Biography
Ervin Edwards (spelled "Erwin" in The Black Panther) was a Black man in Mobile, Alabama, prosecuted for the death of city patrolman Henry Booth. On August 14, 1979 (the paper misprints the year as 1978), Booth tried to arrest Edwards on an outstanding misdemeanor warrant the officer did not have with him and, when Edwards asked to see it, tried to force him into the patrol car; a struggle followed in which Booth struck Edwards with a flashlight and the two fought over the officer's service revolver, which discharged and killed Booth. Trial testimony — including that of witness Michael Burrell — supported Edwards's claim of self-defense against an unlawful arrest, but an all-white jury in what the paper called a "mockery of a jury trial" convicted him of capital murder in February 1980 and he was sentenced to death, with a sentencing hearing set for March 6, 1980. He was represented by Alabama state senator Michael Figures. The Alabama Supreme Court later reversed the conviction (Ex parte Edwards, 452 So. 2d 503, 1983), holding the trial court should have instructed the jury on a person's limited right to resist an unlawful arrest.
