JUSTICE DELAYED

Murder Case Against Sharecropper Tossed 40 Years After Death

Clarence Henderson got his conviction overturned three times—but the state would not dismiss the charges against him.

Aided by the NAACP, a Black sharecropper named Clarence Henderson got three murder convictions and death sentences for the 1950 slaying of a white man overturned. But while Georgia prosecutors declined to try him again with their flimsy evidence, they also did not dismiss the charges, and Henderson died with them hanging over his head. The case drew attention recently because of a book, and on Thursday, a judge finally threw out the murder charge in the same courtroom where Henderson once pleaded for his life. “The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. I believe that is what happened as I sign this order today,” Superior Court Judge Erica Tisinger said.