Emmett Till
Page 21
First up, and by far the most important, was eighteen-year-old Willie Reed. Reed was called in to testify as Mamie Bradley exited the courtroom, which prompted some overeager photographers to snap pictures of them both. The steady popping of flashbulbs got the attention of the judge, who ordered deputies to remove the erring photographers from the room.26
Robert Smith examined Reed for the state. The witness said that he lived on the Clint Shurden plantation (erroneously spelled Sheridan in the trial transcript and various newspaper accounts), and was familiar with both Leslie Milam, who managed the bordering Sturdivant plantation, and codefendant J. W. Milam, Leslie’s brother.
“Do you know Mr. J. W. Milam when you see him?” asked Smith.
“Yes, Sir,” replied Reed.
“Do you see him here in the courtroom?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Will you point him out, please, sir?”
Reminiscent of what Mose Wright had done the day before, Reed looked at Milam, pointed, and said, “He is sitting right over there.”27
Reed then gave his account about the morning of August 28. Between 6:00 and 7:00 A.M., he was walking north to a store owned by Glen Patterson, located near the Reed home, three and a half miles west of Drew. As he walked along the road, a green and white 1955 Chevrolet pickup truck passed by. In the front, he saw four white men; in the back were three black men. Two of those were sitting on the side of the truck, while one sat on the floor. Reed said the truck was about as far away from him as the back door in the courtroom was to his seat on the stand. Smith estimated this to be about fifty feet. Reed did not notice the features of anyone in the truck, not feeling any need to pay attention.
“Now, later on,” Smith probed, “did you recognize a photograph or anything that indicated to you who the one sitting down in the back end of that truck was?”
“Well, when I looked at this paper, I was sure—well, I seen it, and it seemed like I seen this boy someplace else before. And I looked at it and tried to remember, and then it come back to my memory that this was the same one I seen in the paper.”
“And was that Emmett Till?”
“I don’t know if that was him, but the picture favored him.”
Breland promptly objected, so Smith tried rephrasing the question several more times. Each time, Judge Swango sustained the defense’s repeated objections.28
Reed then provided the most disturbing part of his testimony. Continuing his walk to the Patterson store, he passed a shed on Leslie Milam’s place. He heard noises coming from the inside that sounded like someone being beaten. Smith showed Reed one of the photos already entered as evidence. After a few objections over wording, Swango allowed Smith to ask Reed if he had ever seen the boy in the photo before. Reed said that it was a picture of the boy he saw on the back of the truck. Although Breland objected once again, this time Swango allowed Reed’s testimony to stand.29
After Reed walked by the shed, he noticed that the truck that had passed him earlier was parked in front. He did not see anyone outside just then, but soon J. W. Milam, wearing a gun on his belt, walked out of the shed. He went to a well, got a drink of water, and returned to the shed.30
“Did you see or hear anything as you passed the barn?” asked Smith.
“I heard somebody hollering, and I heard some licks like somebody was whipping somebody.”
“You heard some licks, and you also heard somebody hollering, is that right?”
“Yes, Sir,” replied Reed.
“What was that person hollering?”
“He was just hollering, ‘Oh.’”
Instead of continuing on to the store, Reed went to Mandy Bradley’s house and told her about the strange noises in the shed. Bradley had him go out to the well, where he could listen more closely, and then bring her some water. As he approached the well, he heard the screams once again. Reed then went on to the store as he had intended earlier. When he returned, the truck and the men were gone.31
Before the defense began its cross-examination, Breland motioned that Reed’s testimony be excluded because there was nothing to connect the defendants to what Reed saw at the shed, nothing that identified the person he saw as Emmett Till, and not enough evidence to connect the body pulled from the Tallahatchie River to what occurred at the shed. Judge Swango overruled the request, and cross-examination shortly began. Before turning the witness over to the defense, however, Smith had Reed clarify once again that the events he witnessed on the plantation occurred on the fourth Sunday of August.32
J. W. Kellum questioned Reed next. The witness stated that he had seen J. W. Milam three or four times in the past, but had never seen the truck before. On the morning in question, Reed was walking east, then turned north. The truck was heading south, then also turned north. The driver’s side passed Reed, but he didn’t notice the driver or any of the men in the truck. He affirmed once again that he was as close to the truck as he was from the witness stand to the courtroom door. He met the truck, and then it turned right to go down the hill, where Reed was also headed. He noticed the black men in the back. He also revised his earlier statement and said that the black men numbered four, not just three. Three were sitting on the right side, while one was on the floor.33
Kellum then queried about the activity at the barn. He asked repeatedly how far Reed was from the barn, and how far he was from the barn when he saw J. W. Milam come out of it. Reed said over and over again he did not know how far it was.
“Then you don’t know whether you were one hundred yards away, or two hundred yards, or five hundred yards from him?”
“No, Sir,” replied Reed.
