Convicting the Innocent: Errors of Criminal Justice
(1932)
by Edwin M. Borchard
Case #48
Bill Wilson
ALABAMA
Bill Wilson was about twenty when in 1900 he married Jenny Wade. He was a
farmer in Blount County, Alabama, and soon after he and Jenny were married
they began raising a family. In 1907 their third
child was born. When the baby was nineteen months old
Jenny left her husband and returned to her family. Bill
went back to his father's place, taking the two older children with him.
Jenny stayed with her family a short time and then suddenly disappeared. No one knew where she had gone or why.
The community was particularly stirred by the disappearance because not long before this Jane McClendon, daughter of another Blount County farmer, had vanished in the
same mysterious way.
Foul play was naturally suspected, but after several weeks
of gossip and fanciful speculation the community returned
to its accustomed calm and the girls were dropped from general conversation.
One fine spring morning in 1912, four years after Jenny
disappeared, Dolphus Tidwell and his son were fishing on
the banks of the Warrior River, which meanders through the
county, and at the point where Tidwell and his son were fishing it passes near the land of Si Wilson, Bill's father.
The Tidwells saw a bone sticking out of the dirt on a bluff
near their fishing ground, and young Tidwell climbed up to
investigate. He cleared away the soil and found a piece of
matting. Under the matting, which was rotted so that it fell
apart, were bones. The Tidwells decided that these bones
were those of two skeletons
– an adult and a child. They were in an advanced state of decomposition and
were difficult to handle.
The Tidwells examined them carefully and were particularly impressed by the jawbones in both skeletons
– the
larger having a very big, well-worn set of teeth and the
smaller showing both a first and second set. Father and son
agreed that they had found Indian relics and believed they
might find a burial mound near by.
After investigating the immediate vicinity thoroughly, they selected one
bone to take home and the rest they covered, pushing the dirt and stones over the skeletons with an
old ax handle they found on the bluff.
News of the discovery spread rapidly; and in the following days many persons visited the bluff, some even bringing
screening to sift the dirt, in hope of finding Indian ornaments. They found nothing, however, and interest in the
relics was about exhausted when Jim House, who worked
occasionally for the elder Wilson, took a sudden interest in
the skeletons and began spreading an ugly story.
He spread the rumor that the bones were those of Jenny
Wilson and her nineteen-month-old baby. The story fairly
flew around the county. Repetition began to give it credence.
James Embry heard it. He was county solicitor. The tale
impressed him, and he became convinced that it had merit.
He accepted it officially and obtained Bill's indictment. Five
years after Jenny disappeared her husband went to trial
charged with her murder.
Embry was the prosecutor. In his opening remarks to the
jury he said that Jenny Wilson went to her father-in-law's
house to see her two older children late in November or early
December, 1908. A quarrel had occurred that night, Embry
said, and Bill Wilson murdered his wife and child, took the
bodies to the bluff, and burned them.
The elder Tidwell testified to the finding of the bones, and
they were offered in evidence as the bones of Jenny Wilson
and her baby.
Dr. Marvin Denton, a practicing physician who testified
for the state, was somewhat doubtful that the bones could
have decayed to such an extent within four or five years. As
for the teeth, the doctor said he did not recall ever seeing second teeth in
a child under four years of age. The Wilson infant was less than two.
Thus far the state had little support for its theory. But
Embry was relying upon Jim House to convince the jury,
and presently House was called and told his damaging story.
Late in November or early December, he told the jury, he
had met Jenny Wilson near her father-in-law's house, where
Bill was living. House said that he was searching for some
stray hogs and that he encountered Jenny on a hill near the
Wilson farm. She was carrying a basket, he said, and he
walked with her to the Wilson gate, trying to dissuade her
from going into the house for fear she might find trouble, as
Bill was then suing for a divorce.
She was adamant, however, and insisted upon going in,
House said. He watched her until she reached the door, where her
mother-in-law was standing with Bill's sister. Seeing no sign of hostility, House walked away.
He did not find the hogs that night and continued the
search next day. It led to the Wilson farm, he said, and in a
field he met Bill. He questioned him about his wife and told
the court that Bill denied that Jenny had called at the Wilson home the previous night.
House walked on, he said. Toward the river he ran across
some tracks. He found a "child's cloth" and saw some blood
on a rock where the tracks crossed the river.
