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Geter's fellow engineers at E-Systems were shocked by the verdict and sentence and convinced that Geter was a victim of racism. A dozen of them, mostly whites, organized a defense committee and raised more than $11,000 in the young engineer's support. "This is not a tightly knit organization," declared Engineer Wendell Crom, "just a bunch of people who know the man is not guilty." The N.A.A.C.P., alerted by a South Carolina State College dean, was also outraged and dispatched Lawyer Hairston to aid in the defense. He and court-appointed Attorney Edwin Sigel scored a small success in November 1982 at a hearing for a new trial when the South Carolina sheriff appeared to say that Fortenberry had misinterpreted his remarks. Geter had no record in South Carolina, he said, "and I wouldn't know him if he were to walk in my door." But the judge refused to reopen the case.
So Hairston turned to the court of public opinion. He began by enlisting a new "old-boy network" of black journalists. As a result, a black reporter on the Dallas Times Herald went to the city editor, who assigned the story to Susan Milstein, then on the paper's courthouse beat. At first she was leery: "People call all the time saying, 'My brother is in jail and it's a case of mistaken identity.' " But she quickly became intrigued: "I could not understand why all of these middle-aged white engineers were so upset. They were visibly shaken. Here was a young engineer making $24,000 a year. Now why would a guy like this hold up a fried-chicken restaurant?" Her story was the first to publicize that the tip leading police to consider Geter had come from a woman who had merely seen a black man park his car, nowhere near any robbery site, and taken down his license number.
Milstein's front-page article led to a rush of other print and TV stories. Coverage by the New York Times, PEOPLE, the Phil Donahue show, ABC and the Cable News Network soon followed. The snowballing scrutiny got a further push last month when Geter's roommate Williams, who had no previous criminal record, was acquitted of the charge against him. But it was a 60 Minutes broadcast in early December that was "the tipping factor," says Hairston, who had written to one of the show's producers. In addition to reviewing the facts, CBS reporters aired evidence from two new alibi witnesses for Geter. The young engineer had a bit of luck. Explains Sigel: "The show came on immediately after the Dallas Cowboys game against Seattle. Dallas won, so people kept watching." The segment, seen by 40 million people, drew the largest number of letters in 60 Minutes' history.
In Dallas, many viewers responded by complaining directly to District Attorney Wade—even, as Wade says, "my own son-in-law." No less important, Texas Governor Mark White got on the phone. Wade contends that the show presented a "distorted" picture and that he was not bending to pressure. But last week he bowed to the extralegal public verdict.