The Innocents (1964)
by Edward D. Radin

Excerpt on

Curbow and Strickland
 

The casual acceptance of an automobile lift from a nodding acquaintance, an experience familiar to most people, started a chain reaction that sent Samuel Curbow of Tyler, Texas, to prison on a thiry-year sentence.

It began for Curbow, twenty-six, on a Saturday night, while he was walking to the home of a girl with whom he had a date. Two men he knew by sight offered him a lift. Because Curbow was early, they drove around a bit before dropping him off at the girl's house.

At 4 o'clock Sunday morning Curbow was routed out of bed and taken to police headquarters for questioning. The two men who had stopped to give him a lift were suspected of having stolen a car later that night, and since he had been seen with them, he also was arrested. Curbow explained the lift and said he had been with his girl friend. He was assured by the officers that if his alibi checked out he would be released. By the time this was investigated and found to be true, it was too late; Curbow now was under arrest in adjacent Cherokee County.

Four nights earlier two men had held up Mr. and Mrs. Ben Pritchard in their gas station in Bullard, a small town twenty miles away. The bandits had escaped in a car containing another man and a woman. Since Tyler police had three possible suspects in a car theft, they notified Cherokee County officers to have their witnesses look the men over. The Pritchards identified Curbow and J. C. Strickland, who had given him the lift.

Four months later Curbow was placed on trial. He had no funds and had asked the court to appoint counsel. He also had furnished officers with a list of witnesses who could testify that he had been in Tyler the night of the gas-station holdup. When he entered the court there were no witnesses for him and no lawyer. He was told that his witnesses could not be located and that no attorney was available to accept his case without fee. The Pritchards identified him from the stand, and without any defense a jury quickly found him guilty and fixed his sentence at thirty years. The Texas Supreme Court later upheld the conviction.

Strickland went on trial afterward and also was convicted, but in his case a jury set the prison sentence at only five years. Curbow had no criminal record, and it was only because Strickland was on probation for an auto theft that Tyler police had picked him up for questioning and started the investigation that had ensnared Curbow.

Deputy Sheriff Leon Halbert had been impressed by Curbow's claim of innocence and he continued his investigation even after the jury conviction. He learned that the same night the Pritchards had been robbed, a car containing three men and a woman had been noticed loitering near another gas station in Jackson, about ten miles from Bullard. The owner had jotted down the license number; it was an Oklahoma plate. Checking on it, Halbert found that the car had been stolen in Tulsa and that the three men later had been picked up by Oklahoma officials. They admitted stealing the car and also confessed to a series of holdups in Oklahoma and elsewhere. One of these was a gas-station robbery in Texas; the prisoners did not know the name of the town, only that it was somewhere near Jackson. Halbert brought the Pritchards to Oklahoma, where they recognized two of the men as the actual robbers.

Both the judge and the prosecutor at Curbow's trial wrote to the Texas Pardons Board, stating that there had been a miscarriage of justice. On April 18, 1940, after having served eighteen months in prison, Curbow was pardoned as innocent. Strickland also was released. Discharged prisoners normally receive $50 from Texas when they are freed from prison. Curbow received no money because this rule applies only to prisoners who have completed their sentences.

APPENDIX

SAMUEL CURBOW and J. C. STRICKLAND,
Cherokee County, Texas
Curbow trial, January, 1939, Rusk District Court; convicted by jury, armed robbery; jury fixed sentence at 30 years. No defense lawyer appointed. Strickland trial jury set sentence at 5 years. Pardoned by Governor Lee O'Daniels, April, 1940. Actual culprits confessed. No compensation.