“… And Justice For All”: The Rule Of Law Defines Civilization And Underpins America’s Precious Democratic Experiment
I’m a little emotional about same-sex couples accepting Alabama Probate Judges’ time-honored offer to newlyweds “You may kiss”. These marriages are all the sweeter because when we were married by an Alabama Probate Judge three decades ago, it was a very different world. Sorta.
Those were the days of “I now pronounced you man and wife.” Unmistakably, a man was a man whatever his marital status. Once married, a woman was reduced to her role. We’d already warned the Judge off the the “obey” thing, but he informed us that another trip to the courthouse and a formal petition — fifty bucks, please — was required for me to reclaim my own surname. It had legally vanished with “I do”. It is a privilege to see justice finally promised to another oppressed group. And what additional satisfaction it is to have a front row seat, watching seemingly immovable traditions — reserving marriage for some, refusing it to others, arbitrarily elevating some over others — dissolving before the irresistible force of a Federal Judge’s orders overturning Alabama’s law banning same-sex marriage — celebration time.
A victory of this proportion is for everyone, a lesson on a grand scale. People died for these rights. Credit especially the martyred San Francisco Board of Supervisors Harvey Milk and his profound insight: “‘Coming out’ is the most political thing you can do.” When individuals risked everything to be true to themselves, debilitating stereotypes dissolved into the faces of our family members, neighbors, friends and coworkers. Millions shared the honor when Mr. Milk was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2009. Our world is improving because people were brave.
Would that the heroic reporter Dudley Clendinen had lived to see this turn of events. His Out for Good, which we explored with him in 1999, remains an important report on harsh realities still endured by too many homosexuals in the world and in America. The particulars of people’s private lives continue to elicit sensational and hate-filled reactions. Still.
Not surprising is the recalcitrance of the “Ten Commandments” Alabama Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore. Nor is this appalling defiance of the Federal Judge’s direct order out of character. In 2003, his own colleagues removed him from office for defying the law. What does it say for the voting majority in Alabama, that In 2012 they returned him to the same position?
I am amazed that half the judges in the State defied their Chief Justice. Perhaps they realized his argument is “so 1832”, dating back as it does to South Carolinian John C. Calhoun’s (and later the Confederacy’s) notion of “nullification“. Maybe those law-abiding Probate Judges didn’t want to be counted among the more recent neo-nullification gang: Orval Faubus, George Wallace, Lester Maddox and now, notably, the list includes the former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee (who’s also voiced suspicions about dancing).
Whatever their motivation, it’s a breath of fresh air that so many Alabama Probate Judges obeyed the Federal court order and married whomever chose that august and demanding path. This is all the more noteworthy given their Chief Justice’s recalcitrance, which carries the distinctive stench of oppression still lingering across America from white supremacists imposing equally noxious restrictions based on race as well as gender.
The rule of law defines civilization and underpins America’s precious (and precarious) democratic experiment. A less privileged individual would go to jail for the kind of defiance we are witnessing. A senior judge flagrantly breaking the law with apparent impunity is a sad spectacle, even in long-benighted Alabama.
Ultimately, justice will win out in a just polity. Still, it should not be necessary to overcome the willful injustice of atavistic elements of our judicial system.
By: Paula Gordon, The Blog, The HUffington Post, February 22, 2015
“Unprofessional, Backwards And Unethical”: The Alabama Threesome; A Judge, His Bible And Bigotry
Power can be hoarded by the mighty or stolen from the innocent. Power provides the ability to choose… but has a proclivity for corruption. The use of power is not to be taken lightly, for it is never without consequence.
— Emily Thorne (Revenge)
Though protagonist Emily Thorne from ABC’s hit drama Revenge is just a fictional character, those words resonated with me when I first heard them.
There are those with immense power that choose to abuse or misuse that power in order to advance their own ideology, careers or agendas — all while negating the oaths they swore to uphold. In the end, justice is the first casualty, and the innocent suffer.
Roy Moore, Alabama’s Supreme Court Chief Justice, is that person who violated his sacred oaths. Justice Moore issued unethical statements on gay marriage — despite it concerning a case that is still ongoing, and one that could come to him. In a letter penned to the governor of Alabama, Justice Moore said:
As Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, I will continue to recognize the Alabama Constitution and the will of the people overwhelmingly expressed in the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment.
Moore continued with:
I ask you to continue to uphold and support the Alabama Constitution with respect to marriage, both for the welfare of this state and for our posterity… Be advised that I stand with you to stop judicial tyranny and any unlawful opinions issued without constitutional authority.
Are these the words of a state’s highest judge, or of an unprofessional, backwards and unethical right-wing fanatic?
