Murder in the South

When David Rose visited Columbus, Georgia, to write a story about capital punishment in the United States, it drew him inexorably into a decade-long battle for justice on behalf of Carlton Gary, a black man on death row, convicted 20 years ago of a series of rape/murders of elderly white women committed some eight years earlier. The handsome, womanising Gary, what would now be called ‘a player’, was an unlikely candidate for such killings, and the ‘violation’ of the title is as much his by the criminal justice system as that of the murder victims.

The setting is pure To Kill a Mockingbird. Columbus is a typical small Southern city, its economy dependent on nearby Fort Benning. Its cultured façade is belied by Phenix City, Alabama, just across the Chattahoochee River, a town whose corruption was the subject of a classic 1950s B movie. Columbus moves with slow southern charm, but it moves in very specific ways, ways still very separate for black and white.

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Rod Liddle

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It was even more so in 1978, when Gary’s defence was repeatedly denied funding to pay for expert witnesses or investigative travel. Gary’s conviction hinged on a ‘confession’ obtained by police who ‘forgot’ to leave their tape recorder running. Notes discovered later indicated that incriminating material had been ‘edited’ together with his actual statements. The prosecution withheld evidence that would have cast doubt on Gary’s guilt, if not exonerated him completely. Their forensic experts twisted material that showed his innocence, while district attorneys hid unreliable identifications, and during the trial introduced ‘facts’ they knew were false.

As Gary’s later lawyers began appeals, this malfeasance started to surface. Rose’s own investigations uncovered a trail of fraud and cover-up whose accumulated weight indicts the Georgia justice system and exculpates Gary.