House's story then jumped to the discovery of the bones
by the Tidwells. He visited the scene, he said, and while
there saw Bill Wilson with several other persons. House said Bill picked up
a bone and handed it to him with the remark, "Here's the baby's rib; you'd better take it along."
House said he replied, "Yes, Bill, that's the very thing I
want."
This was House's story and he stuck to it.
House was followed on the stand by Mack Holcomb, a
convict, who had occupied a cell near Wilson's while the
latter was awaiting trial. Holcomb told the jury that Wilson's eldest daughter, Ruthie, visited her father in jail one
day and that as she was leaving Wilson said to her, "If you
tell anything I will tend to you when I get out."
Other testimony quoted Wilson as saying of his wife that
he would kill her if she returned. A woman testified that she
met Wilson on the train returning from the trial of his divorce suit. He was drunk, she said, and announced the outcome of the trial by saying: "I beat her. Damn her, she
didn't appear. She will never appear against me any more
because she's over Green River." And another witness said
that the defendant had spoken to him voluntarily about the
divorce and when asked whether his wife had appeared replied, "Hell, no, she's over the river."
Then the state tried to corroborate House's story and
called Forrest Hardin, who testified that he had seen Jenny
late in 1908 with her baby and that she carried a basket at
the time. He could add no more. Jenny's brother, Velt Wade,
testified that he had seen her last in the fall of 1908 and
that she was then on her way to visit her brother-in-law,
Monroe Graves, who lived near Blount Springs. Since then,
he said, he had been told that she was in Ashville. When
asked about the ax handle that House said he picked up on
the bluff (the one used by the Tidwells to cover the skeletons), he said he had seen it at Wilson's cotton gin.
The defense called a witness whose testimony concerning
House cast a great deal of doubt upon the character of the
state's star witness. She was Mrs. Lizzie McClendon, mother
of Jane McClendon, who had also disappeared.
Mrs. McClendon told the jury that House came to her
after her daughter vanished and declared that he would
testify that he saw the Wilsons kill Jane if Mrs. McClendon
would swear out a warrant for their arrest. In cross-examination, House
admitted that there was considerable ill feeling between himself and Bill Wilson, but he denied the statements that Mrs. McClendon attributed to him.
The defense claimed that Jenny was alive after the date
on which her husband was alleged to have killed her; that
House was prejudiced and unreliable; and that much of the
state's testimony was untrue.
Jenny's sister testified that Jenny had come to her home
in 1909 and later went to "Mr. Green Merrill's and he carried her to Blount Springs." Merrill corroborated this statement and said that Jenny stayed at his home for two weeks
in January, 1909. Then came five witnesses, all of whom
swore that they had seen Jenny at various times in 1909, and
several of them intimated that she had been living with one
John Wilson, no relation of Bill's.
Mrs. Benton Cornelius, a friend of Jenny's, testified that Jenny told
her as early as April, 1908, that after her separation from Wilson she intended going to Missouri and that
no one in Blount County would ever hear of her again.
The defense scored again when Bill's brother John, his
sister Frances, his daughter Ruthie, and John Rice, who
worked for the elder Wilson, all denied that Jenny had
visited the Wilson home at any time after the separation.
Thus, Jim House was the sole source of evidence on the subject of the alleged fatal visit.
Ruthie was asked about the statement attributed to her
father in which he told her when she visited him in jail that
he would "tend to her" if she told anything. She denied that
he had made such a threat, but said that what he did tell
her was that if she were not a good girl he would punish her
when he got out of jail.
The defense introduced testimony to show that the skeleton of the woman found by the Tidwells indicated that no
dental work had ever been done on the teeth, whereas two
friends of Jenny's testified that two of her front teeth had
been filled. The question of the ax handle was then brought
up, and John Wilson, a brother of the defendant, testified
that he had worked around his father's cotton gin for twenty
years and had never seen it there.
Finally, the defense capped its case with the expert testimony of Dr. J. F. Hancock, who said that he believed it
would take at least ten years for bones to decay as those
alleged to be Jenny's had done. He also testified that the teeth in the large skeleton were those of a very old person
and that a nineteen-month-old baby would have no sign of
second teeth.
But the jury believed Jim House, for Bill Wilson was
convicted of murder in the first degree and sent to the Alabama state prison
for life. An appeal was taken but the conviction was affirmed. Petitions for pardon presented from
time to time by Bill's friends were denied.
