 Of the original nine young black defendants (some of them minors at the time of arrest), accused of gang raping two fellow hobo white women on a freight train, eight were quickly convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries in trials occurring in a mob atmosphere in Scottsboro.The only two local attorneys who were willing to take the cases had few qualifications for criminal defense work.They were unable to put up much of a defense when the judge gave them no time to prepare their defenses before the trials.