Posted on 02/02/2024 4:36:34 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1951, the first of two batches comprising the “Martinsville Seven” — black, all — went to the Virginia electric chair for gang-raping a white woman. (The remainder were executed on Feb. 5)
Somewhat forgotten today, the Martinsville Seven were in their day the locus of radical activism against Jim Crow in the South — very much like Willie McGee, who was put to death in Louisiana later that same year.
In fact, this case generated a bit of a legal milestone: a month before the executions began, the U.S. Supreme Court declined an appeal seeking relief on the then-novel grounds of equal protection — rather than due process.
The argument was that the Old Dominion’s superficially race-neutral rape statute was anything but; that argument was buttressed by data showing that Virginia had executed 45 black men for raping white women from 1908 to 1950, but never once in that period executed any white man for raping a black woman. (The high court only declined to take the appeal; it wouldn’t get around to explicitly ruling equal protection claims based on racial patterns out of bounds until 1987’s McCleskey v. Kemp.)...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Which begs the question: Were any white men convicted of raping black women in Viginia during that same time period? If there were, and they got a lenient sentence, then there would definitely be an equal protection issue.
You have to wonder how many white men would rape a black woman.
But then you have to wonder if they did how many black women would go to the police.
Those are good questions.
But, in order to argue an equal opportunity violation there must be evidence that a white man convicted of raping a black woman received a lesser sentence, and why. The comparison has to be apples to apples.
Men who violently rape women should be given a choice: surgical castration or death, regardless of the race of either the victim or perp.
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