State v Johnson

“Nobody was interested in justice.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Before we begin, a warning this episode contains material
that may be upsetting to some listeners. The facts of
the case in State v. Johnson, as described by the
alleged victim, are as follows. She was thirty two years old.

(00:36):
She was a nurse's aide at Talmadge Memorial Hospital. She
says she left work alone on the evening of January
twenty sixth at eleven p m. While she was getting
in her car, the accused, Nathaniel Johnson, seized her and
threatened to kill her if she did not get into
his car. She got away, screamed for help. He caught her.

(00:57):
She told him to take her money and leave her alone,
but he replied, I don't want money, I want you.
The victim's description of what happened that night is very graphic.
It goes on for several pages. I'm giving you an
abridged version, but it's still very disturbing, so please keep

(01:17):
that in mind. As you'll see, understanding exactly what the
defendant was accused of in this instance is crucial. She
got away and ran screaming onto the lawn of the hospital,
where he once again caught her and dragged her to
his car. He knocked her down, repeatedly slapped her in

(01:40):
the face, and told her to shut up or he
would kill her. Johnson placed his knee on her chest,
pinning her down, put his hand on her throat into
the trachia and kept bearing down on it, telling her
to quit screaming. He closed her nostrils with his other hand,
and since she could not get air, she lost consciousness.

(02:02):
When she came to, she realized that she was in
the back of a moving automobile. He finally stopped his
car on a dirt road, pushed her out onto the ground,
and raped her. He took a shot of whiskey and
asked her if she drank. She replied that she did not,
that she was a Sunday school teacher. He raped her

(02:24):
a second time they drove back into town. He took
her wallet, wrote down her name, address, telephone number, and
her husband's name on a piece of paper, and put
it in his pocket. Pictures taken of the victim immediately
after the assault and placed in evidence without objection on

(02:45):
quoting now shows several severe scratches and bruises on her face, head,
and throat, and testimony offered by the state shows that
her clothing was badly torn and bloody.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
End of.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
The alleged perpetrator, Nathaniel Johnson was arrested. The victim picked
him out of a lineup. He confesned, he was tried,
he was convicted. Here's my question, how do you feel
about the case of State v. Johnson. We have a victim,

(03:23):
we have physical evidence, we have a positive identification, we
have a confession. Do you know all you need to know?
My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. In the course

(03:49):
of this season, I have been preoccupied with the subject
of power, the particular power of friendship, the way shifts
in power change the way we remember the past. And
with this episode and the next one, I want to
return to that subject one more time and focus on
our reluctance to acknowledge the role of power, the way

(04:10):
we pretend that we can make sense of the world
without first clarifying who has the power and who does not.
Let me give you an example of what I mean
about the complicating effects of power. It's from Well into

(04:30):
the trial of Nathaniel Johnson. One after another, witnesses against
Johnson have presented devastating evidence. One of the arresting officers
is testifying about what Nathaniel Johnson said in his confession.
It's a small moment and slips out seemingly without anyone
remarking on it. This is what the officer says. Nathaniel

(04:52):
Johnson told us that after he had intercourse with this
lady there, that she asked him for a cigarette. He said,
he give her a cigarette and said he took one
and smoked it himself, and said they threw the butts
down there. We found three butts there at this place,
at the scene, we found three butts there? Does that

(05:15):
fact strike you as strange? Is it commonplace for two
people to share a cigarette after a brutal rape? And
how about this? It also slips out in the trial
without comment. The police chief, a man named George Mutimer,
tells the court about Nathaniel Johnson's confession. Johnson's talked about

(05:35):
driving with the victim in his car. They fought, she resisted,
he was apparently choking her. And then Mutimer testifies, and
I'm quoting, he said at that time that he drove off,
went to a little side road off the New Savannah
Road and parked, and he claims that she said it
was too close to the road. He drove on maybe

(05:56):
half a city block further and parked. Why is the
victim complaining to her rapist that he's parked too close
to the road. Then there's a prosecution's star witness on
Missus Bailey. She testifies that three years earlier, Nathaniel Johnson

