Joan Little (pronounced "Jo Ann") (born 1953) is an African American woman whose trial for the 1974 murder of a white prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina, became a cause célèbre of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-death penalty movements. Little was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Her case also has become classic in legal circles as a pioneering instance of the application of scientific jury selection.
Read more about Joan Little: Early Life, Criminality, Effects, Later in Life
Famous quotes containing the words joan little and/or joan:
“Oh what a lovely war!”
—Joan Littlewood (b. 1914)
“General de Gaulle was a thoroughly bad boy. The day he arrived, he thought he was Joan of Arc and the following day he insisted that he was Georges Clemenceau.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)