LIVING HISTORY
worth. A newspaper account of the trial says he “showed
obvious signs of the strain of the long imprisonment.”
Cora Leigh was in the courtroom with 10-year-old Burt Jr.,
who left when his father took the stand.
The main difference in this trial was an additional witness,
Mrs. Harold E. Kirk, whose garage apartment overlooked the
Pruitt bedroom. She said that between 5 and 5:15 the morning
of the shooting she was awakened by someone stumbling
over washtubs. She said she saw Powell sitting on the bed in
a bedroom and heard him talking in a loud voice.
She said he was saying, “I don’t give a …. what the neighbors
say!” and something about “getting someone,” and “I’ll
fix you now and forever.”
Mrs. Kirk, who had taught Powell in school, said she
thought the shot was a backfire on Dixie Highway. “I thought
he was drunk and paid little attention.” Questioned as to
why she had not come forward earlier, she said she had told a
“law enforcement officer” but would not give a name.
Pruitt took the stand and generally repeated what he had
said in the two earlier trials.
Cora Leigh took the stand on the morning of the second
day of the third trial but was allowed to testify only that she
had left the home on July 19, 1938, because Powell was in
love with her and she feared what he might do. The judge
would not allow testimony from her or a friend about alleged
threats from Powell, verbally and in a letter to Cora Leigh,
because these had not been communicated to Burt.
Before final arguments began, the jury was taken to the
scene of the crime to determine whether Kirk could have
heard the voices from her apartment as she testified. As the
trial drew to a close, the assistant state attorney called for a
conviction for first-degree murder. Speaking for the defense,
attorney Charles Francis Coe made what is described as a
“dramatic speech” asking that it be ruled self-defense.
THE VERDICT
The jury was sent to make its decision at 4:20 p.m. and took
so long another mistrial was feared. After two hours, the jury
came out and asked for further instructions on the difference
between second-degree murder and manslaughter. At 10:10
p.m. they announced it had a decision.
Burt Pruitt was found guilty of manslaughter for the July
31, 1938, death of Carl W. Powell. Manslaughter carried a
sentence of one to 20 years. Stories on the actual sentencing
could not be found, but an Aug. 27, 1940, article in the Palm
Beach Post, stated he’d been sentenced to seven years in state
prison for manslaughter.
That article, based on a dispatch from Tallahassee, said he’d
been granted a reprieve of 60 days. This was from Aug. 22,
1940, when Burt was to have started serving his prison time
after the Florida Supreme Court denied him a new trial. His
new lawyer, T. Harold Williams, was expected to use the time
to make an appeal to the pardon board.
If Burt actually went to the state prison and how much
time he spent there is unclear. The 1940 U.S. Census lists him
and Coral Leigh in the same house as the shooting. It seems
likely that once he was released he headed for the wild area
he loved along the North Fork.
In a 1962 outdoors column, Burt is quoted as coming to the
“solitude of a wooded area on the North Fork, commonly
known as ‘Bootleggers Paradise,’ ” about 19 years earlier,
approximately in 1943. He had used the spot as a temporary
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