Bad Day in Longview

In an unpainted, poster-plastered little hut of a cafe outside the Gregg County seat of Longview in East Texas, a handful of teen-age Negroes drank soda pop, danced to the music of a beat-up jukebox, chattered happily just because it was Saturday night. Suddenly the cheerful inside noises were smeared by the snarl of a car outside, a sputtering of shots ("like a string of firecrackers," said one witness) and a scream.

As Perry Dean Ross of nearby Tatum, the driver of the car, put it later in his signed confession: "I held the steering wheel with my left hand and laid the gun (a Mossberg .22 automatic rifle] across the left door. I was going about 85 miles per hour at the time and I fired nine shots into the cafe." One of the slugs entered the head of a 16-year-old Negro, John Earl Reese, who died the next morning. Two others struck and wounded a pair of Negro girls, 13 and 15. That was 18 months ago.

Last week Triggerman Ross, 22, was finally brought to trial in Longview (pop. 38,900) for the "murder with malice" of the young Negro. Before a jury of twelve East Texans, all whites, his lawyers argued that Ross, who had had several beers, had not been bent on murder. Said one of them: "This boy wanted to scare somebody and keep the niggers and the whites from going to school together--now that's the truth about it." He appealed to the jury to "call it a bad day and let the boy go on in life." District Attorney Ralph Prince, who let 15 months go by before pressing the indictment, argued less forcibly that the jury should give Ross a jail sentence "that will deter others from committing a similar crime." The jury retired at 4:55 p.m. Ninety minutes later it was back with its verdict: guilty of murder, "without malice." The jury's recommended sentence: five years, suspended. Killer Ross was turned loose.

In Birmingham, Ala. (pop. 365,000), quite a different kind of trial took place. Accused of burglary "with intent to ravish'' Mrs. Mary Giangrosso, an elderly white woman, was Charles Clarence Hamilton, 26, Negro. Rejecting the court-appointed lawyer, Hamilton attempted to conduct his own defense, denied the state's charge that he entered Mrs. Giangrosso's home in October and that he was caught while removing his clothing. After slightly more than an hour's deliberation the all-White jury returned its verdict: guilty as charged. The sentence: death in the electric chair.

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