Biography
Black woman from Georgia whose prosecution after the 1975 shooting of Ronnie Horne became the focus of a national defense campaign. Woods asserted self-defense against sexual assault. Originally sentenced to concurrent ten-year manslaughter and twelve-year armed-robbery terms, not a combined twenty-two years. In 1981 the federal appeals court reversed the robbery conviction while affirming manslaughter. Released July 9, 1981.
Release chronology and concurrent sentences
The original state judgment identifies June 16, 1975 as the offense date, not an exact arrest date. The unsupported arrest-day field and its derived 2,215-day total are removed; no prison-admission date or substitute total is guessed. The judgment records concurrent ten- and twelve-year sentences, correcting the former twenty-two-year description. The federal decision of June 22, 1981 reversed armed robbery but affirmed manslaughter. Its account of an earlier three-day Reidsville jail stay describes a separate episode before the shooting, not admission or release in this prosecution. Torch's contemporary prisoner brief explicitly reports release on July 9, corroborating the existing July 9, 1981 field. Exact initial custody endpoints remain unresolved.
Sources: Woods v. State, original judgment, November 1, 1977; Woods v. Linahan, 648 F.2d 973, June 22, 1981; Torch, October 15-November 14, 1981, page 6, Prisoner briefs. Original complete newspaper page visually inspected; its unrelated Ron Settles photograph is not a Woods portrait. Existing Woods photo retained.
Defense pamphlet: distinct custody phases and date limits
The National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods pamphlet The Story of Dessie Woods (June 1978 second edition, printed pp. 2–4, 11–14) distinguishes custody phases. It reports that Woods and Cheryl Todd spent three days jailed in Reidsville after setting out on June 14, 1975, were released after money was wired, and were later arrested in the Horne case. It also says they obtained freedom on bond after the September 2, 1975 indictment challenge, pending reindictment. That bond release prevents assuming uninterrupted custody from the first June arrest through Woods’s eventual 1981 release. Exact admission, bond-release and later recommitment days still require independent records. The pamphlet dates the shooting June 17 and says arrest the next day, conflicting with other source chronologies; no exact arrest day is adopted. Its February 2 verdict followed by a ten-day sentencing delay also conflicts with its later February 2 sentencing statement. Existing month-only sentencing precision is preserved. The main text correctly states concurrent ten- and twelve-year terms; the appendix’s summed twenty-two-year wording is not adopted.
Source: The Story of Dessie Woods, second edition, June 1978. Allegations and descriptions are attributed to the defense committee; sentence terms are distinct from actual time served.
The defense habeas petition reprinted in Justice Amerikkkan Style, PDF pages 13–15 and 19–23, challenged the participation of Leon Greene as a privately retained special prosecutor. It quotes Judge James B. O’Connor’s November 3, 1975 announcement that Greene had been retained by the deceased’s family to assist the state, and says a January 13–14, 1976 disqualification hearing ended with denial of the motion on January 16. The defense argued that Greene’s financial and attorney-client obligations deprived Woods of a fair trial; that is the petition’s allegation, not a finding adopted here. The requested habeas discharge at the end of the brief is a prayer for relief, not proof of release. Existing concurrent sentence terms and custody chronology are preserved.
Justice Amerikkkan Style, Dessie Woods habeas petition, PDF pages 13–15, 19–23 and 26.
Breakthrough’s Spring 1979 defense-campaign report says that Woods was transferred from prison to the Georgia State Mental Institution shortly before Christmas 1978 and later returned to prison following a telephone protest organized by the National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods. It alleges beatings, isolation, denial of visits and forced medication with prolixin. These are contemporary campaign allegations, not independently adjudicated findings. Return from the mental institution was a transfer within custody, not release to freedom. No exact transfer day, separate imprisonment total or change to her established concurrent sentences is inferred; the article’s summed twenty-two-year wording is not adopted.
