My Father and Atticus Finch by Joseph Madison Beck

the clerks, and the lawyers entered, the lawyers solemnly taking their places at their respective tables and commencing to rustle papers. Next came the twelve jurors, solemnly nodding, occasionally smiling to their friends and neighbors in thepacked courtroom, but avoiding eye contact with the lawyers as they had been instructed to do by Judge Parks.
    It was time for the defendant to be brought in. At Foster Beck’s insistence, Charles White’s face had been shaved and his hair neatly trimmed, and he had been loaned a set of civilian clothes before leaving Kilby prison, but there had been a question about whether he would have to wear his shackles in the courtroom. “As Blackstone wrote as long ago as 1769, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England ,” Foster had argued to Judge Parks in chambers, “unless there is a danger, a defendant must be brought to bar without irons or any manner of shackles. The State of Alabama has not shown there to be any danger.”
    Judge Parks agreed. The defendant would not wear shackles when in the presence of the jury. As a result, Charles White was able to walk in with only a deputy holding his arm and to make his way unassisted to his counsel’s table.
    â€œAll rise,” an assistant clerk commanded the moment Charles was seated. The assistant clerk had moved to Troy from Boston. Despite having lived in Alabama for ten years, he had retained a stentorian Boston accent, which gave a martial tone to the words “All rise,” the signal for Judge W. L. Parks to enter the courtroom.

   Chapter 18
    J UDGE W. L. P ARKS , by the evidence of his obituary, had not attended law school. That was not unusual in those days, when attorneys often simply apprenticed with practicing lawyers before taking the bar exam. I remember my father saying that Judge Parks had a reputation for being fair and that he “could have done worse,” a comment that was like him, for he was not the kind of man to blame others.
    My father believed that Judge Parks chose him, rather than a Yankee lawyer, to defend Charles White as a way of demonstrating Southern self-sufficiency. In addition to my father’s growing reputation, Judge Parks also knew of my father’s law partner, Mr. Yarbrough, and the fact that this much older civic and business leader placed confidence in my father would have been reassuring to Judge Parks. The advocacy of a respected, if on the young side, trial lawyer from Enterprise, the son of one of Alabama’s progressives on race, along with the strict courtroom decorum that Judge Parks had promised to impose, would go far toward convincing skeptics that the trial of Charles White would be as fair as any colored manaccused of raping a white woman could have gotten anywhere, even in New York.
    Judge Parks gaveled the courtroom to silence and directed everyone to be seated. He did not say good morning, and his tone and demeanor were solemn as the indictment was read: “The Grand Jury of Pike County charge that Charles White, alias William White, alias Reeves White, whose Christian name is to the Grand Jury otherwise unknown, forcibly ravished Elizabeth Liger, a woman, against the peace and dignity of the State of Alabama.”
    What was said by Judge Parks as he turned to face the jury does not appear in the transcript, but based on what my father said and the way things are done in court, he would have explained that what he had just read was what the law called an indictment: a formal charge of a crime but not evidence of a crime. Pausing to allow the distinction to sink in to each of the twelve jurors, all of whom he knew personally or through their families, he told them to base their verdict on evidence alone . Another pause, and then there was a change in tone; no longer warm, his voice held a warning.
    In a moment, he told the jury, you will hear the opening statements of Mr. E. C. Orme of Troy, representing the people of the State