The witness obviously did not understand measurements by yardage, and Kellum took full advantage of that.
Reed said he had already passed the well and was going down the road when Milam came out of the barn to go to the well. Reed had to turn around to see him, which Kellum thought was odd.
“Well, what caused you to turn around and look towards the well?” Kellum asked.
“I just looked back there, and I seen him when he came to the well.”34
Kellum then referred to a meeting between Reed and the defense attorneys, held the day before, when Reed said he was at least 300 or 400 yards away from both the barn and the well. Kellum asked Reed about the “licks” he heard coming from the barn. Reed admitted that he did not see anyone in the barn.
“And you don’t know whether that was somebody hammering there, trying to fix a wagon or a car, or something like that, do you?”
Reed did not back down. “It was somebody whipping somebody.”
From over at the defense table, Breland raised an objection, even though the question had come from his own team.
“The objection is sustained,” said Swango, “but you will have to be careful in objecting to answers to your own counsel’s questions.”35
What happened in the barn and with whom was obviously the crux of Reed’s testimony.
“And you don’t know whether Mr. Milam was in the barn or not, do you?” asked Kellum.
“I seen Mr. J. W. when he left the barn.”
“But you didn’t see him in the barn, did you?”
“No, Sir. But I seen him when he left the barn and went to the well, and then I seen him when he went back towards it.”
“But you don’t know whether he went in the barn or behind the barn, do you?”
“No, Sir. He was headed straight to the front of the barn.”
“And also, if all of the people on the truck were in the barn, then that would make eight, is that right?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“That is, four white men and four colored men?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And you weren’t able to understand anything that was said in the barn at all?”
“No, Sir.”
“Did you report this to anybody after you left there that day?”
“Well, I was talking with the grandfather,” replied Reed.36
Reed rarely spoke above a whisper, and throughout his testimony, Swango repeatedly asked him to speak up. Reed was noticeably frightened, yet despite this, he held up well.38 “Defense counsel put Willie through a stern cross-examination,” observed Clark Porteous, “but could not shake his testimony. The most they could do was mix him up on his estimate of distance.”39
Robert Smith then began a round of redirect, demonstrating that Reed really did not know how to measure the distance between himself and the shed. Reed also made it clear that he saw Milam go to the well and back after he heard the screams. After Smith finished, Breland asked that the jury be excused, and Reed stepped down from the stand.40
Breland motioned that Reed’s testimony be disregarded because nothing about it connected Roy Bryant to the events Reed described. Smith, however, argued that the defendants had a choice of being tried jointly or separately, and that they chose to stand trial together.
“We can’t put on proof for just one defendant and exclude the other,” he said. “We have to put on any proof that implicates either one of them. And since they made their own decision to be tried together, we feel that it is wholly competent.”
Swango agreed, which assured that Reed’s testimony would stand. It was then 11:45 A.M., and the judge recessed court until 1:35 P.M.41
Add Reed, grandfather of Willie Reed, was the first witness called when court resumed.42 His testimony was more of a supplement to his grandson’s. The senior Reed said that on Sunday morning, August 28, he walked across the bayou that separated his house from Leslie Milam’s plantation to get some slop for his hogs. He saw two men, one of whom was Leslie Milam. Around 8:00 A.M., he passed a shed where he saw a white pickup truck.
“As you passed there, Uncle Add, will you tell the court if you heard anything out of the ordinary?” asked Smith.
Breland quickly objected—a motion Swango sustained. Reed, however, still answered.
“Yes, Sir,” he said, obviously unaware of the objection.
Surprisingly, Smith did not rephrase the question but promptly turned Reed over to the defense. Sidney Carlton asked only that the witness clarify the direction of his house from Drew. After he answered, he was excused.43
Although he was not allowed to state this on the witness stand, Add Reed had told reporters earlier that day that when he walked by the shed on the morning of August 28, he heard beating and groaning sounds “and kept going.”44 This backed up the testimony of his grandson. Unfortunately, the jury never heard it.
Mandy Bradley, the last of the plantation witnesses, was next. Bradley lived on the Sturdivant farm managed by Leslie Milam, perhaps 100 yards from Milam’s house, she estimated. She testified that between 6:30 and 7:00 A.M., Willie Reed came over and told her what he had heard at the shed. She looked out her window and saw four white men going in and out of the building. One of those men whom Bradley described as “kind of a tall man and bald headed” went to a well and got a drink of water. Bradley said that the men backed the truck into the shed and then drove off.45
The defense had no questions for Bradley. With her testimony over, the prosecution had presented all of its witnesses.
