Judge James Horton’s daughter-in-law, Katherine Horton, and granddaughter, Kathy Horton Garrett.
ATHENS-Kathy Horton Garrett knew the man named James Edwin Horton simply as Granddaddy.
Her mother and Horton’s daughter-in-law Katherine Horton knew him as a man who liked his cigars to the point that he requested one to hold when he once was being rolled by stretcher to an ambulance.
James Edwin Horton, however, is known to the rest of the world as the Limestone County judge who upheld justice in the 1930s re-trial of one of the Scottsboro Boys defendants when he set aside the jury’s verdict and death sentence.
James Edwin Horton
On Friday, Dec. 4, at the Athens Rotary meeting, a committee that has spearheaded a project to honor Horton in Athens held a program to highlight the courage of Horton and seek support for the project. Local attorney and Athens Rotary President Shane Black said the committee is asking the community to help raise $75,000 to erect a bronze statue of Horton at the entrance of the Limestone County Courthouse.
The verdict Horton set aside was for defendant Haywood Patterson, one of nine black men accused of raping two white women in 1931 on a train traveling from Tennessee into Alabama. Eight of the nine men were sentenced in Scottsboro to death despite a lack of evidence.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted an appeal for new trials in Decatur, where Horton, of Athens, presided over Patterson’s trial. Despite medical testimony indicating there were no rapes and one woman recanting her story, the jury found Patterson guilty.
“After the re-trial ended in Decatur, it was in his hometown of Athens on June 22, 1933, that Judge Horton set aside the jury verdict,” said Judge Horton Monument Committee member Limestone County Circuit Court Judge Jimmy Woodroof.
In 1933, Horton lost his race for re-election, which is attributed to his decision to set aside the verdict.
Thomas Reidy speaking to Rotary about Judge Horton
As part of Friday’s Rotary program, University of Alabama at Huntsville part-time faculty member Thomas Reidy, who was part of the effort to exonerate the Scottsboro Boys, spoke about Horton being a central part of the story. Reidy pushed for the Alabama Legislature’s 2013 passage of the Scottsboro Boys Act, which allowed the Board of Pardons and Paroles to consider posthumous pardons, as well as Resolution of Exoneration for all nine defendants in the Scottsboro case.
Reidy called Horton a judge and a philosopher, a man willing to risk his political career and public criticism for justice. He noted that Horton, when speaking about the re-trial, repeated what was known as a family phrase, “Let justice be done though the heavens may fall.”
Morgan County Archivist John Allison brought part of the Morgan County Archives
Law school photos of Judge Horton
photograph and display pieces from its Scottsboro Boys collection. Many of its images in the collection have been used in documentaries and publications about the Scottsboro Boys story.
“He didn’t mention it much unless someone interviewed him for an article or book,” Garrett said as she viewed the photograph collection. “We knew he was involved in the case. But growing up, I just knew he was Granddaddy.”
Horton died at age 95 when Garrett was 17 years old.
Black called the Scottsboro Boys case an “ugly story for Alabama.”
“Judge Horton was the bright light in that story,” Black said.
The monument project is being overseen by the Judge Horton Monument Committee comprised of local attorneys and community members. The Limestone County Bar Association started efforts and received support from the Limestone County Commission and Limestone Area Community Foundation.
To support the project, mail a tax-deductible donation to LACF-Horton Fund, P.O. Box 578, Athens, AL 35612. To learn more, go online at www.hortonmonument.com or on Facebook at James Judge Horton Monument Project.
