My great uncle Doyle Butler was murdered in cold blood in 1931. There were many witnesses. There was no question who the murderer was, a Greek immigrant named George Goumas.Goumas was convicted of the murder and served 14 years in prison for it. After 14 years he was released and went on to spend the rest of his life in peace, with his family.
My uncle Doyle Butler was not so fortunate.
In 2010, a retired judge named James F. Morris wrote an article in the Georgia Bar Journal called Rule of Law Doesn't Just Happen. It presented a very slanted view of the case against George Goumas. It started off comparing the case to the famous 1913 Leo Frank case, in which a Jewish man was lynched for a murder he probably didn't commit. Clearly, a terrible miscarriage of justice. NOT the same as the Goumas trial, though. Not even close.
My uncle Doyle was, by all accounts, a lovely person.
Morris: "Butler was reported to be the most popular man in town. He was a graduate of Marietta High School and a trained pharmacist; he was Goumas’ fellow Mason and the president-elect of the Rotary Club.Most important, he was the first Ford dealer in Cobb County, starting when there were but six Fords registered and selling his business in 1928 after more than 3,000 sales.He knew everyone, and everyone admired Butler. His quiet but absolutely devoted wife was helping him parent their three model children. They were stalwarts in their church."
Doyle's whole life was rendered in that one short paragraph in the Morris article. In the same article, Goumas' life is vividly depicted, using hundreds of words, and there are photos of Goumas and his wife. Not hard to figure out who Morris was more sorry for, was it?
Morris said Goumas was likely a victim of KKK harassment because he was Greek. If that's true, it's very unfortunate, but the South in 1931 was a very racist place. That doesn't excuse murder. Goumas came back from World War I with likely PTSD, which is also sad, but it doesn't justify murder.
Goumas' life was not so tragic. He had a lot of friends in the Greek community who wanted him set free. "Goumas was granted clemency in the mid 1940's and... lived an apparently quiet life until he died in 1960."
In 2018 the Marietta Museum of History had a program about Goumas and [similar to the Morris article] the blurb about it on their website started off comparing his trial to that of Leo Frank. Ridiculous comparison. Why were they exploiting the whole situation yet again? Why drag up a very painful part of the past, something that caused the Butler family a lot of grief?
Morris concluded his lengthy article by saying: "What does this say about the rule of law? That it isn’t clearly written in black and white. That it isn’t necessarily linear in its application. That it takes nurturing to keep it alive. That it isn’t just the responsibility of the courthouse to make it work. That sometimes we are just lucky. That sometimes we are good." I think Morris was saying Goumas deserved clemency and got it.
I say no. Racism doesn't excuse what Goumas did, and yet he only served 14 years for my uncle's murder. This type of editorializing is why I read every news account with a great deal of skepticism and you should too.
I worked at a daily newspaper for a year and the editor printed the stories he wanted to print. Out of hundreds of stories to come across the AP wire he might print two of them. There was a lot of bias. News media accounts for the past week or so have all been about protests and/or riots and of course they were newsworthy but there was other news to report. What gets reported and what doesn't heavily influences the public. How something is written or depicted is very important too. For instance, if Morris' article had been 90% about my uncle and his tragic early death (and the lifelong grief of his siblings and parents) the reader would have felt very different about Goumas by the end of it. Read critically. Question what you read. Look for stories from other sources about the same news item. Google makes research easy nowadays. Use it. Also, don't make assumptions. Never assume the news outlet has no bias. They are ALL biased.
below, my great uncles, from left: Doyle Butler, Ralph Butler, Carl Butler [who was mayor of Acworth Georgia for many years], and Dan Butler