(06:17):
had come up to her while she was sitting in
a parked car and he tried to assault her. And
reading now from the transcript, the prosecutor asks, Missus Bailey,
you testified that this man grabbed you round the throat
and you screamed and somebody came out of the door.
I believe Missus Bailey, Yes, sir, prosecutor. Did you see
where he went, Missus Bailey, I saw him run down

(06:40):
the road, Prosecutor, How fast was he going? Bailey? Mighty fast.
Nathaniel Johnson happens to be an Army veteran who lost
part of his foot in combat, broke both legs, both arms,
his shoulder, broke his collar bone, six bullets in his hip.
He spent two years in a rehab hospital recovering. I

(07:00):
don't see him running mighty fast anywhere. At the very
end of the trial, Nathaniel Johnson finally speaks. He's not
very coherent. He knows he's going to get convicted. He's confessed.
He starts out by saying that he had a statement
he wanted to make, but he's decided against giving it.

(07:23):
Again from the court transcript, this is Nathaniel Johnson. I
don't know. I just don't feel that it was. It
would be, it would be well, it would be, you know,
for me to say it, But to tell the truth
about it well makes you wonder. Trial is over. He's

(07:44):
already confessed. Why is he hemming in hawing? He goes on,
I am here to say to day that I am
not guilty of rape. I won't give this statement which
would run the facts down on what really happened and
everything to keep from bringing a disturbment in a century
of colored and white at this time, I don't want
to be responsible for it. Nathaniel Johnson wanted to avoid

(08:13):
bringing a disturbment between colored and white. I asked you
at the beginning, how sure you were about the guilty
verdict against Nathaniel Johnson. We had a victim, we had
physical evidence, we had a positive identification, we had a confession.
That sounds like enough, But that little reference to colored
and white is a reminder that I left out almost

(08:36):
all of the details having to do with power. Where
did the rape allegedly take place, Well, let me tell
you in Augusta, Georgia, the South. Okay, when did it
allegedly take place? Nineteen fifty nine, a very different era
in a place like Augusta, Georgia. And the most crucial fact,

(09:00):
colored and white. The accuser was white, her alleged assailant,
Nathaniel Johnson was black. After his arrest, Johnson has taken
to the interrogation room at the police station with the
arresting officer, Holly Tebow. Tebow's not getting anywhere, so he
calls in Chief Mutimer. At the trial Tebo says they

(09:22):
do that quite frequently because whenever they call him Mutimer,
most of the people talk. Then Tebow goes on. Chief
Mutimer stayed in the interrogation room with him for some time,
and he came out and shook his head and said, Holly,
he told me about it. And I went back and
there in the interrogation room, and he was crying Nathaniel

(09:45):
was crying. The chief of police, who was really good
at making people talk, disappears alone into the interrogation room
with Johnson for a few hours, no lawyer's in sight,
and when he emerges, he has a confession. Let me
read to you again from Nathaniel Johnson's closing statement, only

(10:06):
this time keep in mind who he is, where he is,
and when it is. Johnson says, I am not guilty
of rape. And the statement I have is a true statement.
But the shape of the courtroom to the community and
citizens of this town, colored and white, I think I
would bring a big confusion between them. And I know

(10:27):
rape is a serious charge, and I know it is
more serious by a colored man being accused of rape
by a white woman. And so I want to leave
it in you all's hands and trust you all to
do what the Lord and justice of it. And I
am not guilty of rape in my heart. That is
the truth from God. If you don't know, it's Georgia,

(10:48):
it's nineteen fifty nine, and that Nathaniel Johnson is black
and his victim is white. What do you know? Nothing?
In Georgia, there is a lineage of civil rights lawyers,
A tradition. It begins with the man named at Walden,

(11:11):
born in eighteen eighty five to two former slaves in
Fort Valley, Georgia.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
When I was a kid, and Austin Thomas Walden, who
finished University of Michigan in nineteen twelve, would come to
my church for the Saint cecia vesper hour, and I
sang in the Saint ceci A choir, and I would
hear him speak about segregation, and he would say, I'll

