A Peculiar Tribe of People: Murder and Madness in the Heart of Georgia by Richard Jay Hutto

Author:Richard Jay Hutto [Hutto, Richard Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, History, United States, True Crime, Murder, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780762772384
Google: bRVyuQAACAAJ
Amazon: B004DI740Y
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2011-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Every attorney wants to win. Think of a coach with his assembled team in a locker room about to begin a game. Of course he runs quickly through some important strategy, but at that point, if his players aren't physically prepared, they may as well not take the field. The vital role the coach assumes at such a critical moment is psychological. He must energize his team and appeal to their instincts for victory. The natural directive is to beat the other side.

Attorneys are no different. It is easy to imagine Bill West and his assistants, as well as Chief of Detectives Bargeron and the other police officers, as they prepared to go into battle against Chester Burge. In the crude language of the day, there was probably a great deal of talk about "the queer and the nigger." Surely twelve white men would do what had to be done to those two. And, just as a coach doesn't reveal his game plan to the other side, West and his team were determined not to reveal the cards in their hand.

Chester's attorneys scoffed at the sucker punch they were dealt by Bargeron. They saw the second indictment for sodomy exactly as what police intended-an effort to attack Burge's morals and reputation before the case ever came to trial. They immediately released the following statement: "The commitment hearing which we sought by a writ has been avoided by the maneuver of submitting the case to a grand jury where the claims of the prosecution cannot be tested." As to the sodomy count, the attorneys asserted, "Time will prove that the second charge placed by the prosecution was done solely for the purpose of fanning hatred and prejudice." The attorneys may not have planned to defend Chester on the sodomy charge, but there was no way they could ignore it.

The same day that Chester's indictments were announced, Mary's will was probated in solemn form, meaning that it could not be challenged through normal legal means. Chester's immediate inheritance was reported to be $129,000, and the judge of Ordinary Court announced that, unless the will were successfully contested, Chester would receive his inheritance regardless of the outcome of the charges facing him. His son, John, inherited the same amount as well as the house. The labyrinth of ownership concerning the numerous Mary Burge properties would take more time to navigate. * In reporting John's inheriting the house, the Atlanta Constitution referred to the "swank Burge home in fashionable Shirley Hills" as the newspaper made plans to cover the trial.

Solicitor General William West had disqualified himself in the Anjette Lyles case because of a distant relationship to the defendant. He was personally close to Chester's defense attorneys Adams and O'Neal, who were the prosecutors in the Lyles case, and Adams had worked for West as an assistant district attorney from 1952 to 1956. In fact, Adams named his son (now Judge William Adams) after West. The Burge case would eventually "strain" their relationship, but it survived intact and flourished, and the two families remained close over the years.

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