Analysis Of A Murder In Virginia By Suzanne Lebsock

In Suzanne Lebsock’s A Murder in Virginia, 2003, the judicial proceedings of a court case are depicted after a women, Lucy Pollard, was found brutally slain in her own backyard. Most would think this to be a simple illustration of a murder trial, but this case comes with a twist. The twist is that the murder took place in rural Virginia in 1895. This is a time period that is characterized as post Reconstruction but before the implementation of the Jim Crow Laws. Being a Confederate state shortly after the Civil War, one would believe that race relations in Virginia would be extremely tumultuous, but this case just happens to fall in a small window of time in which relationships were surprisingly harmonious. Reconstruction was the period after

This was a much harder task than it would seem. First, O’Ferrall could not send troops whenever he felt it was needed; the troops had to be requested by the local sheriff. If the sheriff was not in agreement with O’Ferrall, he might not request troops in hope that the suspects would be lynched. Second, Lunenburg County was in a very strange place; there was no easy way to get there due to the lack of railroads. This meant that backup could not easily be supplied and that there was no communication through a telegraph. O’Ferrall did not like the situation, “Sending troops to Lunenburg Courthouse was like sending them back to another century” (Lebsock, p. 65). Against all of the challenges, O’Ferrall still highly valued the suspects’ lives and would act in order to protect

110). An African American with this power during these days was almost unheard of. He worked to give justice to the poor and mistreated in his community, so Mitchell was instantly interested in the case when he heard of it. Mitchell immediately set out to find lawyers for the suspects. He knew if he found black lawyers, it would be difficult to receive a fair trial. In the end, Mitchell ended up with three white lawyers to defend the suspects: George Wise, Henry Flournoy, and Alexander Guigon. Finding three white lawyers to defend a group of African Americans had to be difficult enough, but in an even more shocking revelation, two of the lawyers, Wise and Flournoy, had once fought for the Confederate army. These men were once willing to risk their lives in order to enslave African Americans; now, they are going to defend them in court in order to save them from hanging. The African American community reached out to the suspects in a big way. Mitchell was constantly receiving money from various African American individuals and organizations in order to fund the lawyers for the upcoming trial. With the help of their new lawyers, the Virginia Supreme Court gave a fair look at the suspect’s case and decided that a retrial would be awarded. They moved the new trial to Richmond, Virginia to remove all bias that was in the original case.