A group of four black men known as the 'Groveland Four' were posthumously exonerated in a Florida courtroom after they were wrongly accused of raping a 17-year-old girl at gunpoint in 1949.
The four men - Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, and Ernest Thomas - who ranged in age from 16 to 26 - had been accused by Norma Padgett in 1949 and sparked a manhunt throughout the small town of Groveland, a town 30 miles west of Orlando.
Black residents suffered racist violence, with a mob hunting down Thomas and killing him by shooting him 400 times. Shepherd was shot dead by cops two years later while being driven to the rape trial.
But the now 72-year-old case has finally been settled with all four men after Administrative Judge Heidi Davis dismissed the indictments of Thomas and Shepherd, both of whom were shot dead in the wake of the allegations, and setting aside the convictions of Greenlee and Irvin.
The members of the Groveland Four were previously pardoned by the Florida Clemency Board, which was led by Governor Ron DeSantis, in 2019 but were not formally exonerated.
The men's families were overjoyed at the ruling of the case as they hope it will lead to the reexamination of wrongly accused black men and women from the same era.
A group of four black men known as the 'Groveland Four' which included Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Ernest Thomas were exonerated on Monday after they were wrongly accused of raping a 17-year-old girl in 1949
Norma Padgett, who was 17 at the time, had claimed the four men had abducted and raped her at gunpoint while she was on the way home from a dance with her husband in Groveland, Florida
Family members of the four men attended the hearing where the case had been dismissed by Administrative Judge Heidi Davis
The case for the men was formerly taken by the National Guard as well as lawyer and civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall following Padgett's accusations.
Padgett had claimed the men had abducted and raped her at gunpoint while she was driving home with her husband from a dance.
The accusations had sparked a manhunt and a wave of racist violence against other black residents in the town.
Thomas was the first from the group to be killed after a mob had shot him 400 times after the accusations had been made.
Shepherd was killed in 1951 by local sheriff Willis McCall while he was driving him and Irvin to them to their second trial.
The US Supreme Court had overturned the men's convictions as not enough evidence had been presented.
Irvin, who was in the car with Shepherd, was also shot by McCall but was only injured.
McCall had claimed that both men had attempted to escape but Irvin claimed that they had been shot by the sheriff and his deputy in cold blood.
Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall had fatally shot Shepherd and injured Irvin after he claimed they tried to escape before their second hearing
Shepherd (left) and Irvin (right) lie on the roadside near Umatilla, Florida after they were shot by McCall
Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court, had helped with the Groveland Four case
At Irvin's second trial, he had been sentenced to death after being found guilty on the charges of rape. He later escaped the penalty and was then sentenced to life on parole.
Marshall represented Irvin in the second trial in front of an all-white jury before he was convicted of the judges and sentenced to death.
However, Irvin escaped execution and had his sentence reduced by then Governor LeRoy Collins to life on parole. He later died in 1969.
Greenlee was also sentenced to life on parole in 1962. He died in 2012.
The Florida Legislature in
