CLYDE KENNARD LARRY RUFFIN
Several years ago, I was blessed to have played a role in the exoneration of civil rights icon Clyde Kennard, a man who was framed for a burglary he did not commit after he persisted in seeking admission to what is now known as the University of Southern Mississippi. Kennard was a University of Chicago student who left college early to enlist in the armed forces during WW2. After his service was over, he went to Hattiesburg to take over the chicken farm of a sick relative and sought admission to the local college. He was framed for stealing 25$ worth of chicken feed and sentenced to Parchman, Mississippi's notorious work camp where inmates toiled in the hot sun picking cotton and doing other hard labor. He was diagnosed with cancer and ultimately released but died before he could be exonerated.
After the sole witness recanted his testimony and signed an affidavit, I and others (students from Adlai E. Stevenson high school in suburban Chicago) sought to obtain a posthumous pardon. When that effort failed, a group of prominent Mississippians filed a Motion for Judgement of Exoneration and Declaration of Innocence to exonerate Kennard. Although there was no precise precedent for such a motion, the State agreed to the relief, and Kennard was exonerated by Forrest County Court judge Robert Helfrich in 2006.
A white Supremacist named Richard Barrett and some of his followers took an appeal of Helfrich's decision, arguing that Mississippi law did not allow for dead people to file for post-conviction relief or for a declaration of innocence. In Gill v. State,
No. 2006-CA-01687-SCT (August 16, 2007),
the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that Barrett's group had no standing to intervene in this matter. Morever, the Court recognized that the motion was akin to an untimely Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict. Although the JNOV motion was filed well beyond the 10-day time line, the Court held that [r]ules are made to secure justice, not defeat it” and that “[a]ll courts have the inherent power to correct and make their judgments speak the truth.”
Fast forward to the same Forrest County Courtroom four plus years later -- September 17, 2010. The New Orleans Innocence Project filed motions to clear and exonerate three men -- Phillip Bivens, Bobby Ray Dixon and Larry Ruffin -- who had falsely confessed to a brutal rape and murder in 1979. Dixon and Bivens, terrified they would be executed, even agreed to testify against Ruffin at his trial. Ruffin died in prison after serving 23 years. He did not live to see the day when DNA testing linked a single perpetrator -- Andrew Harris, a man already in prison for rape to the crime.
Again, Judge Helfrich was asked to vacate the convictions of innocent men. Again, these motions were not objected to by the State. Helfrich vacated the convictions of Dixon and Bivens and the two men walked out of prison and into the arms of their loved ones. Ruffin, however, will have to wait until after the State brings charges against Harris. What basis will lead to Ruffin's exoneration? It will be none other than the precedent set by the Clyde Kennard exoneration. Attorneys for the IP-NO filed a "Kennard" motion to exonerate Ruffin.
On the day that happens, in the words of Dr. King, "the arc of the moral universe will have bent a little further toward justice" in Hattiesburg MS.
