The Informant by Gary May

Author:Gary May
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2005-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

Matthew Hobson Murphy, the Klan’s Imperial Klonsel and Wilkins’s defense attorney in his first trial. (UPI-Bettmann/Corbis)

That brought out the rest; one limped to his chair, followed by McMurphee, wearing his red hunting jacket and carrying a soft-brimmed hat, obviously ready to go home. Wilkins sat up straighter and tried to read the jurors’ faces but showed no emotion.

Were they any closer to a verdict? McMurphee rose slowly, looked out the window for a moment, and stammered: “I don’t much think so. We have been hung [at] the same number almost from the outset.”

Was the jury “hopelessly deadlocked?”

Yes. Those for conviction were as committed as those for acquittal. The foreman had spoken to every juror and now concluded that “they will remain constant in their beliefs.” What was surprising was the way the jury had voted in the twelve ballots taken during the past two days. In their first poll, eight jurors voted for conviction, four for acquittal; but over the course of their deliberations two men had changed sides, so that the final tally was ten to two to convict.

“Well, that sounds just as hopeless as could be,” said Thagard.

“I don’t know that I have ever seen a jury strive any more diligently or any harder,” McMurphee said, almost apologetically.

The judge said he was impressed with their “sincerity,” and after asking the others to acknowledge their inability to reach a unanimous verdict—all nodded—he regretfully declared a mistrial. He reminded the jurors to stop by the clerk’s office to receive the pay they had earned for their service—thirty-one dollars. “Good-bye and good luck,” were his final words.34

Klansmen whooped, stomped their feet, and clapped. Wilkins, obviously relieved, “slumped down” in his chair and reached for his cigarettes; his mother rushed over and kissed him on the cheek. She was proud of the way Lee had acted during this ordeal, she told a reporter. “I always told him to look someone straight in the face and to hold his head up high and he’s doing just that.” Reporters and photographers crowded around the table, flashbulbs popped, and Wilkins yelled, “no comment.” As another photographer tried to take his picture, he pointed a finger at him.35

Murray Kempton ran into Gene Thomas as he was leaving. “What do you think?” Thomas asked him. Putting a hand on the Klansman’s shoulder, the empathetic Kempton, who thought Murphy had been a disaster, said quietly, “Mr. Thomas, you had better go and get yourself a lawyer.” John Frook couldn’t get away without a final comment from the verbose woman who had befriended him. “Lord sakes,” she said, grabbing his elbow, “I’m glad that’s over. Y’all can go back North now and let us have some peace and quiet.”36

Reporters rushed to Joe Breck Gantt for his first reaction to the outcome. Gantt was encouraged. Despite Murphy’s efforts to create a racial smokescreen, the state’s message had gotten through: “I think maybe this vote will wake up a few people and show them that there is a slight case of murder involved here.

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