“If the court please,” Smith announced, “the State rests.”46
With that news, reporters made a mad dash to the lobby. John Herbers of UPI was the first to call in the story that state testimony had ended, beating out the Associated Press and International News Service reporters. The operator got him through to the Atlanta office before other newsmen could even connect their calls. During the course of the trial, Herbers ran up and down the stairs so many times to call in his stories that by the end of the week “my leg muscles were bigger than they’d ever been.”47
At 1:55 P.M., the court took a forty-minute recess to allow the defense to telephone one of its witnesses, Greenwood pathologist Luther B. Otken, to instruct him to come to Sumner. When court resumed, Breland asked permission to present motions, and Judge Swango briefly excused the jury.48
In an obviously symbolic gesture, Breland asked the court to dismiss all evidence offered by the state against Milam and Bryant and that the jury be directed to issue a verdict of “Not Guilty.”
Swango immediately rejected Breland’s plea. “Those motions will be overruled for the reason that the Court is of the opinion that the evidence offered on behalf of the state of Mississippi, that that evidence as a whole presents issues for the determination of the jury.”
The thirteen jurors then returned to their seats, and Breland entered into evidence the two photographs Mamie Bradley previously identified as those of her son. The defense then began presenting its witnesses.49
Carolyn Bryant was called first. After all of Sidney Carlton’s teasers about the incident between the woman at the store and the boy from Chicago, those in the packed courtroom were about to hear Bryant’s side directly. Mamie Bradley said years later that she was not present for Bryant’s testimony but remained in the witness room. After asking several questions about her family and her husband’s military service, Carlton wanted to know about the events of Wednesday, August 24, when she was working in the store. Everything came to a halt, however, when Robert Smith raised an objection to any questions having to do with that night “unless it is connected up” with the crime. Carlton assured the court that he would connect it. Rather than appease either side, Swango once again sent the jury out of the room.50
Carlton argued that because the state, through Mose Wright, had provided testimony that one of the men who came into his home “wanted to see the boy that did the talking down at Money,” the defendants had a right to have explained just what happened the night in question. The occurrences of August 24 and August 28 were, insisted Carlton, part of “one entire transaction.”51
Legal arguments ensued for the next several minutes. Smith maintained that the state’s “proof started with the occurrence on Sunday morning at two o’clock when two or more persons came to Mose Wright’s house for the boy. And we went from there on with our evidence and proof.” They had offered nothing from before that date, and nothing about Carolyn Bryant had been brought into testimony, nor had she even been mentioned before now. Also, Smith argued, the Mississippi Supreme Court held that past difficulties between two parties cannot be brought in as evidence. More important, he said, “we contend that anything whatsoever that happened down there on Wednesday is no justification for murder anyway.”52
Breland, on the other hand, insisted that if it could be shown that “any of the happenings can be connected up and it forms a background for a later happening, then that can be considered as part of an entire transaction. And I believe the Supreme Court has ruled on that several times in the past.”53
Judge Swango then explained how he interpreted the state supreme court decisions on evidence. Prior difficulties can be introduced as long as they can be considered part of the entire incident or transaction. If there were questions about who the aggressor was, for example, evidence would be admissible. “But without such a showing it would not be admissible.”54
Defense attorney John Whitten took the defense’s reasoning beyond the supreme court’s decisions about res gestae (meaning “things done” or words spoken that are so closely connected to an event that they are considered part of the event).
“In the first place, the state, by its own witness, has raised in the minds of this jury some question as to whether what happened down there at the store in Money was just mere talk.” According to Whitten, that was said at least three times. Because the state introduced this into the testimony, “the accused must have an opportunity to explain it or develop it further to show the ju
ry all the facts.”
Swango disagreed. “The Court is of the opinion that any accused in any criminal case can bring out anything relating to a continuation of any part of an alleged crime,” he argued. “But the testimony that is being offered here of details of a prior incident, I do not believe that is admissible.”55
Breland finally acquiesced, but he still wanted the defense to examine Carolyn Bryant so that her testimony could be part of the record. Swango allowed him to proceed. Breland told the press later that this was mainly for appeal purposes should the defendants be convicted. With the jury still absent, Sidney Carlton proceeded to question his witness.56
Bryant said that on Wednesday, August 24, 1955, she was working at the store, and Juanita Milam was babysitting in the back. At 8:00 P.M., a “Negro man” came in and stopped at the candy counter at the front left side of the store. Bryant said she walked up to the counter and asked what he wanted. After he told her and she got the merchandise, she put it on the top of the candy case and held out her hand for payment. The man then grabbed her hand with a strong grip and asked, “How about a date, baby?” Bryant said she jerked herself loose and started toward the back of the store. The man followed her and caught her by the register by putting his hands on her waist. Bryant demonstrated how the man held her by taking Carlton’s hands and positioning them similarly.57
Bryant said that when the man grabbed her, he asked, “What’s the matter, baby? Can’t you take it?” She freed herself but then he told her, “You needn’t be afraid of me.” Bryant spoke quietly but clearly and appeared quite emotional.58 She was hesitant, but Carlton urged her to continue.
“And did he then use language that you don’t use?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell the Court just what that word begins with, what letter it begins with?”