Word: ware
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...Monday, July 22, Charlie Ware stood trial on the first of three criminal indictments brought against him. The scene was the tiny city of Newton, located in Baker County, Georgia. This slight, almost fragile Negro man of about 45 faced charges of being drunk on the public highway, drunkenness on a ball park, and assault with intent to murder the Sheriff of Baker County, L. Warren Johnson. It was an historical setting. For it was here that former Sheriff Claude Screws twenty years ago dragged another Negro, Bobby Hall, by the bumper of his car into the next county...
...this case itself made history, for on Friday, although finding Ware guilty, the jury sentenced him to a maximum of five years and a minimum of three, five years less than the statuatory limit. They also returned a recommendation for mercy, asking the court to treat the felony as a misdemeanor in passing sentence. The judge refused the recommendation, sentencing him to three to five years on the charge of assault with intent to murder, and to 12 months on the charge of drunkenness on the ball park. On the previous Monday, another jury had found Charlie Ware guilty...
...this context that Charlie Ware stood trial. But times had changed, if only grudgingly, and with the ever-present possibility that the barbarism in its crude and original form would return...
...brother was called to the stand. Ben Johnson, the deputy sheriff said he had noticed a car which was going very slowly, an indication to him that something must be wrong. As he approached the car and asked the driver, John Hayes, for his license, he alleged that Charlie Ware, who appeared to him to be very, very drunk, called out something like "God damn the Law and you too." Under the Georgia statute dealing with public drunkenness, any person who displays his drunkenness in a public place by using vile language or violent discourse is guilty of a misdemeanor...
...Charlie Ware's testimony and that of the two persons accompanying him in the car differed substantially. Yes, they probably had been going slowly, for Newton is a "speed trap" and Negroes are arrested and fined heavily for "speeding" or drunken driving when they are crawling along the road or even absolutely sober. But the three Negroes testified that Ware was sound asleep at the time that the car was stopped...