The Tennesseean

By MOLLY SECOURS, Columnist

Hindsight is 20/​20. Unless you are the vic­tim of a wrong­ful exe­cu­tion. It is only use­ful to those who live long enough to deci­pher the lessons of his­to­ry. Unfortunately Tennessee has much to learn from the unjust exe­cu­tions of our past.

Respected Nashville jour­nal­ist and author John Egerton researched sta­tis­tics com­piled at Tuskegee Institute and reveals in his book Shades of Grey that 1,799 blacks and 196 whites were lynched in the United States between 1900 and 1962. An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of those lynched were black males killed in the nine Southern states. Out of those nine states, Tennessee is one in which over 200 lynch­ings have occurred (204 black and 47 whites).

Egerton states that ​”since 1919, the state of Tennessee which is 85% white has legal­ly exe­cut­ed 86 blacks and 38 whites all of them males from the bot­tom of the socioe­co­nom­ic scale.” The last exe­cu­tion of a black man in our Volunteer State took place just over 40 years ago. There was scant evi­dence to prove that William Tines actu­al­ly raped Bertha Riggs, and the vic­tim her­self could not remem­ber the assault. Though Tines had pre­vi­ous­ly been con­vict­ed of a dou­ble mur­der, it was the rape charge for which he was exe­cut­ed. Amid the ten­sion and pub­lic­i­ty sur­round­ing the tri­al, the court failed to admon­ish the jury to look sole­ly at the evi­dence pre­sent­ed. And unfor­tu­nate­ly for Tines, one of the jurors was a co-work­er of the vic­tim’s broth­er. William Tines died in the elec­tric chair in 1960.

Most of us would rather not acknowl­edge that many a black man has unjust­ly lost his life for being accused of defil­ing a white woman in spite of the fact that most rapes com­mit­ted against white woman are by white men. Egerton writes about a dubi­ous 1921 exe­cu­tion in Knoxville. Maurice Mays, a light-skinned black man (rumored to be the ille­git­i­mate son of a promi­nent pub­lic offi­cial) was accused of shoot­ing Bertie Smyth Lindsey and fondling her cousin. There was no evi­dence to sup­port the accu­sa­tion years after the exe­cu­tion, a guilt-rid­den Sadie Brown Mendil walked into a police sta­tion in Norton, Va., and calm­ly told the offi­cer in charge that she mur­dered Bertie Smyth Lindsey because the vic­tim was hav­ing an affair with her husband.

Mendil’s writ­ten con­fes­sion revealed that she dis­guised her­self by dress­ing in men’s cloth­ing and black­en­ing her face, con­fi­dent that author­i­ties would read­i­ly sus­pect a black man. Although the Virginia author­i­ties found Mendil’s con­fes­sion to be cred­i­ble, the Knoxville police chief dis­cred­it­ed her sto­ry, stat­ing that ​”con­fes­sions” were com­mon after sen­sa­tion­al crimes. Mendil was ignored, and no one ever ques­tioned her about the crime again.

All of this begs the ques­tion: What has Tennessee learned from its past? If you’ve been pay­ing atten­tion, you know that the state sched­uled to exe­cute a men­tal­ly ill black man named Abu-Ali Abdhur’Rahman April 10. He was charged and con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing a drug deal­er in spite of the fact that the only per­son to tes­ti­fy against the defend­ent was DeValle Miller, a co-work­er and co-con­spir­a­tor in the crime.

The exe­cu­tion date is set despite the facts that:

  • The state’s pros­e­cu­tor, Assistant District Attorney John Zimmermann neglect­ed to inform judge, jury and defense coun­sel of Abu-Ali’s long his­to­ry of abuse and men­tal-ill­ness or the foren­sics report which deter­mined that no blood evi­dence was ever found on Abu-Ali’s cloth­ing in what was a par­tic­u­lar­ly bloody crime.
  • Devalle Miller who imme­di­ate­ly fled Nashville after the crime cut a deal with Zimmerman after being appre­hend­ed a year lat­er there­by trad­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny for a lesser charge.
  • After fed­er­al Judge Todd Campbell reviewed this case in 1998 and deter­mined Abu-Ali was denied his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a fair tri­al. (The State Supreme Court over­ruled the decision.)
  • Since the facts of this case sur­faced, eight of the 12 jurors signed sworn affi­davits stat­ing they should have known all the infor­ma­tion in Abu-Ali’s case before deliv­er­ing a ver­dict. Some expressed anger, and sev­er­al said it was dev­as­tat­ing to have unjust­ly sen­tenced a man to death.


Chris Armstrong, a crim­i­nal defense inves­ti­ga­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in death-penal­ty cas­es explained that typ­i­cal­ly there are one or two jurors who feel bad about killing some­one. In Abu-Ali’s case, Armstrong said, jurors were ​”hor­ri­fied” when they ​”real­ized that if the attor­neys in this case had done their work, Abu-Ali would not be on death row.” Armstrong also stat­ed that ​”once some­one is con­vict­ed, it’s ​‘all up stream.’ At that point, a defen­dan­t’s inno­cence is irrel­e­vant. If more peo­ple under­stood how the death penal­ty worked they would nev­er be in favor of killing anyone.”

If Abu-Ali is exe­cut­ed April 10, those look­ing back will won­der about the ques­tions raised and dis­missed in the case. They will won­der about such an egre­gious exam­ple of injustice.

For Tennessee, 20/​20 hind­sight will come in the form of embar­rass­ment and shame for hav­ing exe­cut­ed a men­tal­ly ill black man who nev­er received a fair tri­al. Sometimes the old adage is true: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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Molly Secours is a writer, activist and video­g­ra­ph­er in Nashville.