--------------------
Doubt of his guilt was so strong that even the trial judge,
Hon. J. E. Blackwood, urged the Governor and the Attorney-General on December 28, 1916
– nearly two years after
conviction
– to commute the sentence.
Further doubt of his guilt was aroused in the same year
when the incriminating bones were declared by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of
physical anthropology of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, to be parts of four or five
skeletons, both child and adult. Dr. Hrdlicka also said that
they apparently came from very old burials, and that there
was nothing about them to indicate that they were not the
bones, of Indians.
Probate Judge John F. Kelton stated in an affidavit:
"Public sentiment convicted Bill, but this has in a great
measure changed." It seemed that the only person connected
with the case who was still convinced of Wilson's guilt was
Embry, the prosecutor, who blocked the attempts of Wilson's friends to obtain a pardon.
Among those working for Wilson's release was Mr. J. T.
Johnson of Oneonta, Alabama, who had been Wilson's lawyer on the appeal and was convinced of his client's innocence. Through his patience and persistence Jenny Wilson
was finally located in Vincennes, Indiana, where she was
living with her second husband.
She was persuaded to return to Blount County and to
give in an affidavit a complete account of her movements
from the time she disappeared until she was found. The day
she returned
– July 8, 1918
– Bill, as a result of a telephone
call from the county sheriff to the Governor, was granted a
full pardon which ended an imprisonment of three years, six
months, and twenty-one days at hard labor.
On February 15, 1919, the Legislature enacted a statute
for the appointment of a commission "whose duty it shall be
to ascertain how much and make an award, in writing, to
the Governor as to the amount of compensation the said William Wilson should in justice and good conscience receive
from the state for his said services" up to the amount of
$3,500.
Wilson was broken by his confinement, yet the Legislature
sought to pay him "for services rendered the state while in
prison," rather than reimburse him for the horrible injury
done him by an amazing perversion of justice.
The award was made for the full amount of $3,500 and,
ironically, brought Wilson again into the courts. The money
was paid to a trustee, described in the record as Probate
Judge of Blount County. He made several small payments
to Wilson and then fled the state with the balance.
Wilson was forced to sue the judge's bondsman to get the
rest of the fund due him. This action cost him $700, and
with other expenses it is doubtful if he ever received more
than $2,500.
With this money he bought a small farm and tried to
begin life over again. But he had lost his courage and the
fight was too much for him. He got into debt, had to sacrifice his farm, and when last heard of, was digging coal as a
day laborer in an Alabama mine.
--------------------
Thus ends another painful story. It is perhaps more flagrant than many others, because the evidence on which Wilson was convicted was so flimsy, whereas that in his favor
was so strong
– especially the cumulative evidence of five
different witnesses to the fact that Jenny was alive after the
date of the alleged murder, and that other testimony concerning the pedigree of the bones so utterly discredited the
theory of the prosecution. Again we have an illustration of
the frailty of juries and of the fact that a prosecuting attorney's persuasion, backed by individual and community
emotions of revenge, desire for a victim, and public sentiment, combined with accidents and misfortune, may bring to
the penitentiary a perfectly innocent man. Possibly the
presiding judge was correct in saying that Wilson's case was
not properly conducted, though the record of the cross-examination does not disclose it. It seems quite probable that
considerations other than the actual evidence in the case
weighed heavily with the jury. Even the Governor and the Board of Pardons,
however, were unwilling to parole, commute, or pardon until Jenny Wilson actually appeared in
Alabama. It is ironic to find that a probate judge, trustee of
a state fund, decamped with Wilson's money. Perhaps we
ought to applaud the state of Alabama for its generous contrition in making some amends by a money payment, for
that is more than many of our states have done under comparable circumstances of the maladministration of justice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Wilson v. State, 191 Ala, 7, 67 So. 1010 (1915).
2. Bill of Exceptions, Circuit Court of Oneonta County, Alabama.
3. General Acts of Alabama, 1919, p. 79.
4. Report of the Board of Pardons of Alabama, October 1, 1917, p.
126.
5. Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, August 7, 1920, p. 1.
6.
Acknowledgments: Mr. Douglas Arant, Birmingham, Ala.; Mr. Geo. W. Darden,
attorney at law, Oneonta, Ala.; Mr. J. T. Johnson, Oneonta, Ala.; Hon. C. A. Moffett, President of the Board of
Administration, Montgomery, Ala.; Mr. A. Wetmore, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C.