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A Pardon For Lena Baker

By TChris, Section Death Penalty
Posted on Tue Aug 16, 2005 at 06:53:01 AM EST
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by TChris

It's easy to understand why Lena Baker shot her employer.

In her one-day trial, Ms. Baker, who was black, testified that E. B. Knight, a white man she had been hired to care for, had held her against her will and threatened to shoot her. She said she grabbed a gun and shot him when he raised a metal bar to strike her.

Sadly, it's also easy to understand why, in 1945, she was convicted.

She was convicted by an all-white, all-male jury.

Sixty years after she was electrocuted, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted her a pardon. While that decision comes sixty years too late to benefit Baker, it may help ease the pain for family members who have labored to clear her name. More information about Lena Baker can be found here and here.

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    A Pardon For Lena Baker | 4 comments (4 topical)
    Re: A Pardon For Lena Baker (none / 0) (#1)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:23 PM EST
    Some things never change. Only the faces on either side of the bench. I am sure that the people who convicted her thought that they were living in the most modern, democratic, and free country in the world. That does not seem to change either. It must be the water.

    Re: A Pardon For Lena Baker (none / 0) (#2)
    by Johnny on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:25 PM EST
    See? The system works... Dunno what all the libruls are crying about. (Sarcasm)

    Re: A Pardon For Lena Baker (none / 0) (#3)
    by BigTex on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:27 PM EST
    See? The system works... Dunno what all the libruls are crying about. (Sarcasm)
    Seriously, the system is working. We can't correct the ills of the past. We can acknowledge that wrongs were committed. Correcting the ills of the past is a sign of coming to terms with the past. Society could have ignored this miscarriage of justice. Rather than ignore the past misdeed, the misdeed was acknowledged and remedied to the best of our ability to do so. Does it make up for the wrong? No. Does it show that as a country we are facing the issues and attempting reconcilation? Yes. Yet the above quote contains nothing but scorn for this action. The problem 60 years ago was with the state. Today it is with those who refuse to allow reconcilation to take place. I posit that the latter is the greater wrong.

    Re: A Pardon For Lena Baker (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:02:47 PM EST
    It's kind of hard not to have sarcasm when it takes 60 years to bring "justice" (if you really want to call it that) to someone who has been wronged solely based on the color of their skin. Especially since this can't bring Lena back and take away the pain and horrifying circumstances of her death. It shouldn't take 60 years for reconcilliation. Besides what about all the other 1000s and 1000s of black people who were subjected to a similar injustice? Where's their reconcilliation and acknowledged "miscarriage of justice?" We don't have the resources to began to atone for all of them. So, I can understand how one can be a little jaded and sarcastic.

    A Pardon For Lena Baker | 4 comments (4 topical)