Lynched Italian men were later proven innocent of the murders charged against them

Evidence

According to press reports, the mob “decided to take them over to a shed near the courthouse and string them up…. The three Italians were lined up again and told to pray, as they would have but two minutes to live. They prayed, and then the ropes were adjusted around their necks, and one after another they were strung up the rafters.” When Hahnville residents awoke the next day, they found three bullet-riddled bodies still hanging. (After the lynchings, someone else confessed to killing the “old Spaniard,” and other evidence casts doubt on Saladino’s presumed guilt.) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 131

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: DNA exonerations prove innocent people have been sentenced to death; Italian immigrants were lynched for alleged crimes without legal process. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 538; Muslims are presumed guilty until proven innocent in US enforcement — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 448
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: DNA exonerations prove innocent people have been sentenced to death; Italian immigrants were lynched for alleged crimes without legal process. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 538; Muslims are presumed guilty until proven innocent in US enforcement — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 448