Executed black woman gets pardoned 60 years later

Decades after execution, U.S. parole board grants black maid posthumous pardon

at 15:15 on August 30, 2005, EST.

ATLANTA (AP) - Six decades after she was executed for killing a white man in the racially segregated South, a black maid was granted a full and unconditional pardon Tuesday.

Lena Baker, 44, the only woman put to death in Georgia's electric chair, had maintained until she was put to death in 1945 that she shot E.B. Knight in self-defence.

Members of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles read a proclamation saying the board's refusal to grant clemency before the execution was "a grievous error, as this case called out for mercy."

Members of Baker's family expressed gratitude for those who worked toward clearing her.

"This was not a white or black issue; it was an issue of right or wrong," said Charles McElveen, Baker's great-great-nephew.

Cuthbert District Attorney Charles Ferguson has said if Baker was charged for the same crime today, the case would not have even met the requirements for capital punishment.

It was only the third posthumous pardon granted in the agency's 62-year history.

During her trial, Baker testified that the 67-year-old Knight, a man she had been hired to care for, held her against her will and threatened to shoot her if she tried to leave. She said she grabbed Knight's gun and shot him when he raised a metal bar to strike her.

Because the all-white, all-male jury did not recommend mercy, the sentence of death by electrocution was required by state law at the time. Baker was executed on March 5, 1945, at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville.

The case should be regarded as more than a wrong from a bygone era, said John Cole Vodicka, who worked to spearhead the pardon effort along with Roosevelt Curry, a great-nephew of Baker.

"There are still a lot of racial overtones in what goes on in the legal system today," said Vodicka, director of the Prison and Jail Project, a civil rights organization based in Americus, Ga. "We still have a system that is not foolproof, where racism still plays a part."

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