Justice wondered where to turn last week in South Carolina. At the suggestion of Governor Richards, the solicitor of Florence County re-examined Mrs. Maude Collins, about 60, a white trash woman whose testimony sent Ben Bess, a prosperous Negro farmer, to prison in 1915. Mrs. Collins had signed an affidavit this Spring confessing that she testified falsely to jail Ben Bess. On the strength of this affidavit, Governor Richards had pardoned Ben Bess in May. The re-examination of Mrs. Collins was to find if she had committed perjury (TIME, June n).
What confounded Justice was Mrs. Collins' new affidavit, to...
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