Clarence Henderson Wiki – Clarence Henderson Biography
It took 73 years, but now the name of a man wrongly convicted of murder is finally cleared. On Thursday, a Carroll County judge officially dismissed the charges against Clarence Henderson. All-white juries convicted Henderson, a black man, three times of killing a white man decades ago. The Georgia Supreme Court threw out the case each time due to lack of evidence.
Judge Erica Tisinger officially dismissed the charges against Henderson in the same courtroom where three jurors found him guilty of the 1948 murder of Carl “Buddy” Stevens. Henderson was a black sharecropper. Stevens was a White Army veteran killed while he was defending her girlfriend from a man she claimed was trying to rape her.
Clarence Henderson Age
Clarence Henderson is 79 years old.
Incident Detail
Henderson died years ago, but the Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office reserved the right to retry the case. That specter hung over the Henderson family for decades, until now. Judge Tisinger granted the district attorney’s motion to dismiss those charges.
“Obviously, the right thing to do was do what we did here today,” said Jep Endanger, chief assistant district attorney for the Coweta Judicial Circuit, which covers Carroll County. “He is and remains an innocent man.” The descendants of Henderson and Stevens embraced after the judge’s ruling.
“I’m elated because it was something that was always in our family’s history, and finally, thank you,” said Melody Darden, Henderson’s granddaughter. “It comforts us to see the system doing the right thing,” said Michael Holmes, Stevens’s second cousin. The question of who killed Stevens remains a mystery, but Holmes said at least the Henderson family got some justice.
“It would have been unfair if the charges against Mr. Henderson remained open,” Holmes said. Henderson spent five years behind bars. His family fought for years to clear his name, but now justice comes decades later and his case has been dismissed.
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