(11:40):
be glad when you are dead, that you rascal. You.
So I grew up wanting to be a lawyer like
Austin T. Walden.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Vernon Jordan, one of the legends of the civil rights movement.
He's had an extraordinary career. He ran the Urban League
for years. He was a close confident on the President Clinton,
a deal maker on Wall Street. He's eighty one years old.
He must be six foot four in pecker Southern manners,
a long and passive face. When he talks to you,

(12:13):
he leans down from his great height and lowers his voice.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
So in nineteen sixty five, as a very young lawyer,
I was asked to give the Emancipation Proclamation Day speech.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
I went to see Jordan in his office in Rockefeller
Center a worse suit. I was told I had to
Vernon likes people to dress properly. He began by describing
his induction into the Civil Rights Fraternity. The day the
Georgia NAACP asked him to speak.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Walden was on this pool pit with braces on his legs.
He could hardly move and when by when I finished,
Walden struggled up to me and said he had a
home run. Son, you hit a home run that was

(13:04):
delaying on of hands. That was the blessing.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
In the lineage of civil rights lawyers at Walden came first.
Next in line was a man named Donald L. Hollowell,
another legend. I will have much much more to say
about Hollowell in the next episode. Vernon Jordan was inspired
by Walden, and straight out of law school he went
to work for Hollowell. He was a disciple of two

(13:32):
of the greats. And I went to see Jordan to
learn what being a disciple in Georgia in those years meant.
What did you learn? What were you up against? There
were very few black lawyers in the South in those years.
If you were black and in trouble, you rarely had
one of your own to represent you. Justice is supposed

(13:53):
to be blind, which is another way of saying that
we're supposed to close our eyes when we enter a
courtroom and not notice a fact like race. In nineteen
fifty nine, Donald Hollowell and Vernon Jordan had their eyes
wide open. They watched what was happening to me Nathaniel
Johnson and Augusta with growing alarm.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
And he was given a white quarter pointed lawyer who
convinced him, given the circumstances of a black man being
accused by a white woman of rape, said to him,
the best way to stay out of the electric chair
is to plead guilty and have her corroborate your guilty.

(14:34):
Plead and you'll get life. And he went for it.
He did not get life, He got the electric chair.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
To put that in perspective, there was a case in
Atlanta right around the same time as Johnson's only that
involved a white man convicted of raping his black maid.
He broke down the bathroom door and attacked her. He
got two to five years. White on black rape was
a two to five year crime in a state of Georgia.
Johnson faced a death penalty, so when Johnson says in

(15:11):
his final statement, I know rape is a serious charge,
and I know it is more serious by a colored
man being accused of rape by a white woman. That's
what he's talking about. There's one set of rules for
white people and another for black people, and the standards
for legal representation those are different too.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
The White Court upon It lawyer the night before he
was to be executed, got drunk in an augusta bar
barred paper from the bartend that wrote out a rid
of pavias corpus, and went to the judge to argue
that Nathaniel Johnson's rights under the Fifth Amendment had been violated.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
As it turns out, that's the wrong amendment. Under those circumstances,
the lawyer should have raised the Fourteenth Amendment. But the
lawyer's writing an appeal while he's drunk, and it's not
at all clear that he cares that much, since if
you read the trial transcript, Johnson's lawyer barely ever said anything.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
And it went up to the Supreme Court on sociary,
which was denied. And then mister Hallowell, my boss, was hired,
and I went with him to see Nathaniel Johnson and
the Reidsville State Prison. He was a very handsome, cool prisoner.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Hallowell and Jordan were brought in by the NAACP to
try and win a stay of execution. One last Hail Mary.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
How old was? He must have been thirty thirty two,
something like that.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Jordan and Hallowell sit down with Johnson and start to
piece together Johnson's version of what happened that night. It's
a very different story.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
He was having a relationship with this woman, this white woman,
and the relationship was put together by a black assistant
nurse at the hospital in Augusta, and he would go
and pick her up and they would go out on
the roads and do their business.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
In the version of events that got Johnson convicted, the
victim had never seen him before. But Nathaniel Johnson told
Jordan and halliwell, they had been spotted together.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
One night. They were out on the road and the
car got stuck in the mud, and a group of
white hunters were crossing the road. And she gets out
and says, I'm taking my yard man home. And we
got stuck in the mud, and these white hunters pushed
the car out of the mud.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
If you read the official account of the case, it
says that the victim reported her alleged assault to the
police in the early hours of the morning on January
twenty seventh, after she gets home. Then it goes on
to say crucially that the police arrest Johnson that same night.
Think about that Augusta at the time is a city
of seventy thousand people, roughly half black. So we are

