Judge Callahan charged the jury that Price and Bates could have been raped without force, just by withholding their consent. He instructed them, "Where the woman charged to have been raped is white, there is a strong presumption under the law that she will not and did not yield voluntarily to intercourse with the defendant, a Negro." He instructed the jury that if Patterson was so much as present for the "purpose of aiding, encouraging, assisting or abetting" the rapes "in any way", he was as guilty as the person who committed the rapes.