BREAKING: Four Black men, known as the Groveland Four, are posthumously exonerated for 1949 rape case.
But on Monday morning, a circuit court judge in Lake County went further, clearing the charges against the men and issuing a ruling that effectively exonerated them of the crime. Bill Gladson, a local prosecutor, set the extraordinary move, when he filed paperwork to toss Thomas' and Shepherd's indictments and set aside the sentences and judgments imposed on Greenlee and Irvin.
Such incidents show how the desire to protect white women was used to justify racism and the oppression of Black people's rights, said author Gilbert King, whose book"Devil in the Grove," which investigated the Groveland Four case, won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 2013. Relatives of the Groveland Four, including Carol Greenlee, right, gather at an unveiled monument in front of the Old Lake County Courthouse in Tavares, Fla., on Feb. 21, 2020.Irvin, also a World War II veteran, received the death penalty. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison, and he was eventually paroled in 1968. He died the following year.Padgett has rarely spoken publicly about the case, and her family did not return a message seeking comment.
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