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Exonerate Kennard, former judge says

By Jerry Mitchell
The Clarion-Ledger

A former judge has petitioned the state Supreme Court to clear the name of a decorated black Korean War veteran falsely convicted of a burglary after he tries to enroll in the late 1950s at a white Mississippi university.

Former Hinds County Chancellor Chet Dillard urged justices “to exonerate and clear records to show the innocence and good moral character of Clyde Kennard,” who repeatedly tried to enroll at the University of Southern Mississippi, only to be sent to prison for seven years for a burglary he didn’t commit. “Without question and beyond any reasonable doubt, Kennard was innocent of any crime yet this court affirmed his conviction,” he wrote.

[On the right side of the above paragraph’s first sentence is a black-and-white headshot of Kennard in military uniform and below the photograph is a caption that reads “Kennard”.]

Dillard, who graduated from Southern in 1953, filed the friend-of-the-court brief after a three-month investigation by The Clarion-Ledger revealed how Kennard was falsely imprisoned.

Attorney General Jim Hood said because Dillard’s motion doesn’t include affidavits or similar proof, his office will oppose the request.

Dillard said he doesn’t think affidavits are necessary because it’s well known Kennard was railroaded. Long-secret records confirm this.

Erle Johnston Jr. – executive director of the state’s now-defunct segregationist spy agency, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission – wrote an Ohio man in 1965: “Many responsible Mississippi citizens recognize that there was a miscarriage of justice in the Kennard case.”

In Kennard’s 1960 trial, 19-year-old Johnny Lee Roberts testified that the 33-year-old Kennard put him up to breaking into Forrest County Co-Op to steal $25 in feed.

Now, 45 years later, Roberts said none of that is true.

Approached by The Clarion-Ledger, he said he’s willing to swear under oath that Kennard “wasn’t guilty of nothing.”

Legal experts say Roberts’ recanting means Kennard’s burglary conviction falls.

In 1960, the white jury took 10 minutes to convict Kennard. The judge sentenced him to the maximum seven years in prison but gave Roberts no jail time.

See KENNARD, 5A

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Tuesday, January 24, 2006 5A

Kennard
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Months later, the state Supreme Court upheld Kennard’s conviction, rejecting defense arguments that black residents had been barred from voting and, therefore, from serving on Kennard’s jury: “The jury box is filled without regard to race.” (That same year, the Justice Department charged Forrest County Circuit Clerk Theron Lynd with voter discrimination.)

Behind bars, Kennard suffered weight loss and severe abdominal pain.

Doctors misdiagnosed him with sickle-cell anemia, and prison guards forced him to pick cotton all day at the State Penitentiary at Parchman.

In early 1963, Gov. Ross Barnett released Kennard, who died months later of cancer.

In 1991, The Clarion-Ledger published secret documents that showed how authorities first framed Kennard on reckless driving and illegal liquor possession.

In 1993, USM honored Kennard by renaming its student services building after him and Walter Washington, the first African American to receive a doctorate there.