Eighty-two years ago, all-white juries in Alabama imposed the death sentence on eight black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women, setting the stage for a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Now, the Scottsboro boys are poised to be pardoned.
Jeremy King, a spokesman for Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, said he expects the bill to be signed this week allowing the posthumous pardons, reversing convictions that became a symbol of racial injustice in a case that led to the end of black exclusion from juries in the South.
