Associated Press Samuel Leibowitz, second from left, conferring in 1935 with seven of the nine black youths convicted of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Ala. Leibowitz took on their case and won a major Supreme Court decision.The vote on Thursday by Alabama lawmakers to issue posthumous pardons to the nine Scottsboro Boys would have pleased Samuel S. Leibowitz of Brooklyn.
Leibowitz, who died 35 years ago, was a lawyer for highflying underworld figures, including Al Capone, during Prohibition. Without charging a fee, he took the case of the nine black youths convicted of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Ala., in 1931. They ranged in age from 13 to 19, and all but the youngest were sentenced to death.
Leibowitz saved their lives after the Supreme Court agreed in 1935 that blacks had been systematically and unconstitutionally excluded from the jury. Charges were later dropped for four of the nine. Most of the rest served prison sentences after being retried. The last of the defendants died in 1989.
“If there’s anything else I can take to my grave, it’s that I got the first black man on a jury in the South in the history of the United States,†Leibowitz said when he retired.
As a defense lawyer, Leibowitz coupled courtroom histrionics with diligent homework to win 139 of the 140 murder cases he defended. The one defendant who was convicted was sentenced to death. One observer later wrote that the defendant “lied himself into the hot seat with a facility that astonished his counsel and convinced the jury.â€
Later, Leibowitz became a Criminal Court and State Supreme Court justice and was famous for meting out tough sentences - 30- and 60-year terms for muggers and robbers, which prompted a fellow jurist to recall: “We didn’t have many recidivists from Sam Leibowitz.â€
