sentences:  Subsequently, all seven were arrested, and confessed both after arrest and in their trials; their guilt was never in question.In short order, the seven men were found guilty and were sentenced to death—the sentence under Virginia law at the time.Alerted to the case and its growing controversy, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) campaigned against the verdicts, arguing that the sentences violated the equal-protection provisions of the U.S. Constitution (no white man had ever been sentenced to death in Virginia for rape).