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| Kin of Executed Ga. Woman Seek Pardon |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 03/24/2003 |
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Lena Baker claimed she was being held against her will by a drunken white man and acted in self-defense when she wrested his gun away and shot him. For a black maid in the segregated South in 1944, her story was a tough sell to a jury of 12 white men. And rumors that she was romantically involved with victim E.B. Knight did not help. Her murder trial lasted just a day, without a single witness called by her court-appointed lawyer. She was convicted and sentenced to death. Now relatives of the only woman ever executed in Georgia's electric chair are returning to Cuthbert to honor Baker and try to clear her name with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole. 'The family doesn't need to go down in history with a bad name,' said Roosevelt Curry, 59, the grandson of Baker's brother. Since 1943, the board has granted only two pardons for people who have proved their innocence. One also was granted posthumously for Leo Frank, who was lynched in 1915 while appealing a murder conviction. Board spokeswoman Heather Hedrick said March 11 the agency has not received a pardon application from Baker's family. Pardon requests usually are filed by living people convicted of less severe crimes, such as drug offenses or robbery, who want to restore such rights as voting and owning a gun. 'I can understand why that would be important for her family to get a pardon for her,' Hedrick said. 'But the point is to restore political and civil rights, and in this case, I don't know if that would be appropriate.' Prosecution witnesses at her trial said that Knight and Baker went on trips together and that he would often go to her house and demand that she leave with him. After she was sentenced, her court-appointed attorney filed an appeal, but it was dropped after he withdrew from the case. John Cole Vodika, director of the Prison and Jail Project, an inmate advocacy program, said the family has a strong case for getting her exonerated. 'She should never have been tried for murder,' he said. 'It was an obvious injustice. That's what the system did with African-Americans who dared resist white men's authority. Baker, who had a sixth-grade education, proclaimed her innocence to the very end. 'What I done, I did in self-defense,' she said in her final statement. 'I have nothing against anyone. ... I am ready to meet my God.' |
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