Tillman Branch's Murder - Mississippi Supreme Court Affirms Matthew Winter's Sentence

This is a follow-up post to an earlier brief account of the murder of Tillman Branch, the subject of a book I am currently writing. The book, tentatively entitled "Tillman Branch, King of the Mississippi Bootleggers," is scheduled for publication by The History Press in April 2014. 

The earlier posting included a decision by the U.S. District Court, Northern Division, Greenville, Mississippi, regarding the legality of Matthew Winter's guilty plea, entered in Circuit Court of Holmes County in 1963. That decision was subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of Mississippi, asking for Winter's guilty plea to be voided and his sentence vacated based on the contention that Negroes had been systematically excluded from a Grand Jury that indicted him and that Winter's attorney, David Crawley, Jr., had not advised the accused of his right to challenge the jury panel. The decision of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, rendered by Memorandum dated February 8, 1971, can be read below. 

Interestingly, the case would be appealed later to the U. S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, a matter that will be discussed further in the upcoming book.

Matthew WINTERS

v.

STATE of Mississippi.

No. 46191.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

February 8, 1971.

Constance Iona Slaughter, Jackson, for appellant.

A.F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Guy N. Rogers, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

INZER, Justice:

This is an appeal by Matthew Winters from a judgment of the Circuit Court of Holmes County overruling appellant's motion to vacate his previous conviction by a plea of guilty to a charge of murder, and the life sentence imposed as a result of his plea. We affirm.

Appellant, a Negro, was indicted at the April 1963 term of the Circuit Court of Holmes County for the murder of E.T. Branch, a Caucasian. He was at the time seventeen years of age and his family employed David E. Crawley, Jr. of Kosciusko, Mississippi, to defend him on this charge. Upon arraignment appellant pled not guilty. His counsel, after an investigation, was convinced from what appellant and members of his family had told him relative to the facts in the case that appellant had no real defense to the charge unless a mental examination would reveal that appellant was insane. Counsel then filed a petition asking that appellant be committed to the state hospital for a mental examination, and the court entered an order so committing him. He was found to be without psychosis and was returned to the Holmes County Jail. At the October 1963 term appellant entered a plea of guilty to the charge of murder and was sentenced to serve a life term in the State Penitentiary.

On October 6, 1969, appellant filed a motion in the Circuit Court of Holmes County seeking to have his sentence vacated. The motion alleged that at the time of his indictment, and for a long time prior thereto, Negroes had been deliberately excluded from service on the grand and petit juries in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was also alleged that appellant was denied his right of effective assistance of counsel because his counsel failed to advise him of his right to challenge the indictment on the systematic exclusion of Negroes from the grand jury and his right to stand trial by a jury from which Negroes had not been systematically excluded. It was further alleged that because he was a Negro layman and uneducated in law, he did not recognize or become aware of his constitutional right until shortly before filing his petition to vacate.

The trial court conducted a full evidentiary hearing on the motion, and the evidence supports the following finding by the court:

The court finds from the testimony presented at the hearing that David Crawley, Jr., is and has been a member of the Mississippi State Bar in good standing since 1942, that as a part of his practice prior to 1963, he had handled a number of criminal cases, including murder cases. The court further finds that the petitioner's attorney, Mr. Crawley, investigated the charges against his client thoroughly, that his investigation showed no substantial conflicts as to the occurrence of the crime, that Mr. Crawley believed based upon his investigation that to go to trial would put his client in imminent danger of receiving the death penalty, that Mr. Crawley considered raising every possible issue and defense, including the systematic exclusion of Negroes from jury service in Holmes County and would have done so had the case been tried, that although the intention to raise the defense of systematic exclusion of Negroes from jury service was not communicated to the petitioner, it was communicated to the District Attorney during the plea bargaining. The court therefore concludes that the petitioner was advised of and knew the elements of the charge against him, was advised of his rights, and was aware of the sentences which could be imposed, including the death penalty. The petitioner knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily entered his plea of guilty upon the advice of competent counsel. The petitioner's voluntary guilty plea waived all non-jurisdictional defects. Lantz v. United States, 417 F.2d 329 (5th Cir. Oct. 6, 1969); Picard v. Allgood, 400 F.2d 887 (5th Cir., 1968); Askew v. Alabama, 398 F.2d 825 (5th Cir., 1968); Henderson v. United States, 395 F.2d 209 (5th Cir., 1968); Busby v. Holman, 356 F.2d 75 (5th Cir., 1966); and Clark v. Cook, Civ. No. 3702 (C.C.S.D.Miss., June 10, 1969).

