Civil rights trial nearing end, alligator found in Arlington
Have you ever wondered what life was like in Jacksonville half a century ago? It may have been a different era of history, culture and politics but there are often parallels between the kind of stories that made headlines then and today. As interesting as the differences may be, so are the similarities. These are some of the top stories from this week in 1960. The items were compiled from the Jacksonville Public Library’s periodical archives by Staff Writer Max Marbut.
• The trial in federal court of 14 former Raiford State Prison guards on charges they violated the civil rights of prisoners entered its fifth week Monday, but it appeared the end was in sight.
John Murphy, chief of the litigation section of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, who was directing the prosecution, said the government had 25 remaining witnesses to present and predicted the trial could conclude within two weeks.
The week began with legal arguments over the admissibility of evidence. Defense attorney Chester Bedell had already won a ruling that evidence of alleged brutality inflicted on prisoners at times other than when they were shackled to the bars of their cells could be applied to only one of the 23 indictments which had been consolidated for the trial.
Bedell then challenged the government’s introduction of testimony and evidence relative to alleged mistreatment of Talmadge Sellers, who died in the prison’s maximum security building on Sept. 6, 1958, except that covering a time closely related to his death.
Bedell’s objection was sustained by the U.S. District Judge Bryan Simpson, who ordered testimony relative to Sellers’ confinement in a straitjacket early in August 1958 stricken from the record.
Bedell based his arguments on admissibility on the general language of the indictments, which charged the guards with depriving prisoners of their liberty as defined by the 14th Amendment. He said the only deprivation of liberty came when the prisoners were shackled to their cell bars and testimony as to brutality should be restricted to such times.
Murphy argued the charge did not relate to physical liberty, but to the liberty all citizens were entitled to under the Constitution, to freedom from torture and abuse. He also said the government was not contending the shackling, in itself, was a violation of civil rights, and admitted guards were sometimes forced to restrain recalcitrant inmates, but declared shackling for long periods of time constituted a deprivation of liberty.
Bedell countered with the opinion that nowhere does the 14th Amendment specify how long a man could be held in shackles.
The principal witness in the Sellers allegations was Ty “Popeye” Cobb, an inmate at Raiford who was on furlough from the Florida State Hospital for the Insane at Chattahoochee in order to testify at the trial. He proved to be one of the most effective witnesses for the government when he gave eyewitness accounts of Sellers’ last days, which could not be shaken under cross examination.
The only time Cobb said anything that could benefit the defense was when he answered a question asked by Simpson, who wanted to know if Cobb had ever thrown salt under prisoner James Smith, as had been indicated by another witness.
“No sir,” said Cobb. “And I never saw any salt under any man.”
Virtually all of the Raiford inmates who had taken the stand to describe their own punishment testified it had included a “salting down” of their cells.
Cobb said he was assigned the job of “run-around,” or trusty, soon after he was sent to the maximum security building in July 1958. As the run-around, he said, he usually carried the hose used in spraying prisoners into the cell block and accompanied guards when they were engaged in shackling prisoners to the bars of their cells or spraying tear gas on them.
Sellers, Cobb said, had developed a habit of singing and tapping on his steel bunk and had been repeatedly warned against doing it by guards, usually Guard Lieutenant Earl Chesser.
Cobb testified that after one of Sellers’ disturbances, Chesser and James Barton, another guard, removed Sellers to the sun room of his cell, where Barton shackled the prisoner’s ankles together then cuffed his hands to the leg irons, leaving him in a squatting position.
Cobb said he remained in Sellers’ cell, watching the man through a porthole in the door and saw Barton and Chesser on the barred roof of the room. Barton had a hose and “skeeted it” on Sellers for a long time.
Sellers, according to the witness, was forced into a squatting position by his shackles, but he moved around and tried to keep his back to the water spray.
Several hours later, Cobb said, Chesser ordered him to get some blankets, which he did, and directed another guard to get a tear gas gun. Cobb added that Chesser then told him to go to the porthole in Sellers’ sun room and watch the gassing.
Cobb said that time he observed that Sellers had been shackled in a standing position with his hands cuffed to the overhead bars of the sun room.
Blankets had been placed over the open roof, he said, and as he watched he saw an edge of one of them lifted, the gas pistol slipped under and one tear gas shell fired into the room.
Cobb testified that as he watched, he heard Sellers say, “I see you up there.”
The next morning, Cobb said, he went to Sellers’ cell when the inmate was removed from the sun room. He said Sellers could hardly walk and sank to his knees beside his bunk. The man was, “shivering and breathing like he had asthma,” Cobb said.
Cobb also said he was present when a medical technician examined Sellers and started to give him a hypodermic injection.
Sellers, according to Cobb, told the technician, “I don’t want a shot. It will give me blackmouth and kill me.”
Cobb said he held Sellers while the medic gave the injection.
The next day, Cobb said, guards wrapped Sellers’ body in a sheet and removed it from the cell block.
• William Highsmith, vice president and dean of Jacksonville University, reported that the university’s faculty “far surpassed” the accreditation requirements of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. He added JU “more than satisfied” the standards in general training, experience and percentage of doctorates on the faculty.
His statements were included in an announcement of 15 new full-time faculty members who would begin teaching in September, bringing the full-time educational staff to 66.
• W.A. Knadle, who lived at 6314 Terry Parker Drive N., found a strange swimmer in his pool.
Awakened about 1:30 a.m. by his dog’s barking, Knadle went into his backyard to investigate and found a foot-long alligator in the pool. Knadle apprehended the intruder with a net and exiled the reptile to a large pail while he “pondered its disposition.”