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In summation, the State asked for the death penalty, otherwise "we might have to buckle six-shooters about our waists." "Don't go out and quibble over the evidence," roared the young county prosecutor who was helping Prosecutor Knight. "Say to yourselves: 'We're tired of this job' and put it behind you. Get it done quick and protect the fair womanhood of this great State." The defense was for the protection of womanhood, too, but also asked for "the protection of the innocent."
The jury got it done fairly quickly. Within eight hours it was back with the regular verdict of guilty but decided that Defendant Patterson be spared the electric chair, to spend the next 75 years in prison. "I'd rather die," scowled Patterson.
Since a live man is better off than a dead one, and since Haywood Patterson will probably be safer behind bars for the next few years anyhow, the defense could count the verdict something of a triumph. In fairly good spirits Counsel Leibowitz was proceeding with the case of another Scottsboro boy when the prosecution suddenly challenged written medical testimony made at the second trial by a physician now too ill to go to court and substantiate it orally. Thereupon Judge Callahan indefinitely postponed all further trials, ordered the prisoners back to jail in Birmingham.
Going down Lacon Mountain 20 miles out of Decatur, the five cars carrying prisoners and officers came suddenly to a halt. Later there was no agreement as to how and why the affray started. But. in sum, Negro Ozie Powell leaned forward and sliced a deputy sheriff in the neck with a knife. The sheriff then shot off a portion of Ozie Powell's forehead. The deputy was rushed off to a physician who closed the wound with twelve sutures. Ozie Powell, still conscious and still chained between two of his fellow prisoners, was driven 70 miles on to Birmingham where a surgeon extracted a slug sunk one inch in his brain.
Nearest thing to an official comment from the law's side was the dark observation of the sheriff of Morgan County: "Somebody smarter than those Negroes . . . figured it all out."
To this Counsel Leibowitz taunted: "Does the sheriff claim that three Negroes shackled together in the rear seat of a rapidly moving automobile . . . with two men in that automobile armed to the teeth, this car preceded in front by an automobile carrying two other armed officers of the law and followed by still another car with armed guards and with state highway patrolmen as an escort, did attempt to escape by using a pen-knife?"