. Waller stated that Davis had refused to let him take the Waller family share of the wheat, and had reached for his pocket as if to draw a gun; Waller then fired on Davis.[11]
Davis escaped through the cornfield after being shot and was taken to the hospital, where he died of his wounds on July 17.[6] Afraid he would be lynched, Waller fled to Columbus, Ohio, but was arrested there at the home of an uncle on July 24 after a manhunt involving police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[12]
Trial
During Waller's trial, which began on September 19, 1940, he was represented by Thomas H. Stone of the small
Stone and another defense attorney, J. Byron Hopkins, were given only three days to prepare Waller's defense.
The testimony of Henry Davis and Oscar Davis's sons proved damning, and several witnesses also testified that they had heard Waller declare he would come home with his wheat or kill Oscar.
Campaign for commutation
After the trial, the RWL agreed to pass responsibility for the public campaign and legal appeals to the WDL, provided that the case continued to be handled "on a class struggle basis", with attention to national issues as well as Waller's specific situation.[24] Eager to help Waller, the WDL reluctantly agreed to the terms.[24] The organization assumed control of the case in November 1940 and immediately began fundraising on Waller's behalf.[25] Pauli Murray, a young woman new to the organization, was dispatched on a national fundraising tour, accompanied at times by Annie Waller.[26][27]
The
[The Waller case] attracted national attention, and it expressly highlighted racial identity as a component of criminal justice, press coverage, and regional exceptionalism.
—Peter Wallenstein[30]
On March 28, 1941, philosopher
US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt also worked on Waller's behalf. Historian Richard B. Sherman states that she became involved after receiving a letter from Murray, which prompted her to write Governor Price requesting that he investigate whether Waller had received a fair trial and delay the execution.[32] Roosevelt biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, in contrast, holds that the First Lady intervened after receiving a handwritten note from Waller himself saying "I have heard lots of people speak of what a nice lady you are and what I can hear is that you believe in helping the poor ... Please write to the Governor and get him to have mercy on me and allow me a chance."[33] Whatever its beginnings, Roosevelt's involvement in the case caused her to be widely criticized in the white Southern press.[34][35]
Execution
On June 1, 1942, the US Supreme Court denied two of Waller's petitions for appeal, and the defense was soon left without further legal options.[36] In a final attempt to win a pardon or commutation from the governor, activists staged events around the country, including a two-hour blackout of the lights in the primarily African-American neighborhood of Harlem in New York City.[37] Governor Price's successor, Colgate Darden, received over 17,000 letters about the case.[37]
On the eve of Waller's execution, Eleanor Roosevelt appealed to her husband, President
Waller wrote a ten-page "Dying Statement" before his execution, admitting he had made mistakes but insisting that he had acted in self-defense:
I haven't lived so upright and I have asked God to forgive me and I feel he has ... I accidentally fell and some good people tried to help me ... In my case I worked hard from sun up to sun down trying to make a living for my family and it ended up in death for me. You take big people, as the presidents, governors, judges, their children don't never have to suffer, they has plenty money. Born in a mention nothing ever to worry about. I am glad that some people are lucky. The penitentiary all over the United States are full of people ho was pore tried to work and have something, and couldn't so that maid them steel and rob.[42]
He was executed by electric chair on the morning of July 2, 1942. At the time of his execution, Waller had been on death row for 630 days, then the longest death row stay in the state's history.[43] His funeral was held on July 5 and was attended by 2,500 people. Only one white person, WDL Secretary Morris Milgram, attended. Other whites had been asked not to come; a reporter wrote of the exclusion that "[the black community] did not want 'Odell Waller's murderers' to look on his face in death".[44]
Impact of the case
Despite the uproar over the poll tax as a factor in jury selection, the tax remained in Virginia until the ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlawed it in 1964.[45] Pauli Murray was deeply affected by her experience working on the case and was inspired to pursue her career in civil rights law.[46] Governor Darden, influenced by the popular sentiment that the case had evoked, began a reform of the Virginia penal system, including the creation of an official Pardon and Parole Board with the authority to commute sentences.[47]
Notes
References
- ^ a b c Sherman 1992, p. 7.
- ^ a b Sherman 1992, p. 9.
- ^ a b Sherman 1992, p. 8.
- ^ a b c Stack 2009, p. 18.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 11.
- ^ a b c Sherman 1992, p. 12.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 10–12.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 25.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 27–28.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 30.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 29.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 12–13.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 16.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 20.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 21.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 17.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 15.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 22.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 25–32.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 27.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 32.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 53.
- ^ a b Sherman 1992, p. 35.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 35–36.
- ^ Mary Welek Atwell (January 1, 2002). "Murray, Pauli (1910–1985)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved January 14, 2013 – via HighBeam Research.
- ^ a b Stack 2009, p. 19.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 90–91.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 53–54.
- JSTOR 3662930.
- ^ Stack 2009, p. 27.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 42–43.
- ^ Goodwin 1994, pp. 351–352.
- ^ Goodwin 1994, p. 353.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 112.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 116, 122.
- ^ a b Goodwin 1994, p. 351.
- ^ a b Goodwin 1994, p. 352.
- ^ Goodwin 1994, pp. 352–354.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 173.
- ^ Goodwin 1994, p. 354.
- ^ Stack 2009, p. 28.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 163.
- ^ Sherman 1992, pp. 167–169.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 189.
- ^ Mack 2012, p. 226.
- ^ Sherman 1992, p. 182.
Bibliography
- Goodwin, Doris Kearns (1994). No Ordinary Time. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780684804484.
- Mack, Kenneth W. (2012). Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674046870.
- Sherman, Richard B. (1992). The Case of Odell Waller and Virginia Justice, 1940–1942. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 9780870497339.
- Stack, Sam F. (2009). "John Dewey and the Question of Race: The Fight for Odell Waller". Education and Culture. 25 (1): 17–35. S2CID 145607508. Retrieved 15 January 2013.
External links
- Interview with Pauli Murray on the Waller case at Oral Histories of the American South