Dear Readers,
Without a doubt, our criminal justice system has had a sordid past. Policing and a criminal code developed over time. Through the pre-World War II 20th Century, successive immigrant groups from Germany, Ireland, Poland, Italy and China, were “controlled” by using criminal laws to target cultural peculiarities.
You can argue whether the Prohibition Era was a good or bad idea. What it was, was an attack on European immigrants through their alcohol consumption tendencies. The Japanese Internment Camps were a muscular use of a criminal law to wrongfully target an ethnic group. It is, perhaps, the purest example of how discriminatory the criminal justice has been.
Especially in the South, it has also been explicitly racist. Americans with darker skin colors were hounded, hassled and at the mercy of white “overlords.” They were blocked from jury service either by disqualification or in the jury selection process of voir dire. Many were given summary sham trials and lynched simply because an unruly mob was worked into a lather. It was ugly.
After slavery officially ended, the Jim Crow criminal justice system was used as a very effective tool to snuff out voting rights. There is a reason a convicted felon loses his or her voting rights, which are difficult to reacquire. There is a reason that a formerly convicted felon is stripped of 2nd Amendment rights and cannot legally possess a firearm. The reasons to both are dripping with racism.
As we have tried to put this all behind us, we passed laws, which, while not overtly racist, unfairly impact minority communities. For years, marijuana has been treated as seriously as drugs like cocaine and heroin; it disproportionately impacts minority communities. This is compounded by recidivist laws, with minorities more likely to be convicted and less likely to receive competent representation.
“Broken Windows” has become the mantra of policing across the sweep of local communities. The idea is to aggressively prosecute even minor crimes to make society safer. Unfortunately, this has the effect of targeting minorities and poorer enclaves, who often lack the means to keep all vehicle equipment up to code, pay fines and fees, and/or find themselves harassed on suspicion of having committed a crime. Policing has had more and more a “war” mentality to its mission, and less and less about serving the community; minorities bear the brunt of this martial attitude.
Because of this, the criminal justice system is not color blind. While this is getting close to “ancient” history, O.J. Simpson was acquitted because he was not guilty of murdering Nicole Simpson Brown and Ronald Goldman, he was acquitted because black jurors believed that the prosecution of Mr. Simpson was racist. This was an almost predictable back-lash result of the overt racism of our past.
The current trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd is a litmus test for whether or not a white officer and a black victim can each be treated fairly by the system. This is really a topic for another column; what is indisputable is that George Floyd is dead because of policing system tolerating a racist impact. In other words, Derek Chauvin may or may not have killed George Floyd because he was racist; yet, he worked in environment that too often has an unfair impact or encourages a mind-set that too often leads to an unfair result.
This infects us with another disease – the knee-jerk accusation of racism or racist intent. This is what got O.J. Simpson acquitted; it is what Derek Chauvin is trying to battle. The “playing of the race card” bleeds accountability from the criminal justice system; it makes it convenient for a family to excuse criminality. Not every arrest, prosecution and sentence has a racist component.
Case-in-point is what happened with Jesse Askew, Jr., in Houston County about 20 years ago. He planned and executed a violent robbery and kidnapping at a buffet style family restaurant in Warner Robins. If I recall correctly, he worked there for a few weeks before concocting his plot, learning the customs of the restaurant. His plan was to burst into the restaurant right before closing, masked, armed with AK-47s, and with co-defendants, and take the weekend’s proceeds. It was kind of idiotic, as there was a safe on-site that could not be opened until the next weekday.
There were about a dozen employees terrorized by Mr. Askew and his crew; his very sister amongst them as either a crewmember or victim. Most were able to flee to the apartment complex across the street, but a few were imprisoned in a cooler in the back. They had to be let out by police, or they would have died. This was an ugly violent crime deserving of harsh punishment.
As a representative of Mr. Askew’s recently confessed to me, he apparently thought that a black attorney could pursue a made up racist claim and get him off, just like Johnnie Cochran did the same for Simpson. In other words, his strategy was to cry racism. He even filed something called a “Trial Demand,” to accelerate his trial date and make it more difficult to prosecute him.
This was a risky strategy and proved disastrous. Mr. Askew’s attorneys were told in writing that there would be no plea offer, if he maintained his trial demand. He was told the same at his arraignment, including that he was facing life without parole as a penalty. Still, Mr. Askew felt he could trick the system.
He went to trial and was convicted by a biracial jury. They were not so gullible as to ignore the facts over a made-up claim to play on a real problem with how black men are (and have been) treated by system. He lost his “game” and received the only sentence for his conviction – life without parole.
He still sits in prison, apparently not remorseful for his vile acts, still claiming racism, and asking for understanding of why he took the same risk Simpson took in thumbing his nose at the system. This is an example of the flip side to the damage real racism has done to the way our system is viewed; racism has done us no favors and its reach still lingers.
Warner Robins attorney Jim Rockefeller is the former Chief Assistant District Attorney for Houston County, and a former Assistant State Attorney in Miami. Owner of Rockefeller Law Center, Jim has been in private practice since 2000. E-mail your comments or confidential legal questions to jim@rockefellerlawcenter.com.
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