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Remedying old injustice is at least worth a try

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published September 6, 2005

In March 1964, racial tension in Jacksonville boiled over into civil disturbance. Protesters took their anger over segregationist laws into the streets.

On the night of March 23, 1964, four angry young white men armed with a .22-caliber handgun decided to reply.

According to their own later statements to police, somebody in the car uttered the fateful words: "Let's go get a n----r."

They drove to a predominantly black area of northwest Duval County looking for a victim. That is where they encountered Johnnie Mae Chappell.

Chappell, 35, had nothing to do with the unrest. She was walking home from her job as a maid for a white family. She was buying ice cream for her children, but had dropped her wallet and was looking for it.

She was shot on the side of the road in cold blood. She bled to death on the way to a hospital that took black patients.

The suspects' statements led investigators to the weapon. All four were indicted, but only one, the triggerman, went to trial. An all-white jury convicted him only of manslaughter, and he served three years. The other three were never tried.

Unlike other, perhaps more prominent murders from the civil rights era, Chappell's has not been prosecuted. As recently as last summer, Jacksonville's state attorney declined again to pursue the case even though the whereabouts of at least two of the accomplices is known.

The state attorney said that too much time has passed. The defendants might be able to raise constitutional speedy-trial issues. Besides, because the shooter was convicted only of manslaughter, what were the chances of a prosecution for the rest?

Chappell's family sued Jacksonville authorities in 2000, alleging a coverup. The murder weapon disappeared long ago. So did key records. But the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

This past April, Gov. Jeb Bush asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate. That inquiry is pending. But yet another reinvestigation - there have been others along the way - represents only more frustration for Chappell's family.

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, who recently agreed to look again at the 1951 bombing death of civil rights leader Harry T. Moore, says he also supports Bush's request for another look.

Besides the sheer random cruelty of the crime, another thing that makes the case remarkable is that the sheriff's detectives who cracked the case back in 1964 never stopped pursuing it, even at the cost of jobs, marriages and reputations.

When I tracked down C. Lee Cody on his cell phone last week, the former detective was still working the case, a Georgia journalist in tow, interviewing a member of the 1964 jury. Cody, 75, has gotten media attention for the case, ranging from Court TV to NBC's Dateline.

"This is not an investigative matter," Cody said when I asked him about the governor's actions. "There's nothing to investigate. It was investigated in 1964, and the fruits of that investigation were presented to a grand jury. The result was indictments." Nothing less than a special prosecutor and a trial will do for him.

I asked Cody: What if the state attorney is right, and a trial results in an acquittal or a defeat on speedy-trial grounds?

"The way we view it," he said, "they were indicted by a grand jury and they should have stood trial. Even if they were not convicted, at least the criminal justice system would have had a chance to work."

State Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, also has worked on the family's behalf. "We all know if time frames or the rights of the accused of such a heinous crime were legitimate excuses," Hill wrote the governor, "cases like the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing would not have been reopened."

It may be that the case is unwinnable after all these years, but I believe that Cody, Hill and the Chappell family are right in their faith that it is better to try than to decide not to try.

As he moves toward the end of his public service, the governor could do much worse than to pursue peace for an innocent mother gunned down on a Jacksonville roadside in an act of brutal injustice 41 years ago.

[Last modified September 6, 2005, 06:08:42]