From Death Row to Freedom: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Pitts-Lee Case
From Death Row to Freedom: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Pitts-Lee Case is a must-read! Phillip A. Hubbart masterfully explains a complicated legal system in plain language as he tells the chilling story of his journey to justice on behalf of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, two Black men wrongfully convicted of murdering two white victims. Readers will experience outrage over the racially motivated arrest, conviction, and prosecution, the desperation of two men dependent on a justice system that failed them, and admiration for Hubbart and his team.
On August 28, 1963, as Hubbart notes, a “great injustice was coming to a climax in the Florida Panhandle — one that would take 12 long years to reverse.” On that day, a judge sentenced Pitts and Lee to death, the same day that Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech and declared that we refused to “believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” Readers will reflect on King’s words as the story unfolds.
Hubbart directs attention to the history of the criminal justice system and racial issues in Florida. This history is hard to accept, but Hubbart quotes James Baldwin to point out “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing will change until it is faced.”
Hubbart clearly illustrates the nexus between racial issues and the convictions. In July 1963, two white gas station attendants were murdered. Law enforcement disregarded their knowledge of the actual perpetrator and myopically focused on Pitts and Lee. Hubbart details the brutality employed during the investigation, including beating Lee and threatening to shave his wife’s head and electrocute her. At one point, the sheriff moved Pitts and Lee to another jail, away from their family, because of the fear of a lynching. Hubbart notes Florida had the second highest rate of lynching per capita of all the southern states from 1880 to 1940. The grand jury and trial jury were 100% white despite 14.6% of registered voters being Black and eligible for jury service. The initial defense attorney cooperated with prosecutors to the clients’ detriment. This attorney was “famous” for his association with the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, but Hubbart notes the right to counsel eroded when the defendants were not white.
After being sentenced to death, Pitts wrote letters to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Miami begging for help. The ACLU represented indigent death row inmates requesting legal help and, in the summer of 1965, accepted the case. Hubbart, working as an assistant public defender at the Dade County Public Defender’s Office in Miami, took on the case. His journey through various courts reached the U.S. Supreme Court. When confronted with obstacles, roadblocks, and threats, Hubbart never backed down.
Hubbart summarizes his experience by referring to his conclusion in his petition for certiorari filed to the U.S. Supreme Court: “The enormity of the injustice done to these petitioners is almost beyond belief. That such an event could happen in this country in this day and age is a reminder to all of us that injustice of enormous magnitude is still very much among us. No ovations, no rationalizations, and no highly skilled legal argument can quite obscure the simple truth.” Philip Hubbart is a hero for his diligent efforts in righting a wrong and writing this book to remind us that nothing will change until it is faced.
