Preoccupation With a Vaccination

I was scheduled to try a sexual assault of a child case in a small, rural town in Oklahoma this upcoming week (the actual charges were Rape by Instrumentation and Lewd Molestation of a Child). My client was accused of some indecent acts with a child and was facing life in prison. But at the last minute, the prosecution offered my client a probation and he accepted. Because of the nature of the allegations, these cases are dangerous to defend. I have defended many such cases in my career, but this one was unique.

During trial preparation, I visited the town at least four times over the past year. And each time I visited, I studied the area and tried to interact with as many people as I could to get a feel for our prospective jury. Each time I visited, my client was the only African American I would see. And as you might have guessed, the alleged victim in the case was white. My client was a black man accused of molesting a young, blond white girl in a small rural predominantly white town. To make matters worse, the girl's family was politically connected. They owned several businesses in the town and were related to an Assistant District Attorney.

Before I was hired on the case, my client's family paid a well-known Houston activist a few thousand dollars to "help." The activist ended up telling my client to enter a plea for prison time to avoid the potential of a life-sentence. He told him that he did not have a chance to win. Thereafter, on the recommendation of one of my former clients, my client's mother paid me a visit. They were at their wits end. They did not know which way to turn. When they told me about the case, I was surprised that he had not turned up dead in the county jail. The story closely resembled most stories about lynchings. My only guess was that they would try to lynch him through the legal system. Initially, the case intrigued me. As I have expressed in other posts, I believe many black men are not treated fairly by the criminal justice system. Such unfair treatment is magnified when there is a cross-racial crime. This seemed like one of those cases. But as I visited the area to scout out the land, the case began to haunt me. My evaluation of the case was that it was defensible. My office had successfully defended another sexual assault of a child case where our client was black and the child was white in Fort Bend County, Texas last year, And if this case were in the Houston area, I would expect to win the case. But in this rural all-white town.....

I have to admit that initially I was disappointed that my client agreed to probation. I so much wanted to try this case and disprove my perception of rural white America. Inside I so much wanted to show them that I, a black man, had ability and intellect. I so much wanted my beliefs about race to be disproved and the notion that "we have overcome" to be SUSTAINED! by a jury. I saw an opportunity to fight against racism on a few different levels, so I seized the gauntlet and suited up for battle. We prepared for several months to defend this case, and with the help of an expert in child sexual abuse, we were preparing to fight to win.

But after reflection, I was relieved that we would not be going to trial. When I walked the streets of that town, I got a few stares and a few looks that made me wonder. Ego drives some lawyers, and I'll admit that I hate to lose. But this was no game. No case is. This was my client's life. The perception that some whites have of blacks in big cities is that we are prone to crime. Truth be told, many African-Americans think the same thing about other African-Americans. Even though this notion is racist and blatantly false (VIDEO), I could not think people in a small town who had limited exposure to black people would be immune to the disease of racist thinking. One trial with me advocating for my client's interest was not the vaccination. My client, although he protested his innocence, decided that a plea of no contest was better than facing the possibility of a legal lynching.