(18:21):
asked to believe that, in the course of a couple
of hours, without benefit of daylight, the police were able
to correctly locate, in a community of thirty five thousand
African Americans a suspect, and that they did this with
no more than the description of his automobile from a
badly traumatized rape victim. Because she'd never met him before.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
And so after a visit on the dark road, she
said to him that she was pregnant, and a disagreement ensued.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
They had a fight. It beat her up. That's how
she ended up with all those injuries. Johnson had physical
power over her, but she had far greater power over him.
In that time and place, a white woman had the
power of life and death over a black man.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
She went home and told her husband that she had
been raped and they went to Nathaniel Johnson's house in
the middle of the night. Illegal arrest, illegal searcher and sez,
illegal attention, all of that.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
When you saw him, did he think that he had
a chance.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
He was just scared to death. He was just scared
to death, and we were his only hope.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
We were his only hope. And so Hallowell and Jordan
set out to save Nathaniel Johnson's life anyway they can
stay the execution, fight for a new trial. Jordan was
fresh out of law school, full of righteous anger and idealism.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
And I remember going into his cell with him and
mister Hallowell when holliwa said, we're going to see the
local judge here. Then we will drive to Atlanta and
we will go to see the Chief Justice, Supreme Court,
the Attorney General, the Governor, and the Board of part

(20:24):
in pro.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
It was the beginning of the apprenticeship of Vernon Jordan.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
And that's when mister Hallowell put me on the case
and we went to Brunswick, Georgia, which I'll never forget.
The federal district judge there began the case by asking
when is the execution schedule, and they said tomorrow morning,

(20:57):
your honor. So he listened to the state Attorney. As
he listened to mister Hallowell, and I remember him saying,
justice delayed is justice denied. And we drove from Brunswick
after he refused to stay the execution, from Brunswick, Georgia,

(21:17):
to Atlanta. That's when it was all two highways. I
did the driving, and we ended up and the chambers
of the Chief Justice. And he walked in and says,
sees me, and he said, son, where did you play basketball?

(21:40):
And I said, mister Chief Justice, we're not here to
talk about where I played basketball. We're here about the
life from Nathaniel Johnson. He said that color Bar went
out there on that road and raped that woman. I

(22:01):
don't wanna hear about that. We then go from his
chambers to the next bill where the Attorney General was.
Secretary picks up the phone and says to the Attorney General,
mister Attorney General, they had two boys out here to
see you. The Attorney General of Georgia, Henry Neal, did

(22:25):
not invite us into his office. He came out and
stood behind the secretary's desk and said that the governor
was out of town, and the governor would not stay
the execution, and we left and went to the Board

(22:46):
of Partnering Paroles. And as we walked in the door,
he said, hallowell, you're too late. Nathaniel Johnson is on
his way to the electric chair.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
There was nothing more for them to do.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
I said, missus Hall, I would like to have the
rest of the day off. He said fine. And I
had on a light beige has spelled suit that I
had gotten for graduation, and I walked down Hunter Street home.

(23:27):
It was eighty five ninety degrees in Atlanta, and I'm
walking alone thinking what I had just witnessed, thinking about
the first time I saw him, and thinking about seeing
him the night before he died. And I just walked

(23:53):
home crying. It's the only time in my eighty one
years that I can remember losing control and just urinated
all over myself on my brand new beige suit. I

(24:20):
remember that as vivid is. I see you right now.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
When Vernon Jordan told me the story of Nathaniel Johnson,
the first thing I thought about was Harperly's classic To
Kill a Mockingbird, the book every American child reads in
middle school.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Now, Maylow suppose you tell us just what happened? Huh?

