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Originally Posted by listopencil
I'm still not convinced that they were innocent.
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That's the thing, people are BOTH so polarized and so addicted to narratives, that an accurate picture will never emerge without a lot of carnage.
The authorities overstepped procedurally and thus the individuals were entitled to absolution and recompense for the failures of the state in the administration of justice. But in the course of that, absolution in fact, or factual innocence, was not established as the present-day hagiographers would have people believe.
It was a group of individuals acting lawlessly in concert that resulted in some heinous crimes. The state failed to do the hard work to explicitly establish who did what and overused the acting in concert aspect to convict them all. It was sound strategy at the time, when the heinousness of the criminal acts were the focus, but it left holes in the evidentiary record when the focus shifted to racial politics and convict rights.
I'm saddened by this overall, from almost every angle.