The decision of the trial court is in keeping with our holding in Ellzey v. State, 196 So.2d 889 (Miss. 1967), where we held an eighteen year old defendant who had voluntarily pleaded guilty to murder could not thereafter urge that plea was void on the theory that Negroes had been systematically excluded from jury service in that county and that he had not been advised of his right to challenge the panel. We adhere to this decision for the same reasons stated in the opinion. We are aware that there are decisions of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Federal District Courts holding contra. However, such decisions are not binding on us, absent a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding to the contrary, we choose to follow the well-established precedent in this state.

For the reasons stated, this case must be and is affirmed.

Affirmed.

GILLESPIE, P.J., and RODGERS, JONES and SMITH, JJ., concur.

Descendants of Robert W. Ragland, A Study of the U. S. Census of 1870

Earlier this week, I posted information about the family of Robert W. Ragland, a brother to my paternal third great-grandmother, Winiford Ragland Branch.  In that post, I wrote that Robert's wife, Sarah Jane Porter, who he married in Hinds County, Mississippi, had died, and Robert, age 32, and his four daughters and one son named Turner were living in rural Attala County. Robert's occupation was shown as "farmer."  Since the Ragland household, as it was enumerated on the U. S. Census of 1860, did not include a wife or an older female, it appeared that Robert had not remarried. Based on this information, I decided to locate Robert on the 1870 U. S. Census to see if he eventually remarried and had additional children.  


Before I can go on, I must preface the rest of this post with a statement about the U. S. Census of 1870. Each U. S. census has had specific objectives for capturing certain information about the citizens of this country, and the U.S. Census of 1870 was no different.  Since that census was the first U. S. Census recorded since the abolition of slavery, one in which all citizens, including those who had been former slaves, would be enumerated together, one of its objectives was to identify the race of the individuals enumerated. The census form included a column for recording one of five codes listed on the form itself, including "W" for White, "B" for Black, "M" for Mulatto, "I" for Indian, and "C" for Chinese. No one knows for certain exactly how the determination of race was made, whether it was a "self-identification" process prompted by the census taker's question, or whether the census taker simply made a visual determination based on skin color and/or certain physical characteristics. And without a doubt, census takers may have recorded racial identity information without input from those who were enumerated. 


An examination of the U. S. Census recorded in 1870 for Attala County, Mississippi, found R. W. "Raglin" a 45 year old white male as the head of a household living in Beat 4 of Attala County.  Interestingly, Robert Ragland and his family lived just three residences away from the household of his sister, Winiford, and her husband Edward Tillman Branch, as well as a household where Joseph Arthur Branch and Edward T. Branch, both still unmarried, lived. 


In 1870, Elizabeth (enumerated on this census as "Bettie"), Turner, and Sarah, now 19, 15, and 14, no doubt children born to Sarah Porter Ragland, resided as they had in 1860 with their father.  However, Robert's household included three additional children, Louvega (9), Adam (6), and Lucy (4), all born since the U. S. Census of 1860 was recorded.  Since "Louvega" is such an unusual name, it is possible the name was an incorrect transcription of "Louisa," the name of Robert's late wife's mother and the grandmother of his older children. (This is supposition, however, since Sarah Porter Ragland's relationship to Louisa Lawson Porter, has yet to be verified by the writer of this blog.)  


While Bettie, Turner, and Sarah, like their father, were identified on the census as "White," the racial identity of each of the younger children, Louvega, Adam, and Lucy, was recorded as "M,"  the abbreviation for "Mulatto." Although relationships were not identified on the 1870 census, all six children were listed under Robert's surname, incorrectly shown on this census as "Raglin." Again, like the 1860 U. S. Census, no wife, older female relative, or an older unrelated female, was enumerated in Robert's household. 


The composition of Robert W. Ragland's household on the U. S. Census Record of 1870 raises two important questions: Who was the mother of Louvega, Adam, and Lucy?  And were they biological children of Robert W. Ragland? 


Watch for a future post in which I hope to answer these questions.


Source: 
Census Year: 1870; Census Place: Beat 4, Attala, Mississippi; Roll: M593_722; Page: 122B; Image: 248; Family History Library Film: 552221. Ancestry.com. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.