After more than 13 years on Death Rowthe longest such period in U.S. historytwo convicted Negro rapists were ordered freed last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. The court ruled that Edgar Labat, 43, and Clifton Alton Poret, 37, had been denied fair trial by the all-white jury system of Orleans Parish (then 32% Negro), which had never allowed a single Negro to serve on a criminal jury.
Labat and Poret were charged with raping a young white woman, who was wrenched from her escort's...
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