What cases best describe the judicial system in the 1930's in the South as they relate to To Kill a Mockingbird?This is the time period that "To...

In the 1930s the South was segregated and blacks were
disinfranchised; Jim Crow was in effect. Blacks could be arrested, harrassed, tried, and
sometimes even convicted with little cause. 

Harper Lee's
novel was published shortly after an infamous trial in Mississippi, the Emmett Till
case, in which a fourteen-year-old black male was accused of harrassing a white woman,
and was murdered by two white males.  When these men were brought to trial, as was the
case throughout the South, only white males were allowed as jurors, and the trial was
held in a segregated courtroom.  While the defense's case rested on the fact that the
body could not specifically be identified as Till and the defendants had been framed, it
took the jury only one hour to acquit the men of all charges.  Even when the men later
admitted to the murder of Till, they were never charged again with any crime.  Till's
mother had an open coffin for her son so that people would see what had been done to her
boy.

In another infamous case, The Scottsboro Trial, nine
black youths, ranging in age from 13 to 21 were arrested in Alabama on March 25, 1931,
and charged with raping two white women.  The black males had been riding with other
jobless youths on a freight train when a fight broke out between them and white males,
resutling in the white males being thrown from the train.  Getting word of this, a
sherriff's posse stopped the train in Paint Rock, Alabama; they took the nine youths
into custody along with two white women. What followed were a series of trials protested
by various groups and countries, especially the International Labor Defense of the
Communist Party.  In the first trial, held only two weeks after their arrest, eight of
the nine were sentenced to death.  With only one lawyer for all the defendants, there
was racial intimidation and a rush to convict the youths.  After this trial made
national and international news, the publicity is probably what saved the lives of the
defendants.  A second trial was held in early 1933; the attorney representing the ILD,
Samuel Leibowitz conducted an aggressive defense contending that the youths could not
possibly have a fair trial in the South.  Nevertheless, despite publicity and a
competent lawyer, the all white jury voted to convict again.  But, the judge, James
Horton, threw out the conviction.  He was replaced by an obviously biased judge for the
third trial, but the trial ended in plea bargaining.  Five of the youths were sentenced
to 6 to 17 years in prison, while 4 were acquitted.  This trial led to a Supreme Court
decision in Powell v. Alabama in 1932 and Norris v.
Alabama in 1935.