Speaker 1 (24:51):
It tells the same basic story, right.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
I was sitting on the porch and he come along.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
The Jim Crow South, a black man named Tom Robinson
accused of rape by a white woman, may La Yule, and.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
I turned around it before I know what he's on me.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
But Tom Robinson's lawyer, Atticus Finch, is white, which of
course changes everything. Finch addresses an all male, all white
jury men just like him, So what does he do?
He puts Robinson on the stand and has him talk
about all the ways in which Mayella Hill try to
trap him.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Tom. Were you acquainted with Mayellow Violet Eule? I had
to pass her place going to in front of the
field every day.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Robinson says, he just happened to be walking by Mayella's house.
She asks him to come in and help her dismantle
a piece of furniture. Then she hugs him around the waist.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Scared miss and I hoped down and turned the tails.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
How was the only thing under Atticus Finch's careful direction?
Robinson then says, one more thing. And by the way,
if you've watched the famous Gregory Peck movie version of
To Kill a Mockingbird, the one you're in hearing. You
won't find these lines. Here's how it's originally written. She
reached up and kissed me on the side of the face.

(26:15):
She says. She never kissed a grown man before, and
she might as well kiss a nigger. She says, what
her papa do to her don't count. She says, kiss
me back, nigger. I say, miss Mayella, let me out
of here, and I tried to run, but she got
her back to the door and I had to push her.
I don't want to harm her, mister Finch, and I say,
let me pass. But just when I say it, mister

(26:36):
yule Yonder hollered through a window. What did he say?
Tom Robinson shut his eyes tight. He says, you goddamn whore.
I'll kill you. In his summation to the court, Arakas

(26:57):
Finch says she knew full well the enormity of her offense,
but because her desires were stronger than the code she
was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. He's saying she
wanted it, and not only that. When he has Tom
Robinson drop that little bit about she says that what
her papa do to her don't count. He's accusing her

(27:17):
of incest. Finch is offering his fellow white men on
the jury a choice. He says, Look, you can act
as white people and enforce your power against black people,
or you can act as men and enforce the power
of your gender against women. Atticus Finch gets an awful
out of love. But when I read that book, all

(27:39):
I could think was he's just telling them, don't be racist,
be sexist. That might be a good argument in the moment,
but it's not especially noble. When Vernon Jordan is walking
through the streets of Atlanta with that humiliating stain spreading

(28:02):
down his beige suit, he knows he doesn't have the
same freedom that Antticus Finch has. Finch is free to
say whatever he wants to the jury, that's the privilege
of his race and position, but Jordan is powerless. That's
also why Nathaniel Johnson didn't even bother to defend himself
in court. He said, I know the truth, but what's

(28:25):
the point. Remember what Johnson said, I would say that
the reason I won't give this statement, which would run
the facts down on what really happened and everything to
keep from bringing a disturbment in a century of colored
and white at this time. I don't want to be
responsible for it. When you went on those rounds, was

(28:48):
no one interested in hearing the facts of the case.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
No, that includes a federal district judge, That includes a
local judge in Redesville, the chief Justice, the attorney general,
and the board department paroles. It was over, it was done.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do you think they honestly believed it was a case
of rape or do you think that they.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
It didn't matter. It was a white woman and a
black man, a black man doing something that was out
of the question in the South, and the court opponted
lawyer had to know that it was a consensual relationship.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, So it's just a kind of They weren't even
going to the trouble of thinking it's true.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Nobody was interested in justice.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Everyone went on with their lives, the judges, the attorney general,
the lawyers. It takes time to unravel the truth in
situations where one side has all the power. Nobody had
the time. The trial transcript of the Johnson case in
the Georgia archives looks like it's never been touched. I

(30:11):
don't even know where he's buried. I wouldn't know how
to look for the grave of someone nobody remembers, executed
half a century ago. All that's left are one man's memories.
Did you ever meet the accuser?

Speaker 2 (30:27):
I never did. The word is that after he died,
that the white lady went around to black churches and
asked forgiveness.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Revision's History is produced by Emil LaBelle and Jacob Smith,
with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Siomarra Martinez White. Our
editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer. Original
music by Luis Sciarra. Special thanks to Andy Bauers and
Jacob Weisberger. Panoply, I'm Malcolm Gladwell.