Cleve McDowell: a place in history

"[Cleve McDowell] has a place in history. I thought he was a person who felt that he had paid his dues and one who knew that he made quite a few sacrifices to try to achieve equality for everybody. He stood up when it was crucial." Constance Slaughter-Harvey, Esq.

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Juarez Webb filed a Petition to Enter a Guilty Plea, reducing his plea from capital murder to manslaughter on January 26, 1998. In his request, Webb said he "shot and killed Cleve McDowell, without malice, in the heat of passion" and "not in necessary self-defense."

Webb also asserted that he was earlier "coerced" into pleading guilty to manslaughter by his attorneys:

"They told me I wasn’t going to be able – I wasn’t going to be able to get nowhere in this case, that I might as well go ahead and take a plea; otherwise, it would be over with me…. I guess they were talking about my life."

But on July 22, 1998, Webb reversed himself and filed a "jailhouse" petition to withdraw his guilty plea, citing "a series of interrogations, threats and promises [made to him] by various law enforcement officials" and "a series of statements of an incriminating nature [that were] obtained from Petitioner in taped, written and oral form against the Petitioner’s will and conscent [sic]."

Interrogations, Webb claimed, were "unsolicited" and "initiated by … the instance [sic] of arresting officers and other varies [sic] courthouse officials." Webb said he did not waive his rights to silence or counsel or self-incrimination, but that he was forced unwillingly and without counsel present to answer questions.

Webb said he was "repeatedly interrogated and threatened as well as coerced to admit to the crime in an involuntary nature, thus rendering his guilty plea involuntary as the result of being threatened by the officials to receive the death penalty." Courthouse records indicate that Webb was taken for a psychological examination to determine if he was potentially suicidal.

Appointed counsel, Webb went to trial on January 27, 1998 and "maintained his innocence," his petition states. His family was "repeatedly harassed by law enforcement officials and was told by his attorneys that he would get the death penalty if he did not take a plea for a lesser charge of manslaughter."

Webb asserted the charge of capital murder was dropped to manslaughter "due to the pressure and threats and unlawful statements obtained as well as other evidence and unlawful arrest against his will."

Webb also admitted giving "false statements in court to end the truma [sic] and nightmare and to protect his family from further threats and harassments … [the] guilty pleas was made unwillingly, involuntarily and [he] was coerced to give his plea to avoid a big trial and publicity on his family."

What Webb wanted was permission to withdraw his plea of guilty and to prove his innocence "so that the real suspect can be caught."

At the time of his slaying, McDowell had been Webb’s court-appointed attorney on earlier burglary charges. "The police thought Webb killed Cleve to steal his Cadillac, money and jewelry. It was all missing from his home when his body was found. They said Webb confessed to the killing when he was arrested," Davis said.

At Webb’s preliminary hearing, according to a Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger account, Drew Police Chief Burner Smith testified that Webb, 18, told police "McDowell had thrown him on the floor and tried to pull his pants down to sexually assault him."

Further, "District Attorney Carlton said accepting Webb’s plea was the best decision" since the case was "not iron-clad" and that McDowell "needed to be remembered for what he did as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement at a time when that wasn’t too popular."

Webb did not get what he had hoped for. On July 9, 1999, Circuit Judge Gray Evans denied and dismissed Webb’s motion. Gray wrote that it had "probably" been a "wise" recommendation by Webb’s attorney to urge Webb to plead guilty to manslaughter rather than face the possibility of a death sentence from a conviction of capital murder.

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Over forty years earlier, during the state legislative session of 1956 and following the Delta murder of young Chicagoan Emmett Till, Mississippi legislators installed a quiet and effective spy agency known as the Sovereignty Commission.

Like so many other blacks (and pro-integration whites), McDowell had been a target; a moderate number of records remain in the Sovereignty Commission files on the Drew native. (Only a fraction of Commission files have ever seen the light of day. Many were reportedly destroyed or removed before they were made available to the public.)

Davis, McDowell’s former administrator, said that McDowell received some of the Sovereignty Commission reports to look over before they were made public – just one week before his murder – but did not appear disturbed over the information obtained.

One last record had given the name of a possible Jackson "homosexual partner," and also declared McDowell as a young black man on the rise – someone who impressed the Governor. Davis did not remember if that record was made available to her former boss.

As Davis spoke about McDowell’s murder, she remembered something that struck her as unusual:

"When Cleve was murdered, the strangest thing to me was how neat the coffee table looked. I went into the house with Cleve’s sister and that was the first thing I noticed.

"It was always a mess, with papers, files, and books stacked up and even falling off. Everyone who knew him would remember that table. But that morning it looked like it had been cleaned up when we went into the house. Every paper was stacked neatly in a pile.

"There were these neat piles all over the table. My eye caught the coffee table immediately, as soon as I walked in. I had never seen it like this before," Davis said.

Retired funeral home employee Woodrow Jackson of Tutwiler backed up Davis’s assertion. That McDowell’s coffee table was straightened the day his body was discovered, Jackson found more than intriguing.

"This says something. His coffee table was always very messy. He would never have straightened it up, himself. I didn’t see his body, but from what I could reconstruct from the rumors going around, there might have been two people involved in the shooting."

Jackson, who embalmed Emmett Till in 1955, talked softly. "I knew Cleve very well. I didn’t embalm his body; I believe it was someone from Cleveland who did.

"But Cleve was a good lawyer and we often spoke about Emmett Till because he was interested in finding all who were involved in the murder.

"Cleve kept boxes of records in his office. I know, because I saw them. I remember a year or so ago before Cleve was murdered he brought Emmett Till up again and still seemed upset, but he would never give out any details. When his office burned down after he was murdered, a lot of important papers had to have been lost."

Still another person who knew McDowell responded with surprise over his cleaned-up coffee table. "Now that means something," Margaret Block said. The former SNCC activist was getting ready to have McDowell do some legal work for her.

"I was very surprised when he was killed, but I had never heard any of these details until now, including that his coffee table was cleaned up."

Davis also noticed McDowell’s prized guns were missing.

"He had guns in many places throughout the house and his office. He was always within reach of a gun. I don’t know how he could have been so surprised as to have been shot. I never learned what happened to all of his guns in his house or in his office. He also kept guns in his car."

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The FBI, responding to a Freedom of Information request, first asserted it has no records on McDowell – strange, say several close friends who remembered how FBI agents visited McDowell’s office in the years before his death.

Later, several records were made available by the FBI regarding a minor incident during McDowell’s tenure as a Tunica Judge. Other "tax records" were not available to the public.

One Drew friend said he always believed McDowell’s murder might be related to a "very large" settlement he won for a client who lived near Tunica and "may have involved something to do with a utility company." Several other friends confirmed this story.

McDowell had invited this friend and his wife to dinner shortly before he was murdered.

"He said he had won ‘the big’ case he’d been working on and for once had lots of money. I didn’t know anything about this case, but I did hear that no attorney in Memphis would take it. Some say there might have been mob involvement."

STILL ANOTHER STORY PERHAPS OFFERS clues to the mystery of McDowell’s murder. Two close friends independently recalled an incident they say took place about four years before McDowell’s death:

McDowell had learned that a close friend, Henry S. Mims, an Alabama lawyer who grew up in Drew had "committed suicide." McDowell’s immediate reaction was that it would be impossible for Mims to have killed himself; it wasn’t in his personality.

McDowell set out to learn what had happened to his friend.

Part I : In Mississippi, still another cold case murder remains unsolved