Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Descendants of Ida B. Wells Call for Freedom for Pervis Payne

As the first court hear­ing on Pervis Payne​’s claim that his death sen­tence must be vacat­ed because of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty was about to get under­way, promi­nent civ­il rights lead­ers and rel­a­tives of a civ­il rights icon added their voic­es to efforts to free the Tennessee death-row pris­on­er, who has con­sis­tent­ly assert­ed his innocence. 

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), found­ed in 1957 by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and oth­er civ­il rights activists, par­tic­i­pat­ed in a press con­fer­ence in Memphis on July 15, 2021, stand­ing along­side nation­al and Tennessee-based civ­il rights activists to call for Payne’s exon­er­a­tion. In an op-ed pub­lished in The Tennessean on July 16, the morn­ing of Payne’s hear­ing, Dan Duster (pic­tured), the great-grand­son of leg­endary jour­nal­ist and anti-lynch­ing activist Ida B. Wells, wrote that hon­or­ing Wells’ lega­cy means stand­ing for jus­tice for Payne.

Payne was con­vict­ed in 1988 of the mur­der of Charisse Christopher and her two-year-old daugh­ter. His tri­al was infect­ed with racial bias – in Duster’s words, ​“the pros­e­cu­tor paint­ed Payne as a drugged-up, sexed-crazed super preda­tor look­ing for a white woman to rape, going so far as to repeat­ed­ly refer to her ​‘white skin’ in front of the jury.” It didn’t mat­ter that Payne didn’t use drugs and the police refused to con­duct a drug test after his arrest, despite his mother’s request. ​“The prosecution’s age-old stereo­type about Black men attack­ing white women was per­sua­sive on a jury in Shelby County, with its long his­to­ry of lynch­ing and biased crim­i­nal jus­tice,” Duster wrote.

Payne has long main­tained that he had noth­ing to do with the mur­ders and was wait­ing for his girl­friend out­side her apart­ment when he heard calls for help. He came upon the crime scene and got blood on his clothes as he tried to help Christopher and remove the knife from her neck. Hearing police sirens and fear­ing he would be sus­pect­ed of the crime, Payne fled the scene. Payne’s account of events, his lack of crim­i­nal record, and evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty did not sway the jury. 

Payne’s case gained wide­spread atten­tion in 2020 as he sought DNA test­ing in his case and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim. The state set a December 3, 2020 exe­cu­tion date but, cit­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, Governor Bill Lee issued an exe­cu­tion reprieve. In January 2021, DNA test results point­ed to an ​“unknown male” as Christopher’s like­ly killer. Payne’s attor­neys described the results as ​“con­sis­tent with Pervis Payne’s long-stand­ing claim of inno­cence.” In April, the Tennessee leg­is­la­ture passed a bill to cure a defect in Tennessee’s law that had denied Payne the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present his claims of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Payne’s attor­neys imme­di­ate­ly filed his petition.

The July 16 hear­ing is the first step in the process of review­ing Payne’s claim. Judge Paula Skahan has ordered a men­tal eval­u­a­tion of Payne by a state expert and sched­uled a December 13 hear­ing for evi­dence from experts and argu­ment from attorneys. 

The sym­bol­ism of the sup­port from the SCLC and rel­a­tives of Ida B. Wells in a Memphis case imbued with racist over­tones was unmis­tak­able. Shelby County has had more lynch­ings than any oth­er coun­ty in Tennessee and Shelby pros­e­cu­tors have repeat­ed­ly been accused of mis­con­duct and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in death penal­ty cas­es. In May 1892, while Wells was attend­ing a con­fer­ence in Philadelphia, a white mob destroyed her Memphis news­pa­per office and threat­ened to lynch her after she pub­lished a sto­ry about the lynch­ing of three Black men who had opened a gro­cery store that com­pet­ed with a white-owned gro­cery. On April 4, 1968, King was assas­si­nat­ed while in Memphis to sup­port a strike by the city’s Black san­i­ta­tion work­ers. The mur­der occurred the day after his famous ​“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.

At a press con­fer­ence the day before Payne’s hear­ing, Dr. Charles Steele Jr., pres­i­dent and CEO of the SCLC said, ​“You need to under­stand what Doctor King said when he said, ​‘silence, in the face of evil, is evil itself.’ You’re just as bad as a pros­e­cu­tor and the folks that are going to exe­cute him if you don’t open your mouth and sup­port this movement.” 

“We’re going to have a nation­al move­ment in Memphis, Tennessee,” Steele said. ​“We’re going to free Pervis Payne!” 

Steele was joined at the press con­fer­ence by reli­gious lead­ers, civ­il rights activists, and State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who authored the first ver­sion of the bill to allow Payne to lit­i­gate his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim. ​“This fight is big­ger than an indi­vid­ual,” Hardaway said. ​“But that indi­vid­ual is just as impor­tant as the fight is. Let’s not ever dis­count that only because we’re fight­ing for one man right now that we’re not fight­ing for the men who have been vic­tim­ized by injus­tice in the past and those who are on the path to injus­tice unless we intervene.”

In his op-ed for The Tennessean, Duster not­ed that a stat­ue hon­or­ing his great-grand­moth­er was being unveiled the same morn­ing as Payne’s hear­ing. ​“The Ida B. Wells memo­r­i­al should inspire us to car­ry on her lega­cy and con­front the racism, unfair­ness, and racial vio­lence that per­sist in the present day,” he said.

“[O]ne per­son can make a dif­fer­ence, one voice can save a life. Now, we need to find that one per­son who will save Pervis Payne’s life,” he wrote. ​“The one per­son could save his life could be the Shelby County District Attorney, who could reck­on with the tac­tics used at Payne’s tri­al and agree to set­tle the case. The one per­son could be a judge who finds that Payne is a per­son with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and as such his exe­cu­tion would vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion. The one per­son could be Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee because Payne has made a com­pelling case for clemen­cy, on grounds of both inno­cence and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. I implore you to do the right thing; Stand for Justice for Pervis Payne.”