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 aid at Talmidge 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 trachea, 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 I'm

(02:45):
quoting now show 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. End of quote.
The alleged perpetrator, Nathaniel Johnson, was arrested. The victim picked

(03:07):
him out of a lineup. He confessed, 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,
we have physical evidence, we have a positive identification, we

(03:27):
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 the way we

(04:10):
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
the trial of Nathaniel Johnson. One after another, witnesses against

(04:34):
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
Johnson told us that after he had intercourse with this

(04:56):
lady there, that she asked him for a cigarette. He
said he gave 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
pla at the scene, we found three butts there? Does
that fact strike you as strange? Is it commonplace for

(05:19):
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
driving with the victim in his car. They fought, she resisted,

(05:39):
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
half a city block further and parked. Why is the

(06:02):
victim complaining to her rapist that he's parked too close
to the road. Then there's a prosecution's star witness, a
Missus Bailey. She testifies that three years earlier, Nathaniel Johnson
had come up to her while she was sitting in
a park car and he tried to assault her. Reading
now from the transcript, the prosecutor asks, Missus Bailey, you

(06:27):
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 the road, Prosecutor,
How fast was he going? Bailey? Mighty fast. Nathaniel Johnson

(06:48):
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 don't
see him running mighty fast anywhere. At the very end

(07:08):
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. Again
from the court transcript, Missus Nathaniel Johnson, I don't know.

(07:29):
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 already confessed.
Why is he hemming and hawing? He goes on, I

(07:50):
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 in 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 bringing

(08:14):
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 all

(08:36):
of the details having to do with power. Where did
the rape allegedly take place, Well, let me tell you
in Augusta, Georgia, a 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 lawyers in sight,
and when he emerges, he has a confession. Let me
read to you again from Nathaniel Johnson's closing statement, only

(10:05):
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 in 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 y'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, it's

(10:49):
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 the man named eight Walden born in eighteen

(11:11):
eighty five to two former slaves in Fort Valley, Georgia.
When I was a kid, and Austin Thomas Walden, who
finished University of Michigan in nineteen twelve, would come to
my church for the Saints to see your best hour.

(11:32):
And I sang in the Saints to see you acquire.
And I would hear him speak about segregation, and he
would say, I'll be glad when you had dead, you
rascal you. So I grew up wanting to be a
lawyer like Austin T. Walden. Vernon Jordan, one of the

(11:55):
legends of a civil rights movement. He's had an extraordinary career.
He ran the Urban League for years. He was a
close confident under President Clinton, a deal maker on Wall Street.
He's eighty one years old. He must be six foot
four and peck Southern manners, a long and passive face.
When he talks to you, he leans down from his
great height and lowers his voice. So in nineteen sixty five,

(12:19):
as a very young lawyer, I was asked to give
the Emancipation Proclamation Day speech. I went to see Jordan
in his office in Rockefeller Center. I wore a 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 that Georgia NAACP asked him

(12:43):
to speak, Walden was on this poolpit with braces on
his legs. He could hardly move. And when back when
I finished, Walden struggle up to me and said he
had a home run. Son, you hit a home run.
That was the laying on of hand, as that was

(13:07):
the blessing 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 holliwell in the next episode. Vernon
Jordan was inspired by Walden, and straight out of law

(13:28):
school he went to work for Hollowell. He was a
disciple of two 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

(13:48):
in trouble, you rarely had one of your own to
represent you. Justice is supposed 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 Nathaniel Johnson and Augusta with growing alarm. And

(14:13):
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, have her corroborate your guilty. Plead and you'll

(14:35):
get life. And he went for it. He did not
get life, He got the electric chair. 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

(14:57):
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
the death penalty. So when Johnson says in his final statement,
I know rape is a serious charge, and I know
it is more serious by a colored man being accused

(15:17):
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. The White Court upon It lawyer the
night before he was to be executed, got drunk and
an augusta bar bar a paper from the bartender, wrote

(15:42):
out a rid of pabeus corpus and went to the
judge to argue that Nathaniel Johnson's writes under the Fifth
Amendment had been bow lady. As it turns out, that's
the wrong amendment. Under those circumstances, the lawyers should have

(16:03):
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. And it went up
to the Supreme Court on social ira, which was denied.
And then mister Hallowell, my boss, was hired, and I

(16:27):
went with him to see Nathaniel Johnson and the Readsville
State Prison. He was a very handsome, cruel prisoner. Hallowell
and Jordan were brought in by the NAACP to try
and win a stay of execution. One last Hail Mary,
How old was he? But spend thirty to thirty two

(16:49):
something like that. 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. He was having
a relationship with this woman, this white woman, and the
relationship was put together by a black assistant nurse at

(17:13):
the hospital and Augusta and he would go and pick
her up and they would go out on the roads
and do their business. In the version of events that
got Johnson convicted, the victim had never seen him before.
But Nathaniel Johnson told Jordan and holliwell, they'd been spotted together.

