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Assaults in the courts (7 of 54)
Three of the assaults involved alleged assaults of police officers, including one for which a white man was arrested: Harry Gordon, one of the Communists who had picketed Kress' store at the very beginning of the disorder. The alleged assaults resulting in arrests were a mix of the forms reported in the disorder - two assaults by individuals, three by groups, two hit by objects, and one shooting (with no details surviving of the circumstances of Jackson's arrest). That mix suggests that no form of assault was more likely than another to lead to arrest.
<Add circumstances of arrests - anything distinctive vs what is in arrests page>
Magistrates held four of the twelve arrested, involved in half the assaults for which an arrest was made, for the Grand Jury. In one case, James Smitten, there is no information on the legal outcome. Of the men prosecuted for Disorderly Conduct in the Magistrates Court, the circumstances are unknown in the cases of Richard Jackson and Salathel Smith, Rivers Wright was allegedly part of a group that attacked a white man, and the others, charged as a group with shooting at police, although there is no evidence anyone was injured and no weapons were found in the men's possession. The magistrate transferred Harry Gordon to the Court of Special Sessions, to be prosecuted for "simple" (misdemeanor) assault, involving a lesser level of violence. Of the four men Magistrates held for the grand jury, one, Douglas Cornelius, has no case file in the District Attorney's records, and there is no information on the outcome of the prosecution.
Strikingly few of the prosecutions produced convictions: Magistrate Renaud convicted Richard Jackson, Salathel Smith and Rivers Wright of the lesser offense of disorderly conduct, and a jury convicted James Hughes of third degree (misdemeanor) assault for throwing a rock that hit Detective Henry Roge. None of those men received a prison sentence: Magistrate Renaud sent Jackson and Smith to the workhouse for two days, and Wright for ten days, while a judge sent Hughes to the Workhouse for three months. Those sentences reflected the limited violence of the assaults in the disorder in terms of both the lack of weapons and the limited injuries inflicted. Magistrate Ford acquitted all three of the group of men who allegedly shot at police of the lesser charge of disorderly conduct, unsurprisingly given the lack of any evidence they had committed a crime (The outcome of the prosecution of the fourth member of the group, Charles Alston is unknown as he was injured and did not appear in court with the others). Despite the prevalence of plea bargaining at this time, none of these men pled guilty to lesser offenses. Two juries also acquitted men put on trial, both in cases of assaults by blacks on whites. This was not a circumstance in which juries usually voted for acquittal unless there was a question about the identification of the defendant as the person who committed the assault. As the cases involved alleged assaults by groups, identification was likely an issue.
How do these outcomes compare with assault prosecutions outside the disorder?
As Part of Related Categories:
- Assaults on white men & women (8/29)
- Assaults on police (2/9)
- Assaults by groups (3/17)
- Assaults by individuals (2/7)
- Assaults in unknown circumstances (1/4)
- Hit by objects (2/19)
- Shot & Wounded (1/6)
- Arrests (12/131)
- Black men and women in the courts (11/107)
- White men in the courts (1/10)
- In the Magistrates Court (11/129)
- Charged with assault (6/6)
- Charged with disorderly conduct (5/?)
- Charge reduced in the Magistrates Court (1/?)
- In the Court of Special Sessions (1/37)
- In the Grand Jury (4/41)
- In the Court of General Sessions (3/15)
- Convicted in the courts (4/70)
- Released in the courts (5/35)
- Outcome unknown in the courts (3/25)