Justice Moore is no stranger to controversy. He was removed from his post as Chief Justice in 2003 for disobeying a federal ruling that he remove a 10 Commandments monument that he had ordered installed in the judicial building.
Justice Moore also issued a very controversial opinion in the case of D.H. vs. H.H. where he voted for an abusive father to be given full custody of his children, rather than their lesbian mother.
He was elected to the highest judicial position in his state, and yet, he treats it like a church pulpit without regard to something called separation of church and state, or the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. You, Mr. Moore, are wrong when you claim that Alabama’s constitution is superior to federal law. Any first-year political science or pre-law student would be able to tell you that.
A person like Justice Moore is a threat to the very fabric of American society. This extremism should never be accepted or tolerated. When one holds the position of Chief Justice of a U.S. State, one would hope that the elected official would put what is legal, constitutional and right above their misguided, extremist or religious beliefs.
Marriage equality is coming to Alabama, Judge Moore. Not you, nor your unethical behavior, nor your piousness will prevent equality and love from prevailing.
Since the Chief Justice doesn’t seem very enlightened on matters concerning the law, and his antiquated beliefs are clouding his judgment, I would be more than happy to educate him on the legality of his position, and several other laws he might not be well-versed in.
Since making time for such a splendid learning session would probably interrupt his Duck Dynasty marathon, Bible speed-reading session or bedtime tales from Fox News, I recommend the Chief Justice run to his local Barnes&Noble store and pick up a paperback copy of Constitutional Law for Dummies. Trust me Judge Moore, it will be the best $20 you spend this year.
By: Izak Pratt, The Blog, The Huffington Post, February 9, 2015
“Federal Crime”: Judge Mark Fuller, A Man Who Clearly Has No Business Being On The Federal Bench
For the past few weeks, the indispensable investigative journalist Brad Friedman has covered the case of George W. Bush-appointed US District Court Judge Mark Fuller of Alabama, who’s notorious for his role in the railroading of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Last month, Fuller was arrested for allegedly attacking his wife in a Georgia hotel in a manner reminiscent of the National Football League’s paragons of family values. However, as Friedman has noted, there’s a creepy possibility that Fuller could avoid any real legal accountability for his alleged behavior.
This horrifying story has, unfortunately, stayed under the radar of the mainstream media, with the recent exception of MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. Now, in an explosive follow-up, Friedman has revealed new details about a man who clearly has no business being on the federal bench:
…Fuller is not necessarily off the hook for prosecution in a court of law yet. The terms of his plea deal, reportedly, require that, in addition to attending once-a-week domestic abuse counseling for 24 weeks, Judge Fuller must also receive an evaluation concerning drug and alcohol abuse by a court-approved entity.
If he successfully completes those requirements, only then will his arrest record be permanently expunged.
Fuller’s attorney, after the plea deal was approved in state court with the consent of Fuller’s wife Kelli, the victim in this case, stated that the federal judge “doesn’t have a drug or alcohol problem and never has.”
That, like the claim that he is a first time offender in regard to domestic abuse, does not appear to be true, at least according to Fuller’s first wife Lisa who filed a damning Request for Admissions during their 2012 divorce, after Fuller was allegedly discovered to have been having an affair with his court bailiff, Kelli, who he eventually married (and subsequently beat the hell out of last month, after she similarly accused him of having an affair with his law clerk.)
According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in 2012, the first wife, Lisa Boyd Fuller, “submitted an objection to her husband’s motion to seal their divorce file…She agreed to redact certain sensitive information but ‘strenuously object[ed] to sealing the entire file,’ according to her response. Her initial complaint and request for admissions accuse Fuller of extramarital affairs, domestic violence and prescription drug abuse.”
Friedman’s coverage of the Fuller horror has been extraordinary. After reading the gruesome details of this story, how can one not join the growing chorus of those demanding that Fuller resign or be impeached?
By: D. R. Tucker, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 20, 2014
“Offender-Funded Justice”: The Economics Of Police Militarism
Two crucial battles broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, this week. The first began with the public airing of sorrow and rage after the death of the eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot by a police officer, on Canfield Court, in the St. Louis suburb, at 2:15 P.M. last Saturday. Then came the local law enforcement’s rejoinder to the early round of protests. Officers rolled in with a fleet of armored vehicles, sniper rifles, and tear-gas cannisters, reinserting the phrase “the militarization of policing” into the collective conscience. The tactical missteps by the town’s police leadership have been a thing to behold. (They’re also to be expected; anyone doubting as much should pick up Radley Balko’s “The Rise of the Warrior Cop.”)
