Like many other colored kids, Ed Johnson had left school in the fourth grade. The police never read him his rights and he was not yet offered an attorney – suspects would receive neither immediate protection for decades. Yet Johnson steadfastly maintained his innocence and gave the sheriff a sizeable list of alibi witnesses who had seen him working at the Last Chance Saloon – miles away from the crime – from late Tuesday afternoon through ten o’clock that night. The sheriff did not believe him. Shipp called the District Attorney. The two interrupted a trial then being conducted by criminal court Judge Samuel McReynolds to alert him that they had the rapist in custody. Word quickly spread.
Fearing that a lynch mob might assemble, the sheriff and judge decided to transfer Johnson to Knoxville temporarily. The jail had already been besieged twice before. Sure enough, that night, 1,500 men – many wielding guns and ropes, bricks and rocks – descended on the Chattanooga jailhouse demanding “the Negro.” They cut the telephone wires to prevent calls for reinforcements and shut off power. Refusing to believe Johnson had been transferred elsewhere, they stormed the building, smashed all the windows and used a battering ram to try to break down the front door. Though police responded, they could not disperse the huge, angry crowd. Then Judge McReynolds showed up and called the governor to ask for National Guard reinforcements. The angry crowd stayed put. One man asked the judge, “Going to help us hang that Negro?” Another said, “The jury is in and we find him guilty and sentence him to hang by the neck until dead.”11
McReynolds told them to go home, but did nothing to try to blunt their anger against a man who had not even been formally accused, let alone had his day in court. Instead, the former prosecutor explained, “We have laws we must follow.” He then pledged that he would give the case the highest priority and told them, “I hope that before week’s end, the rapist will be convicted, under sentence of death and executed according to law before the setting of Saturday’s sun.”12 Such betrayal of bias should have forced McReynolds off the upcoming trial. Just over a decade earlier, the United States Supreme Court had traced back through Ancient Rome and Athenian Greece to the Old Testament the basic guarantee a free society promises all criminal defendants: the presumption of innocence.13
Not until Saturday did Sheriff Shipp bring Nevada Taylor to Nashville to view the two suspects then in custody: Broaden and Johnson. Shipp instructed them to speak so she could try to identify her assailant. Sheriff Shipp needed Nevada Taylor to pick the same man as Hixson. He was worried about more than the upcoming election; he was also concerned about his own safety and that of his staff, other prisoners and the jailhouse itself. When Johnson’s voice sounded to Nevada different from that of the rapist, Shipp assumed that the prisoner was just trying to disguise it. Soon Nevada told the sheriff what he wanted to hear – that Johnson was “like the man as I remember him.” He “has the same soft, kind voice.”14 The sheriff immediately dispatched a wire to the prosecutor in Chattanooga. An all-white male grand jury indicted Johnson that afternoon, after which Judge McReynolds met with the sheriff and prosecutor to plan their joint trial strategy, which nowadays would be unethical but was then routine.
Tennessee was more advanced than many states in requiring trial judges to appoint a defense lawyer in all death penalty cases. But that was often an illusory right since the judge had discretion to choose any lawyer in his jurisdiction, even if the lawyer was clearly not up to the task. The trio thought about appointing a black defense lawyer, but decided that if Johnson somehow won acquittal, the mob would likely take revenge on the judge as well as defense counsel. McReynolds instead selected Robert Cameron, a known lightweight in the local bar who mostly earned his money finding cases for other lawyers. Cameron had no criminal law experience and no contested civil trials under his belt.
On Saturday evening, January 27, former Circuit Judge Lewis Shepherd stopped by Judge McReynolds’ home to offer his suggestions for the high-profile case. Thirty-four-year-old McReynolds had only been on the bench three years, but was highly ambitious and pragmatic. He was open to ideas from the balding liberal, who at fifty was one of the leading lawyers in the state and a seasoned state politician as well. Shepherd was then defending gambler Floyd Westfield on the charge of murdering the constable. McReynolds surprised Shepherd by asking him to partner with Cameron as Johnson’s lead counsel. Shepherd accepted on the condition that McReynolds would also name a prominent civil trial lawyer to serve as well.
The next morning before church, McReynolds summoned both Cameron and civil lawyer W. G. Thomas to his chambers. Thomas begged to be passed over, but McReynolds would not take no for an answer. McReynolds dumbfounded the pair by telling them he would not give them time to learn the facts and applicable law. The trial would start as soon as the Westfield trial ended, perhaps by the end of the week, when Judge Shepherd could join their team. As they left, Judge McReynolds reminded them they would not get paid, hinting broadly he expected little effort. Neighbors and clients immediately shunned both Thomas and Cameron and subjected them to ridicule. Thomas’s secretary quit. Then rock-throwing hooligans attacked the home Thomas shared with his mother. Though Thomas moved her to a relative’s for safety, she and Cameron’s wife begged the two men to get off the case.
Johnson meanwhile stayed in the Nashville prison where he had been transferred for safe-keeping. On February 2, he gave a jailhouse interview to the Nashville Banner in which he protested his innocence and repeated the alibi he had told the sheriff. Johnson did not meet his lawyers until the following day when Shepherd and Thomas got him to review with them in detail his movements on January 23. Shepherd told Johnson how grim the situation looked because “the people of Chattanooga are very mad and they want someone to die for this crime.”15
Johnson must have melted their hearts with his reply: “But I don’t understand. I never done what they say. I swear to God I didn’t. I’ve never seen the woman they brought up here before. I didn’t even know where she lived. I just want to go home.”16 Shepherd embraced his client.
All three lawyers quickly scrambled to gather alibi evidence. Judge McReynolds had already held an improper private meeting with two of the three defense lawyers, the sheriff, the mayor of Chattanooga and District Attorney Matt Whittaker. Like the sheriff, Whittaker was on the upcoming ballot for reelection and under similar pressure to convict Johnson and make him hang for the rape of Nevada Taylor. McReynolds warned the defense team against making a motion for change of venue or asking for a postponement of the trial to allow the community to calm down. Contrary to his duty to decide how Johnson’s case would proceed based on the arguments about to be presented in court, McReynolds had made up his mind in advance not to grant either form of relief for fear that it would only infuriate the mob and precipitate a lynching. McReynolds had already indicated to the sheriff and prosecutor that Johnson’s acquittal would present the same serious political problem. The judge felt Johnson’s life well worth sacrificing to preserve the façade of a law-abiding society. Let the defense lawyers try their best in an impossible time frame, the script was already written – Johnson had to die to satisfy the mob.
Shepherd was determined to succeed against all odds. For assistance, he had already approached the most gifted local African-American attorney for help, Noah Parden, the younger partner of black politician Styles Hutchins. Unlike Hutchins, forty-one-year-old Parden was scholarly and athletic. He had light skin, tight curly hair, a long straight nose and a bushy mustache. Parden had been raised in an orphanage since the age of six when his mother, a housecleaner, died of illness. He never knew his father, who likely was white.
Among the few possessions Parden’s mother had left him was a Bible, perhaps explaining why he embraced his legal career like a religious calling. Like Hutchins, Parden was an impassioned champion of individual rights, but unlike his mentor, he was far more pragmatic. He did not dare offer help to Johnson publicly for fear of retribution from both the white and black communities, both of which wanted the alleged rapist quickly brought to justice and the whole ugly matter put behind them. Yet Parden helped Johnson’s lawyers track down alibi witnesses and gave valuable behind-the-scenes advice. Thomas and Cameron worked day and night establishing that Johnson was at the saloon when he said he was from 4 p.m. until 10 p.m. the night of the rape. Yet