Joan Little
Encyclopedia
Joan Little (born 1953) is an African American
woman whose trial for the 1974 murder
of a white prison guard at Beaufort County
Jail in Washington, North Carolina
, became a cause célèbre
of the civil rights
, feminist
, and anti-death penalty
movements. Little was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Her case also has become classic in legal circles as a pioneering instance of the application of scientific jury selection.
herbalists
. Her father was a security guard in Brooklyn, New York. The eldest of six blood siblings, she was forced to care for them and her four half-siblings as well. She took to running away and hiding and soon fell in with an older crowd who supported her rebellion. Her social worker, Jean Nelson, who once called her an "escape artist," also noted her intelligence, telling her "some day you could do a lot of good." As a teenager, she worked in the tobacco
industry and as a waitress. In 1973, she went to work with a sheetrock
finisher named Julius Rogers, whom she later accompanied to Greenville
and later to Chapel Hill
, where she would become entangled with the law.
. After a few weeks at Dobbs, Little fled, walking to a nearby service station where she and a friend hitched a ride back to Washington. Her mother realized she had not been duly released and so sought to legitimize her daughter's situation by procuring an official release. She later sent Joan to live with relatives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
. Three weeks after graduating from high school there, Joan developed a thyroid
problem and returned to North Carolina for an operation.
In December 1973 and January 1974, Little, now 20, incurred a spate of arrests for theft and eventually for breaking and entering, with escalating legal consequences. In the coastal town of Jacksonville, North Carolina
at the end of 1973, she was charged with the possession of stolen goods and the possession of a sawed-off shotgun, but was not prosecuted. On January 3, 1974, she was arrested in Washington, North Carolina for shoplifting
. That charge, too was dismissed. Six days later, she was again arrested for shoplifting, a charge for which she was given a suspended six-month sentence. Six days after her release, she was again arrested and charged with three separate counts of felony
breaking and entering
and larceny
. Her trial was set for June 3 and she left town in the interim.
She returned to Washington in time for the trial, accompanied by Julius Rogers and two juveniles. The juveniles ended up in jail, where they were sexually harassed
by a guard who offered them freedom if one of them would "give him some." Little was convicted on June 4, 1974, and asked to remain in the county jail rather than be transferred to the Correctional Facility for Women in Raleigh
, as would have been customary. Remaining in Washington, she said, would allow her to remain close to home, where she could work on raising her bond
.
and the heart
area from an icepick. Semen was discovered on his leg. Little was missing. She turned herself in to North Carolina authorities more than one week later, and said that she had killed Alligood while defending herself against sexual assault
.
, drew the attention of anti-death penalty and prisoners' rights advocates. The racial component drew the attention of civil rights activists, and the gender component drew the attention of feminists. The combination of these three factors, along with sophisticated fundraising tactics, allowed the Joan Little Defense Committee to raise over $350,000. Jerry Paul was her lead attorney. The question of whether or not blacks
were treated equally by the criminal justice systems in the American South drew the attention of the national media.
, which had just come into existence in 1972. The defense commissioned surveys with a view to comparing popular attitudes among white people toward black people between Beaufort and Pitt Counties, in the state's northeast, and the north central area of the state. The results showed that unfavorable racial stereotypes were more strongly held in Beaufort County. For example, about two thirds of the respondents in Beaufort and Pitt Counties believed that black women were lewder than white women and that black people were more violent than white people. Armed with this information, Paul successfully petitioned to have the trial moved to the state capital of Raleigh
.
At trial, the prosecution contended that Little was a lewd woman who seduced Alligood only to murder him to enable her escape. In two days of testimony, Little testified that Alligood, who at well over 200 pounds was nearly twice her size, had come to her cell three times between 10:00 pm and 3:00 am to solicit sex, finally forcing her at the point of an ice pick to perform oral sex. She testified she was able to seize the ice pick while he was seated on her bunk because he had let his guard down in the moments after his orgasm. She stabbed him repeatedly, and she testified he resisted fiercely and wrestled her, but that given his wounded state, she had been able to get free of him. Attorney Jerry Paul made liberal use of the jury's Southern Christian
sympathies, characterizing his client as a religious woman who found solace in the Bible
in times of trouble.
The jury of six whites and six African Americans deliberated for one hour and 25 minutes and rendered a verdict of not guilty.
Joan Little was returned to prison to serve the remainder of her sentence for breaking and entering. One month before she would have been eligible for parole, she made an escape. She was caught and then convicted and sentenced for the escape. She was freed in June 1979 and moved to New York City.
Little authored a poem entitled "I Am Somebody", which was incorporated into a mural in San Diego
's Chicano Park
by the female muralists of Sacramento
's Royal Chicano Air Force
.
The a cappella
musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock
included a song titled "Joanne Little" on their 1976 self-titled album.
