4 Black men exonerated more than 70 years after being wrongly accused
By Sara Weisfeldt, The families of the “Groveland Four” got some closure Monday after Florida officially cleared four young Black men wrongly accused of raping a 17-year-old White girl in 1949. Circuit Court Judge Heidi Davis in Lake County, Florida, granted the State’s motion to posthumously dismiss the indictments of Ernest Thomas and Samuel Shepherd and vacated the convictions of Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin, in the case known as the “Groveland Four.” “I would not hate, but I will love and embrace all of those who did not know at the time that my father was a caring and