Collie Leroy Wilkins

Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old white mother of five, was murdered in Detroit by three members of the Ku Klux Clan in 1965. Known for her vigilance as a member of the Civil Rights movement, the Klan members who murdered her did so to set an example for what would become of anyone else who would attempt to help African Americans. The FBI took four suspects into custody within 24 hours; among these suspects, one in particular was the man who did the deed. Collie Leroy Wilkins received his own trial for the murder of Liuzzo shortly after he was found out. His D.A., Matthew Hobson Murphew Jr., was Grand Klonsel of the U.S.A. and was successful in convincing the Alabama Jury of Liuzzo walking into a dangerous line of work, participating in the Civil Rights Movement during the 60's. Ending in a hung jury, three of the four suspects where sent to prison for ten years, whereas the fourth, a man named Gary Rowe was revealed to be an undercover FBI informant, and was therefore placed under the witness protection program. Moved by the murder of Liuzzo, however, President Johnson ordered an investigation of the Klan shortly after. After Wilkins and the other suspects testified in court that it was, in fact, Rowe who had murdered Liuzzo, two police officers present at the time admitted that Rowe had bragged about being the one to kill her.

What truly separates this case apart from the others, however, was the follow-up on this event. Not only did government attorneys successfully dismiss the charges against Rowe, but after the Liuzzo family filed a formal suit accusing the FBI of harboring information concerning the murder of Viola. Not only were the charges against Rowe slightly more evident than Wilkins', but FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was trying to hide the embarrassing fact that he had given permission to Rowe to "do work" during the march that Liuzzo was a part of (giving light to Rowe being an informer who may have been unfit as such). These facts, coupled with the fact that the formal suit presented by the Liuzzo family was not given the benefits of a jury, presents a disturbing case for the FBI.

For more info on this series of trials, visit the link below:

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1377

Angela Davis

Truly an unfortunate instance of a mixture of poor accusations and even fouler profiling, Angela Davis was arrested and put on trial some time after in February of 1972 in California. The entire mess aroused in a completely different court hearing involving the attempted interruption / bailing out known murderer Johnathon Jackson. A younger brother to one of three radical black inmates, the brother being George Jackson, the entire case was traced back to Angela Davis, the lover of George Jackson. Her disappearance shortly after Johnathon's failed attempt of escape only hardened this false accusation, and Davis was arrested on the charges of murder and conspiracy. But Davis knew she was innocent, and she played her cards right. Defending herself admirably, she testified that she virtually had no connection to the case involving John Jackson simply because she was intimate with his older brother. Furthermore, none of the prosecutions chief witnesses were able to produce solid evidence of any type of involvement she may have had in the ordeal; inevitably, she was acquitted of her charges.

This is one of the less cases that favors the particular ability of the law to judge their criminals; they believed that Davis was a suspect not primarily for her disappearance, but due to her communist sympathies and, most likely, to her being African American. The unfortunate mixture of race and beliefs lead to a poor profiling and, as a result, the court had little to go with as far as actual facts go with the case. However, despite the fact that her jury was all white, her case was presented with enough solid evidence that there was no possible way that Davis was responsible for orchestrating the escape attempt whatsoever; reason prevailed in a case that typically wouldn't have been given much thought if a defendant of Davis' unfortunate stature was unable to defend herself.

For more information regarding the specifics of the trial of Angela Davis, visit the link below:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3498200246.html