, who had assisted her in the past, for help.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
woman whose trial for the 1974 murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
of a white prison guard at Beaufort County
Beaufort County, North Carolina
- Law and government :Beaufort County is a member of the Mid-East Commission regional council of governments.Beaufort County is one of the proposed sites for a Navy outlying landing field. This practice airfield would allow pilots to simulate landings on an aircraft carrier...
Jail in Washington, North Carolina
Washington, North Carolina
Washington is a city in Beaufort County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 9,744 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Beaufort County. The closest major city is Greenville, approximately 20 miles to the west....
, became a cause célèbre
Cause célèbre
A is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and heated public debate. The term is particularly used in connection with celebrated legal cases. It is a French phrase in common English use...
of the civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
, feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, and anti-death penalty
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
movements. Little was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Her case also has become classic in legal circles as a pioneering instance of the application of scientific jury selection.
Early life
Little was born and raised until age 15 in Washington, a town of under 10,000 in North Carolina's rural Atlantic coastal region. Her mother, Jessie Williams was a "religious fanatic" who frequently consulted "root workers," or voodoo folkFolk medicine
-Description:Refers to healing practices and ideas of body physiology and health preservation known to a limited segment of the population in a culture, transmitted informally as general knowledge, and practiced or applied by anyone in the culture having prior experience.All cultures and societies...
herbalists
Herbalism
Herbalism is a traditional medicinal or folk medicine practice based on the use of plants and plant extracts. Herbalism is also known as botanical medicine, medical herbalism, herbal medicine, herbology, herblore, and phytotherapy...
. Her father was a security guard in Brooklyn, New York. The eldest of six blood siblings, she was forced to care for them and her four half-siblings as well. She took to running away and hiding and soon fell in with an older crowd who supported her rebellion. Her social worker, Jean Nelson, who once called her an "escape artist," also noted her intelligence, telling her "some day you could do a lot of good." As a teenager, she worked in the tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
industry and as a waitress. In 1973, she went to work with a sheetrock
Drywall
Drywall, also known as plasterboard, wallboard or gypsum board is a panel made of gypsum plaster pressed between two thick sheets of paper...
finisher named Julius Rogers, whom she later accompanied to Greenville
Greenville, North Carolina
Greenville is the county seat of Pitt County and principal city of the Greenville, North Carolina metropolitan area. Greenville is the health, entertainment, and educational hub of North Carolina's Tidewater and Coastal Plain and in 2008 was listed as the Tenth Largest City in North Carolina...
and later to Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care...
, where she would become entangled with the law.
Criminality
Little's problems with the law began in 1968, when her mother asked a judge to declare her a truant and to commit her to the Dobbs Farm Training School in Kinston, North CarolinaKinston, North Carolina
Kinston is a city in Lenoir County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 23,688 at the 2000 census. The population was estimated at 22,360 in 2008. It has been the county seat of Lenoir County since its formation in 1791 . Kinston is located in North Carolina's Inner Banks...
. After a few weeks at Dobbs, Little fled, walking to a nearby service station where she and a friend hitched a ride back to Washington. Her mother realized she had not been duly released and so sought to legitimize her daughter's situation by procuring an official release. She later sent Joan to live with relatives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. Three weeks after graduating from high school there, Joan developed a thyroid
Thyroid
The thyroid gland or simply, the thyroid , in vertebrate anatomy, is one of the largest endocrine glands. The thyroid gland is found in the neck, below the thyroid cartilage...
problem and returned to North Carolina for an operation.
In December 1973 and January 1974, Little, now 20, incurred a spate of arrests for theft and eventually for breaking and entering, with escalating legal consequences. In the coastal town of Jacksonville, North Carolina
Jacksonville, North Carolina
Jacksonville, North Carolina, is a city in Onslow County, North Carolina, United States. As of the 2010 United States census, the population stood at 70,145, which makes Jacksonville the 14th largest city in North Carolina...
at the end of 1973, she was charged with the possession of stolen goods and the possession of a sawed-off shotgun, but was not prosecuted. On January 3, 1974, she was arrested in Washington, North Carolina for shoplifting
Shoplifting
Shoplifting is theft of goods from a retail establishment. It is one of the most common property crimes dealt with by police and courts....
. That charge, too was dismissed. Six days later, she was again arrested for shoplifting, a charge for which she was given a suspended six-month sentence. Six days after her release, she was again arrested and charged with three separate counts of felony
Felony
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...
breaking and entering
Burglary
Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...
and larceny
Larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the wrongful acquisition of the personal property of another person. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of England into their own law. It has been abolished in England and Wales,...
. Her trial was set for June 3 and she left town in the interim.
She returned to Washington in time for the trial, accompanied by Julius Rogers and two juveniles. The juveniles ended up in jail, where they were sexually harassed
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
by a guard who offered them freedom if one of them would "give him some." Little was convicted on June 4, 1974, and asked to remain in the county jail rather than be transferred to the Correctional Facility for Women in Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...