(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. If you read the

(17:58):
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,

(18:19):
roughly half black. So we are 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, and so after a

(18:46):
visit on the dark road, she said to him that
she was pregnant, and a disagreement ensued. 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

(19:07):
and place, a white woman had the power of life
and death over a black man. She went home and
told her husband that she had been raped, and they
went in Nathaniel Johnson's house in the middle of the night,
illegal arrest, the illegal searcher and s illegal attention, all
of that. When you saw him, did he think that

(19:29):
he had a chance. He was just scared to death.
He was just scared to death, and we were his
only hope. We were his only hope. And so Halliwell
and Jordan set out to save Nathaniel Johnson's life anyway

(19:51):
they can stay the execution, fight for a new trial.
Jordan was fresh out of law school, full of righteous
anger and idealism, and I remember going into his cell
with him and mister Halliwell. Halliwell said, we're going to
see the local judge here. Then we will drive to

(20:14):
Atlanta and we will go to see the Chief Justice
of Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the Governor, and the
Board of Partning pro It was the beginning of the
apprenticeship of Vernon Jordan. And that's when mister Halliwell put
me on the case and we went to Brunswick, Georgia,

(20:39):
which I never forget. That Federal District judge there began
the case by asking when is the execution schedule? And
they said tomorrow morning, your honor, So he listened to
the state attorney. As he listened to mister holliwell, and

(21:03):
I remember him saying, justice delayed is justice denied. And
we drove from Brunswick after he refused to stay the execution,
from Brunswick, Georgia to Atlanta. That's when it was all
two highways. I did the driving, and we ended up

(21:26):
and the chambers of the Chief Justice. And he walked
in and say, sees man. He said, son, where did
you play basketball? And I said, mister Chief Justice, We're
not here to talk about where I played basketball. We're

(21:48):
here about the life from Nathaniel Johnson. He's odd that
color bar went out there on that road and raped
that woman out. Don't want to hear about that. We
then go from his chambers to the next bill where

(22:09):
the Attorney General was. Secretary picks up the phone and
says to the Attorney General, Miss attorney General, they had
two boys out here to see you. The Attorney General
of Georgia, Henry Neil, did not invite us into his office.
He came out and stood behind the secretary's desk and

(22:33):
said that the governor was out of town and the
governor would not stay the execution, and we left and
went to the Board of Pardoning Paroles. And as we
walked in the door, he said, Hallowell, you're too late.

(22:55):
Nathaniel Johnson is on his way to the electric chair.
There was nothing more for them to do. I said,
Miss Hallowell, I would like to have the rest of
the day off. He said fine. And I had on
a light bage has spell suit that I had gotten

(23:21):
for graduation, and I walked down Hunter Street home. It
was eighty five ninety degrees in Atlanta, and I'm walking
alone thinking what I had just witnessed, thinked about the

(23:42):
first time I saw him, and thinked about seeing him
the night before he died. And I just walked home crying.
It's the only time in my eighty one years that

(24:05):
I can remember losing control and just urinated all over
myself on my brand new Baige suit. I remember that
as bivid is. I see you right now. When Vernon

(24:31):
Jordan told me the story of Nathaniel Johnson, the first
thing I thought about was Harper Lee's classic To Kill
a Mockingbird, the book every American child reads in middle school. Now, Mala,
suppose you tell us just what happened? It tells the

(24:51):
same basic story. Right, I was sitting on the porch, Jenny,
come along the Jim Crow South. A black man named
Tom Robinson accused of rape by a white woman, Mayella Yuele,
And I turn around it and for I know what
he's on me. But Tom Robinson's lawyer, Atticus Finch, is white,

(25:13):
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 eu
will try to trap him. Tom, were you acquainted with

(25:33):
Mayella Violet Euel? I had to pass her place going
to in front of the field every day. 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. Scared,
miss old ban, I hop down and turn the tail

(25:55):
under Atticas Finch's careful direction. Robinson then says, one more thing.
And by the way, if you've watched the famous Greggory
Peck movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird, the one
you've been 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. She says, she never kissed

(26:17):
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 Maella, 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 Yule Yonder hollered

(26:37):
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, Alicas Finch says she

(26:58):
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,
not only that. When he has Tom Robinson dropped that
little bit about she says that what her papa due
to her don't count. He's accusing her of incest. Finch

(27:21):
is offering his fellow white men on the jury at 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 lot of love. But when
I read that book, all I could think was he's
just telling them, don't be racist, be sexist. That might

(27:46):
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 down his beige suit,
he knows he doesn't have the same freedom that an
Atticas Finch has. Finch is to say whatever he wants

(28:10):
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 the point. Remember what Johnson said,
I would say that the reason I won't give this statement,

(28:32):
which would run the facts down on what really happened
in 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 no one interested in hearing the facts
of the case. No. That includes the federal district judge.

(28:56):
That includes a local judge in Reesville, the Chief Justice,
the Attorney General, and the board of part in paroles.
It was over, it was done. Do you think they
honestly believed it was a case of rape or do
you think that they didn't matter. It was a white

(29:17):
woman and a black man, a black man doing something
that was out of the question in the South, and
the court upointent lawyer had to know that it was
a consensual relationship. Yeah, so it's just a kind of
They weren't even going to the trouble of thinking it's true.

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

(30:05):
of the Johnson case in the Georgia archives looks like
it's never been touched. I 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 a one man's memories. Did you ever meet the accuser?

(30:27):
I never did. The word is that after he died,
that the white lady went around to black churches and
asked forgiveness. Revisionist History is produced by Mail La Belle

(30:59):
and Jacob Smith, with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Ciomara
Martinez wife. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flawn Williams is
our engineer. Original music by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to
Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberger. Panoply, I'm Malcolm Gladwell