If I Could Defend My People
By: Alton Maddox, Amsterdam News
When Black leaders met on Sept. 26 with Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, and she, subsequently, conferred with the district attorney of LaSalle Parish, Blacks were witnessing the unveiling of a full-scale pacification program. For Blacks, this is a one-sided deal.
Sixty thousand persons converging on a small town to protest an injustice is a big deal and it has the potential for big-time trouble. It is still a crime for Blacks to engage in an unlawful assembly. The local district attorney is still fuming over Blacks coming to Jena on Sept. 20.
Louisiana is no match for Blacks when, collectively, they decide to embrace the concept of sovereignty. The United States is a collection of 50 sovereigns. When we decide to become the 51st sovereign, lights will be out. As a sovereign, Blacks can smash Louisiana’s economy. Every other group in the United States has embraced sovereignty.
Unless Blacks wake up and smell the coffee, Mychal Bell will be going to prison in short order. This deal was worked out this past Wednesday, Sept. 26, in Baton Rouge. In law school, every first-year law student would call this arraignment an unconscionable contract.
Judge J.P. Mauffray would grant bail. This is his pre-existing duty. The prosecutor would waive his frivolous appeal. Bell would be released. In return for these crumbs, Bell’s attorneys would consent to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court.
Black leaders are Democrats first. They have no allegiance to the Black masses. Attorneys in Louisiana serve at the mercy of the Establishment. They must do the bidding of the judges. Otherwise, they will face disciplinary complaints on trumped-up charges, if necessary.
Before Blacks can challenge this system, they must find attorneys who know the law and are fearless. The U.S. Constitution prohibits a person from being twice put in jeopardy. This language can be found in the Double Jeopardy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
When a criminal defendant is convicted after trial and an appeals court reverses the conviction for lack of jurisdiction and insufficiency of evidence, double jeopardy attaches and a second prosecution is barred. The Constitution prevents an evil prosecutor from getting two bites at the apple.
Bell’s constitutional rights were unintelligently waived and he will be sideswiped in a juvenile court in LaSalle Parish. No competent attorney would readily allow a client to be tried in a kangaroo proceeding with Judge J.P. Mauffray and LaSalle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters as participants. This is a legal trap.
Any competent and zealous lawyer would go upstairs, in a minute, to get them removed from the case. Moreover, a writ of prohibition should be filed to bar the juvenile court from exceeding its jurisdiction. It is not legal for a prosecutor with an evil eye to go forum shopping, especially when the judiciary is asked to sanction egregious, prosecutorial misconduct.
Once Bell steps inside a juvenile court, he might be fighting the juvenile justice system by himself. No member of the public can get a peep. This closed-door proceeding will remind Bell of the chicken being tried by the foxes. The judge and the prosecutor can’t wait to get their hands on him.
It is still illegal for a Black person to strike a white person. I remember such a case in Newnan, GA. The accused, who knifed his two white employers in self-defense, was lucky, however. He hired the late attorney Donald Hollowell who miraculously pulled his client out of the fire. This outcome helped inspire me to become a lawyer.
It gets worse when Black, self-appointed leaders moonlight as good Samaritans. The Black leader who pretends to be a good Samaritan must serve two masters. He ends up hating his Black master and loving his white master. The beneficiary is the Democratic Party.
Blacks have no knowledge of exercising political and economic leverage. Instead, we are always purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge. The same modus operandi that is being used in “Jena 6” was also used in Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Henry Richards and Don Imus. Only the “deaf, dumb and blind” could be so stupid to repeatedly embrace it.
Every problem has a legal foundation. The legal tension in Jena High School started in 1949 in Clarendon County, S.C. In Wichita, Kan., Blacks opposed a desegregation lawsuit so the NAACP urged its Topeka branch to support it. In Prince Edward County, Va., Black students sought a new high school. A white school bus refused to pick up Black children in Delaware.
In Washington, D.C., Blacks demanded that Black children attending overcrowded, segregated schools should be rerouted to white schools with vacant seats. The parents approached Charles Hamilton Houston. He suggested that they sue for equalization of facilities. Houston initiated a lawsuit independent of the NAACP. Houston died mysteriously.
The parents, afterwards, approached James L. Nabrit, a law professor at Howard University. He refused to initiate litigation for equalization of facilities. Instead, he demanded to initiate a desegregation lawsuit to appease NAACP policy.
Judge J. Waties Waring changed the legal question in Briggs v. South Carolina and he was chased out of South Carolina. The Black parents only wanted school buses for their children. Waring had another idea. He was pushing for desegregation arising out of a modified New York plan of the 1880s.
Houston is the greatest lawyer in American jurisprudence and the legal architect of dismantling Jim Crow but Blacks chose to follow the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall and J. Edgar Hoover. Marshall had opposed the hiring of Black professors at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. The desegregation advocates won out and Bell will be paying the price.
This was the same problem with professional baseball. We followed Jackie Robinson and today, under 10 percent of professional baseball players are Black. The Negro League is an artifact. There is a difference between a merger and integration.
The same problem arose with Black jockeys. No Black person can be found riding a racehorse at any racetrack today. We once ruled the roost at the Kentucky Derby. Those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. When will we ever learn?
The case of the “Jena 6” will be won or lost before Bell appears in a juvenile court. The defense lawyers should already be in an appeals court with a writ of prohibition. This is a race to two different courthouses. We have no lawyers in the United States who are ready to go toe-to-toe and eyeball-to-eyeball with white supremacists.
The Supreme Court commented on this problem in Powell v. Alabama. We saw it again in the Central Park 6 case in 1989. It is the right of legal representation. This can only be guaranteed by fearless, legal warriors in hostile workplaces.
Only four Black lawyers reported for duty in defense of the Central Park 6. In addition to myself, Colin Moore and Robert Burns were, subsequently, disbarred. Joseph Mack was suspended. Blacks are in a war and Black lawyers in Louisiana know it. Bell’s life hangs in the balance.
Oct. 6–7: An overnight bus trip to the Blacks In Wax Museum and the Baltimore Harbor in Baltimore and an “Egypt on the Nile” tour of Washington, D.C., conducted by the esteemed Egyptologist Anthony Browder. No Child (Should Be) Left Behind. Every Black child should be taught the true history of the nation’s capital. For further information call (718) 834-9034.
Oct. 10: United African Movement will host its next forum at 7:30 p.m. at the Elks Plaza, 1068 Harriet Tubman (Fulton) St. (near Classon Ave.) in Brooklyn. A film documentary titled “9/11: The Rise of the Police State” produced by investigative journalist Alex Jones will be shown. Take the C train to Franklin Ave.
Oct. 27: Alton Maddox will conduct a seminar on “Critical Thinking and Legal Reasoning” in the NAC Building at City College in Harlem. For registration information call (718) 834-9034.
Oct. 30: PWV Acquisitions, LLC v. Maddox, in Manhattan Housing Court, 111 Centre St., Rm. 523, New York, NY at 9:30 a.m.
See: www.reinstatealtonmaddox.net for “Democratic Party and the ‘Jena 6.’”
