Contempt Case Helped Develop Due Process Concept
February 1, 2016 I Tennessee Bar Journal I William L. Harbison
A few years ago, my partner John Farringer loaned me a book titled Contempt of Court: the Turn-of-the Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism. The co-authors are Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips Jr. The book is about a case originating in Chattanooga that ended up in the United States Supreme Court and resulted in the only Supreme Court criminal trial in the court’s history. Curriden published an article about the case in the ABA Journal in June 2009.
The case is United States v. Shipp. Shipp was the Sheriff of Hamilton County in 1906, when an African-American teenager named Ed Johnson was tried in Chattanooga for the rape of a white woman. His trial occurred within a few days of the alleged crime, and the trial judge made clear that there would be no postponement or change of venue granted. The crime was widely reported and community outrage was immense. It is almost certain that Johnson was not guilty. Arrested on Jan. 26, 1906, Johnson was tried on Feb. 6. In the short time between his arrest and his trial he was moved by train to Nashville because of threats of a mob lynching. In a trial that lasted less than three days, Johnson was convicted of the crime. To our modern sensibilities, with our modern concept of due process, the book’s account of the arrest of Johnson and his immediate trial is nothing short of shocking. The trial judge announced that the sentence would be death. Johnson’s court-appointed lawyer recommended that any appeal would be useless.
Noah W. Parden and his partner, Styles L. Hutchins, were the leading African-American lawyers in Chattanooga at the time. Johnson’s father pleaded with these lawyers to help his son with an appeal. Parden and Hutchins took the case and filed an appeal and for a stay of execution with the Tennessee Supreme Court. The court unanimously denied the appeal. Parden and Hutchins then filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal court in Knoxville. The petition argued that Johnson’s original lawyers were denied the right to file pretrial motions, that the case was tried under a threat of mob violence, and that only white jurors were summoned to jury duty on the case. After a hearing, the district judge expressed concerns about the intimidation from the mob in Chattanooga, and he expressed doubts about the case against Johnson. Nevertheless, under the state of habeas corpus law at the time, he felt powerless to overturn the conviction. He did issue a 10-day stay of execution to allow time for Johnson’s lawyers to file an appeal with the United States Supreme Court.
Parden and Hutchins did file that appeal and sought a stay from Justice John Marshall Harlan, who is still remembered as the author of the prescient dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. Justice Harlan granted a stay. A telegram was sent to Chattanooga informing officials of the court’s action, and the news spread quickly. A mob formed, and Sheriff Shipp left Johnson in jail with just one elderly guard — giving all the other deputies the night off. The mob broke into the jail, took Johnson to the county bridge over the Tennessee River, and lynched him. His last words were, “God bless you all. I am innocent.”
In Washington, the members of the Supreme Court, as well as President Theodore Roosevelt, got news of the lynching and were outraged. The court considered the actions of Sheriff Shipp and others acting with him to amount to contempt of the Supreme Court — a conspiracy to defy the court’s grant of a stay of execution. The court charged Shipp, along with some deputies and mob leaders, with criminal contempt and conducted a trial with the deputy clerk as special master to take the evidence. Shipp and others were convicted of contempt, and Chief Justice Fuller announced the court’s opinion on May 24, 1909. Shipp was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
The story of United States v. Shipp is rich and complicated, and I commend Curriden’s book to those who are curious for more details. I do not purport to know all of the significance of the case, especially as part of the evolution of criminal law practice, but I do believe that Tennessee lawyers should be aware of the sad and difficult parts of our history as well as the good and uplifting parts. Many commentators believe that the Shipp case was important in developing the concepts of due process and fair trials in our country. If that is true, then something good has come out of a tragic and shameful episode.
