The Arizona Gleam

Dean Pickens Exonerated In Fatal Auto Accident

Bakersfield After taking the case under submission on Thursday afternoon, Judge Stewart McGee, committing magistrate, rendered a decision Friday at noon which completely exonerated Dean William Pickens, director of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People branches and noted lecturer, of charges of negligent homicide in the death of James Anderson, 21-year old white hitch hiker, who died June 3 last.

It was Saturday afternoon May 30 while Dean Pickens was on his way to Bakersfield to address an NAACP branch that he picked Anderson up. Apparently a victim of monoxide gas, Pickens lost control of his car and crashed into a tree on U.S. Highway No. 99, after avoiding a collision with an approaching

car and one directly ahead of him. The white youth's injuries proved fatal, as he died the following Wednesday after an operation at the Kern County hospital here.

Pickens was badly shaken up and received a broken right arm.

The coroner's Jury at the inquest into the death of Anderson dismissed the case, holding it was accidental. The State Highway Patrol, however, filed a complaint charging negligent homicide. Bond was set at $5000.

Attorney Thomas L. Griffith, junior, chief defense counsel, and president of the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP, was aided somewhat by Attorney Walter Gordon, Alameda NAACP Branch head, and J.O. Reavis prominent local citizen, who sat in on the case.