Biography
Thomas Wansley was a Black teenager arrested in 1962 in Lynchburg, Virginia at the age of 17 on a rape charge — a prosecution that became a national cause célèbre against the racially discriminatory use of the rape charge and the death penalty. Originally sentenced to death as a teenager, he was later resentenced to a life term. His conviction was overturned and he was released on bond in January 1973, but Virginia Governor Linwood Holton denied him a pardon — the Lynchburg prosecutor, Royston Jester, having called Wansley "a discredit to his race" — despite petitions bearing 15,000 signatures and the support of some 20 national human-rights organizations. Documented in The Black Panther (January 19, 1974).