A Case of Rape or Seduction?

"One, two, three, Joan must be set free. Four, five, six, power to the ice pick."

A death weapon is an odd object for cheering. So, for that matter, is Joan Little. But the chants of some 500 demonstrators merely echoed the uniqueness of the case that came to trial last week in Raleigh, N.C. What began as an obscure slaying in a small-town Southern jail has burgeoned into an expensive legal struggle and an emotional national controversy. Supporters of Joan Little, the 21-year-old black defendant, have raised nearly $300,000 through nationwide appeals; the state of North Carolina and its Wake County are spending some $100,000 to provide lavish trial security and to prosecute the case.

The tension stems from conflicting theories of why Joan (5 ft. 3 in., 120 lbs.) stabbed Jailer Clarence Alligood (5 ft. 8 in., 200 lbs.) eleven times with an ice pick in the Beaufort County jail in Washington, N.C. (pop. 9,000), on Aug. 27, 1974. Joan, her lawyers and a spontaneous coalition of feminists, civil rights and prison-reform advocates insist that she was defending herself against rape by her 62-year-old white jailkeeper. To them, this is a classic example of the way rape victims can be railroaded by male-dominated legal systems, and of how black women prisoners are sexually abused by white guards, especially in the rural South. To the prosecutors, as well as to much of the local white population, Joan is a burglar and a woman of loose morals who lured Alligood into making sexual advances in order to break out of jail.

Bad Company. No one denies that Joan had recently fallen into bad company. Born along the Pamlico River in rural Beaufort County, she was the oldest of nine children; her parents were divorced while she was young. She attended high school in South Orange, N.J., and Philadelphia, where she had relatives. She returned to Washington to get her diploma, but quit when school officials insisted that she repeat a year. She worked as a sheet-rock finisher, making up to $275 a week, but was arrested twice in 1973 on charges that included shoplifting and carrying a concealed rifle in her car. She drew a suspended sentence for shoplifting.

Joan began living in 1973 with Julius Rogers, a Washington pool-hall operator with an unsavory local reputation. She was arrested last June with her younger brother Jerome and charged with stealing $850 worth of property from two mobile homes. Jerome turned state's evidence and got a three-year sentence; Joan later admitted her guilt but still received a stiff seven to ten years in prison. She had spent 81 days in the Beaufort jail, awaiting transfer to a women's correctional institution, when the killing occurred.

According to Joan's lawyers (Jerry Paul and Morris Dees, both white, and Karen Galloway, a black), Alligood carried sandwiches to Joan's cell at about 3 a.m., put them down, then took off his shoes and pants and entered the cell, nude from the waist down. Joan noticed a "silly little grin" on his face, saw an ice pick in his hand and grabbed the pick in the struggle to defend herself. The prosecution concedes that Alligood had sex on his mind, but it contends that Joan had willingly accepted his advances on previous visits in return for telephone privileges and sandwiches. In this instance, according to Prosecutor William Griffin, Joan had taken the ice pick from Alligood's desk while making a telephone call, cooperated in a sexual act and then murdered him.

Whether Joan had indeed engaged in sex with the jailer, willingly or under force, will be a basic issue at the trial. She claims she successfully fought off the attack. The county medical examiner reported finding what appeared to him to be semen on Alligood's thigh--an inconclusive point, certain to be argued. Joan could not be examined for evidence of rape because she ran out of the jail after the killing, surrendering eight days later with her lawyer.

Book Notes. The verdict apparently will hinge largely on whether the jury is most persuaded by Joan, who may be impressive on the stand, or by the state's circumstantial evidence. The state will stress a note that Joan made in a crossword-puzzle book, which it will contend indicates she intended to escape. The defense will insist that the note referred to her hope for release on bail while appealing her conviction.

To get the jury it wants, the defense had the trial moved from rural Washington to the state capital of Raleigh, and it has called in a battery of psychiatrists, sociologists and other specialists who spent $38,992 developing an "attitude profile survey" of the county's population. After first making telephone surveys designed to detect patterns of prejudice, the defense asked prospective jurors seemingly unrelated questions like "What magazines do you subscribe to?" and "Do you think Richard Nixon was treated unfairly during Watergate?" (This technique has been used with some success in certain trials of radicals.)

At week's end eight jurors had been seated (six whites, two blacks; three men, five women) after the prosecution used peremptory challenges to bar five other blacks. So the trial will not be a short one. Estimated duration: at least six weeks.

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