A Brutal Crime and a Case for Change

On Oct. 20, 1953, Doris Nelms Langley and her 4-month-old child were alone in their home on Cooper Lake Road when Amos Reece came to the door. Reece, a black man, asked Langley, a white woman, for a glass of water.

Besides being a black man in a time of racial mistrust, Reece was also wearing a prison uniform. It is therefore baffling that Langley fetched him a glass of water and unlatched her screen door to give it to him. Perhaps she had seen Reece’s “road patrol,” a heavy equipment street paver, parked in front of her house, and, seeing that he was unsupervised, assumed him to be a prison trusty. Or maybe she was just a very compassionate woman.

Either way, unlatching the door was a mistake.

Reece was already serving time for the robbery and attempted rape of two Marietta women in 1945. The fact that he was unsupervised was a tragic blunder on the part of a new and inexperienced warden.

Earlier that day, Reece had been filling ditches under the supervision of a water company guard. The warden then ordered Reece to another work site, some three miles away. In a tremendous breach of procedure, the warden allowed Reece to travel to the new site alone.

Reece first stopped and purchased a pint and a half of moonshine liquor. After becoming intoxicated, he then stopped at the house on Cooper Lake to ask for some water. When Doris Langley unlatched the door, Reece forced her back into the house, raped her and left.

By the time he arrived at the work site, Smyrna police were waiting for him.

As criminal cases go, this one seemed to be open-and-shut. Reece admitted to having raped the woman and put up no resistance when arrested. Nevertheless, the series of trials and appeals that followed would forever alter Cobb County’s judicial practices regarding race and civil rights.

When the case came before Superior Court Judge James Manning, it was never about Reece’s guilt or innocence.  Attorneys Gordon Combs and Frank Holcomb, appointed to represent Reece, based their defense on two points: firstly, that Reece, who was slow-witted by all accounts, was not competent to stand trial; and secondly, that the black man’s constitutional right to equal protection had been violated due to the fact that Cobb County systematically barred African Americans from serving on juries.

At the time, Cobb County drew its jury lists from land owners based on tax records. But when property owners went to the county courthouse to file their tax returns, whites were given a form printed on white paper while blacks were given a form printed on yellow paper. A stub from each form was detached and placed in a tin jury box.

When the time came to call potential jurors, the clerk of the Superior Court would take the tin box to Judge Manning, who drew out the stubs and announced the names written thereon. The allegation leveled by the defense in the case of Georgia vs. Reece was that whenever the judge drew a yellow stub, he would “accidentally” drop it back into the box and then draw another.

Clerk John LeCroy and Deputy Clerk Tyre Lee Terry both testified that no such practice occurred. However, both men admitted when questioned under oath that they could not recall any occasion when an African American had been summoned as a potential juror.

Manning ruled against the defense on this second point. The only matter left to the jury was Reece’s mental competence, and while the professionals who evaluated Reece agreed that he had the mental aptitude of a 10-year-old at best, they also agreed that he was capable of discerning right from wrong. After deliberating for four hours, the jury found Reece guilty. Rape, at this time, was a capital offense, and Manning sentenced Reece to death by electrocution.

But the defense would not leave the matter alone and appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. Joining the defense was Daniel Duke, an attorney with a reputation for advocating civil rights. The appeal made two assertions: once again, that Cobb County excluded blacks from jury participation and that Manning had improperly charged the jury regarding Reece’s mental abilities.

The court dismissed the first motion but overturned the conviction on the second, remanding the case for a new trial.

An all-white grand jury issued a second indictment, and Manning presided over the second trial on June 22, 1954, with only Daniel Duke as attorney for the defense. Once again, Duke moved to quash the indictment on the grounds that African Americans had been unconstitutionally excluded from participating in the grand jury. Once again, Manning denied the motion. During opening remarks, prosecutor Raymond Reed told the jury to consider race and social standing in their decision. Duke immediately moved for a mistrial, which was predictably denied. The second trial ended the same way as the first, with Amos Reece sentenced to death in the electric chair.

Once again, the defense appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. This time the appeal failed, sending it to the nation’s highest court.

On Dec. 5, 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Georgia’s decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Tom C. Clark of Texas stated that one’s equal protection under the law, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, was denied when members of one’s own race were excluded from participation on grand juries. The fact that no African American had ever served on a Cobb County jury despite their significant population in the county was, in the majority opinion, evidence of systematic exclusion.

But even before this decision sent the trial back to a third grand jury, the case had resulted in measurable changes. According to the Marietta Daily Journal, two black men had served on a grand jury in October 1955, and several more had served on trial juries. Regardless of Reece’s fate, history had been made.

When a new grand jury was convened in February 1956 to hear the evidence against Amos Reece, three African-American jurors were present. The grand jury returned an indictment for rape, and the case went to trial. Once again, Dukes defended Reece with Manning presiding. Although several African Americans were presented to the jury panel, the 12 jurors approved by both sides were white.

Once again, Reece was found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. He was executed at the Reidsville prison on Jan. 4, 1957.

The case is remarkable on multiple points. First of all, the fact that the trial lasted almost four years and went through three appeals and two retrials is remarkable. A decade earlier, a black man who admittedly raped a white woman would have done well to escape lynching. Lynch law notwithstanding, once convicted, a black man would have been executed almost immediately.

Secondly, although it was a triumph in the arena of civil rights, the defendant was not falsely accused; he was an admitted brute who arguably deserved his fate. The hero, then, was an idea, and the hand of change was forced in a county which, while progressive in so many ways, lagged behind on issues of racial justice.