, as would have been customary. Remaining in Washington, she said, would allow her to remain close to home, where she could work on raising her bond
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
.
Slaying of a jailer
Nearly three months later, before dawn on August 27, 1974, a police officer delivering a drunken prisoner to the Beaufort County jail discovered the body of jailer Clarence Alligood, 62, on Joan Little's bunk, naked from the waist down. Alligood had suffered stab wounds to the templeTemple (anatomy)
Temple indicates the side of the head behind the eyes. The bone beneath is the temporal bone as well as part of the sphenoid bone.-Anatomy:Cladists classify land vertebrates based on the presence of an upper hole, a lower hole, both, or neither in the cover of dermal bone which formerly covered the...
and the heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...
area from an icepick. Semen was discovered on his leg. Little was missing. She turned herself in to North Carolina authorities more than one week later, and said that she had killed Alligood while defending herself against sexual assault
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
.
Charged with first degree murder
She was charged with first degree murder, which carried an automatic death sentence. The capital status of the case, and the fact that North Carolina was home to over one third of all the death penalty cases in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, drew the attention of anti-death penalty and prisoners' rights advocates. The racial component drew the attention of civil rights activists, and the gender component drew the attention of feminists. The combination of these three factors, along with sophisticated fundraising tactics, allowed the Joan Little Defense Committee to raise over $350,000. Jerry Paul was her lead attorney. The question of whether or not blacks
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
were treated equally by the criminal justice systems in the American South drew the attention of the national media.
The trial
The defense team made crucial use of applied social science, including the new method of scientific jury selectionScientific jury selection
Scientific jury selection, often abbreviated SJS, is the use of social science techniques and expertise to choose favorable juries during a criminal or civil trial. Scientific jury selection is used during the jury selection phase of the trial — when lawyers have the opportunity to question jurors...
, which had just come into existence in 1972. The defense commissioned surveys with a view to comparing popular attitudes among white people toward black people between Beaufort and Pitt Counties, in the state's northeast, and the north central area of the state. The results showed that unfavorable racial stereotypes were more strongly held in Beaufort County. For example, about two thirds of the respondents in Beaufort and Pitt Counties believed that black women were lewder than white women and that black people were more violent than white people. Armed with this information, Paul successfully petitioned to have the trial moved to the state capital of Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...
.
At trial, the prosecution contended that Little was a lewd woman who seduced Alligood only to murder him to enable her escape. In two days of testimony, Little testified that Alligood, who at well over 200 pounds was nearly twice her size, had come to her cell three times between 10:00 pm and 3:00 am to solicit sex, finally forcing her at the point of an ice pick to perform oral sex. She testified she was able to seize the ice pick while he was seated on her bunk because he had let his guard down in the moments after his orgasm. She stabbed him repeatedly, and she testified he resisted fiercely and wrestled her, but that given his wounded state, she had been able to get free of him. Attorney Jerry Paul made liberal use of the jury's Southern Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
sympathies, characterizing his client as a religious woman who found solace in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
in times of trouble.
The jury of six whites and six African Americans deliberated for one hour and 25 minutes and rendered a verdict of not guilty.
Joan Little was returned to prison to serve the remainder of her sentence for breaking and entering. One month before she would have been eligible for parole, she made an escape. She was caught and then convicted and sentenced for the escape. She was freed in June 1979 and moved to New York City.
Effects
Her murder trial focused national attention on the issues of a woman's right to defend herself from rape, the validity of capital punishment racial and sexual inequality in the criminal justice system, and the rights of prisoners in general.Little authored a poem entitled "I Am Somebody", which was incorporated into a mural in San Diego
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
's Chicano Park
Chicano Park
Chicano Park is a 32,000 square meter park located beneath the San Diego-Coronado Bridge in Barrio Logan, a predominantly Mexican American and Mexican-immigrant community in central San Diego, California...
by the female muralists of Sacramento
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...
's Royal Chicano Air Force
Royal Chicano Air Force
The Royal Chicano Air Force is a Sacramento, California-based art collective. It was one of the main centers of the Chicano art movement in California during the 1970s and 80s and continues to be influential into the 21st Century....
.
The a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Sweet Honey in the Rock is an all-woman, African-American a cappella ensemble. They are an American Grammy Award-winning troupe who express their history as women of color through song, while entertaining their audience. They have together worked from four women to the difficult five-part harmony...
included a song titled "Joanne Little" on their 1976 self-titled album.
Later in life
In 1989, Little was arrested in New York City on charges including driving a stolen car. She telephoned William KunstlerWilliam Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler was an American self-described "radical lawyer" and civil rights activist, known for his controversial clients...
, who had assisted her in the past, for help.
Further study
- Harwell, Fred. A True Deliverance: The Joan Little Case (1980) Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-49989-1 (Edgar Allan Poe Award Winner, 1980, Best Non-Fiction Crime Book of the Year)
- The James Reston collection of Joan Little trial materials at the University of North CarolinaUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
.