"I Never Hit Nobody"

In Mississippi, evidence does not always equal conviction, especially in civil rights cases. Still, acquittal seemed unlikely last week for eight white men on trial in U.S. District Judge Claude Clayton's court in Oxford. The cause of it all was a wild white mob that undeniably tried to halt school integration in Grenada last fall by flailing Negro schoolchildren with fists, feet, clubs and chains. According to the U.S. prosecutor, the defendants, including a justice of the peace, were part of that mob --and he had 25 witnesses to prove it.

For two days, the witnesses described acts of violence committed by the defendants, who faced maximum one-year federal sentences and $1,000 fines for violating the victims' civil rights. James Conley, 17, testified that Duke Reynolds had cried, "Nigger, move," that he had moved, and that Reynolds then clubbed him with a stick. Felix Freelon, father of two Negro schoolchildren, said that William Bryant Flanagan had hit him with a blackjack. According to Charles Alexander, 17, Justice of the Peace James R. Ayers had threatened him with a pistol. And Emerald Cunningham, 11, a polio victim who could not run, added that Ayers had chased her, grabbed her dress, pulled her down, kicked her, put a pistol to her head, and warned: "If you bring your black ass back to the white school, I'll blow your brains out."

Character Witnesses. The star prosecution witness was one of the defendants' peers, Grenada Police Captain W. C. Turner, who described how Archie Larry Campbell and Donald Wayne Bain attacked a Negro boy walking to school. "As he approached the library," said Turner, "Mr. Campbell walked across the street and hit him with something. I don't know what it was. Then the boy was laying on the sidewalk. Mr. Bain was kicking him in the face. He was bleeding about the nose and mouth." Turner said that he also saw Jerome Shaw smash the windows of a car with a pick handle, recounted other scenes of men gone berserk.

It was not enough. The experienced defense lawyer was Hugh Cunningham, law partner of ex-Governor Ross Barnett and high among those who sprang Byron De La Beckwith, the accused killer of N.A.A.C.P. Leader Medgar Evers. Under Cunningham's skilled guidance, one by one the eight defendants told the all-white jury that either they were somewhere else during the riot or, if they were present, "I never hit nobody." A parade of character witnesses, including a local judge, warmly vouched for the defendants' reputations for truth. Lawyer Cunningham then attacked Police Captain Turner's credibility by producing other character witnesses who declared that Turner's reputation for truth was "no good."

That was enough. Judge Clayton urged the jurors to reach a decision "based on the evidence without bias," and the jurors deliberated for 3 1/2 hours. Then in came the verdict: not guilty. The defendants rushed up with handshakes for the jurors; the jurors beamed congratulations. The Government cannot appeal.

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