Abstract

Six Minus Four: Trenton's Way Out

This article presents information on the Trenton Six murder case in which an all-white jury acquitted four of the defendants and recommended life imprisonment for the two found guilty in 1950. Lasting fifteen weeks, this second trial was not so much a trial of the six African American defendants as a trial of the Trenton, New Jersey police, who stood accused by the defense of deliberately suppressing evidence and of having forced false confessions from innocent men. The case relates to William Homer, a seventy-two-year-old shopkeeper, who was beaten to death in the rear of his second-hand furniture store on the morning of January 27, 1948. From the outset of the second trial a strong light was thrown on the methods used by the Trenton police in investigating the case.