Biography
Charlie Davis was one of four Black men sentenced to death in Florida after police obtained coerced confessions to the murder of Robert Darsey. Davis was arrested on the night of May 13, 1933 and held in the Broward County jail. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death on June 17, 1933. In Chambers v. Florida, decided February 12, 1940, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the convictions because the confessions violated due process. S. D. McGill and Leon A. Ransom argued the appeal, with Thurgood Marshall also on the brief. Davis remained confined after that ruling. Following a retrial in March 1942, he was acquitted and released.
Family background and continued confinement
Richard Brust’s dissertation describes Davis as a 22-year-old store clerk who rented a room in Mamie McNeeley’s guesthouse on Church Street in Pompano. During the early interrogations, police held him in the Pompano jail separately from the other three defendants.
After the Supreme Court reversed the convictions, Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth dismissed the original indictment on December 11, 1940 because African Americans had been excluded from the grand jury. Palm Beach deputies rearrested the defendants on the same charge when they were due to be released. A new indictment followed on March 11, 1941, and the Florida Supreme Court upheld it on November 4.
Davis, Woodard and Williamson were acquitted and released from court on March 9, 1942. Speaking to the Fort Lauderdale Daily News after his release, Davis maintained his innocence and said that he was unsure where he would go. Brust found no records of his subsequent life.
Source: Richard Brust, The Pompano Boys (University of Florida, 2022), pp. 39–40, 95–96 and 254–257.