One moment, we see a young man with a welt from a rubber bullet between his eyes; the next, three officers with big guns are charging at another black man who has his hands up. On Thursday, Jelani Cobb filed a powerful account from the sidewalks and homes of Ferguson. Cobb asks about “the intertwined economic and law-enforcement issues underlying the protests,” including, for instance, the court fees that many people in Ferguson face, which often begin with minor infractions and eventually become “their own, escalating, violations.” “We have people who have warrants because of traffic tickets and are effectively imprisoned in their homes,” Malik Ahmed, the C.E.O. of an organization called Better Family Life, told Cobb. “They can’t go outside because they’ll be arrested. In some cases, people actually have jobs but decide that the threat of arrest makes it not worth trying to commute outside their neighborhood.”
The crisis of criminal-justice debt is just one of the many tributaries feeding the river of deep rage in Ferguson. But it’s an important one—both because it’s so ubiquitous and because it’s easily overlooked in the spectacular shadow of tanks and turrets. Earlier this year, I spent six months reporting on the rise of profiteering in American courts, which happens by way of the proliferation of fees and fines for very minor offenses—part of a growing movement toward what’s known as offender-funded justice. Private companies play an aggressive role in collecting these fees in certain states. (Often, this tactic is aimed at the poor with unpaid traffic tickets.) The reports from Ferguson raise questions about how militarization and economic coercion feed a shared anger.
Missouri was one of the first states to allow private probation companies, in the late nineteen-eighties, and it has since followed the national trend of allowing court fees and fines to mount rapidly. Now, across much of America, what starts as a simple speeding ticket can, if you’re too poor to pay, mushroom into an insurmountable debt, padded by probation fees and, if you don’t appear in court, by warrant fees. (Often, poverty means transience—not everyone who is sent a court summons receives it.) “Across the country, impoverished people are routinely jailed for court costs they’re unable to pay,” Alec Karakatsanis, a cofounder of Equal Justice Under Law, a nonprofit civil-rights organization that has begun challenging this practice in municipal courts, said. These kinds of fines snowball when defendants’ cases are turned over to for-profit probation companies for collection, since the companies charge their own “supervision” fees. What happens when people fall behind on their payments? Often, police show up at their doorsteps and take them to jail.
From there, the snowball rolls. “Going to jail has huge impacts on people at the edge of poverty,” Sara Zampieren, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told me. “They lose their job, they lose custody of their kids, they get behind on their home-foreclosure payments,” the sum total of which, she said, is “devastating.” While in prison, “user fees” often accumulate, so that, even after you leave, you’re not quite free. A recent state-by-state survey conducted by NPR showed that in at least forty-three states defendants can be billed for their own public defender, a service to which they have a Constitutional right; in at least forty-one states, inmates can be charged for room and board in jail and prison.
America’s militarized police forces now have some highly visible tools at their disposal, some of which have been in the spotlight this week: machine guns, night-vision equipment, military-style vehicles, and a seemingly endless amount of ammo. But the economic arm of police militarization is often far less visible, and offender-funded justice is part of this sub-arsenal. The fears that Cobb and Ahmed describe—court debts that lead to warrants and people who are afraid to leave their homes as a result—compound the force that can be wielded during raids or protests like those on the streets of Missouri. Debtors’ fears change their daily lives—can they go to the grocery story or drive a child to school without being detained? “It deters people who have legitimate problems from calling the police, and removes the police’s ability to do what they’re supposed to be doing—helping people in the community respond to emergencies,” Karakatsanis said. It erodes the community’s trust in and coöperation with law enforcement.
In Alabama, Equal Justice Under Law has filed a class-action lawsuit against the city of Montgomery on behalf of minor offenders who have been jailed for debt; their challenge is pending and the city refutes the allegations, but, Karakatsanis says, at least thirty-five people were released from jail for their court debts since the suit was filed. (A judge has issued a preliminary injunction that leans in favor of the debtors.) More often than not, though, plaintiffs who face overwhelming municipal-court debts never get a shot at a legal challenge. Instead, their problem often compounds their resentment and their disinvestment in authority.
Several years ago, I embedded with U.S. troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and spent time with a unit that was tasked with implementing the directives from a set of trainings known as “Commander’s Guide to Money as a Weapons System.” The trainings instruct troops in how to use economic tools to further military objectives, and there is a warning printed in the opening pages of one such field manual: “Warfighters and their leaders must ensure their actions will stand up to a Congressional inquiry and must not cause embarrassment to the Department of Defense.” Here, “real” militarism has one advantage over its domestic counterpart, at least doctrinally—the principle is genuine investment in communities where the military hopes to earn trust and influence. Unsurprisingly, it has proved complicated to implement (and has often failed wildly), but, at least in theory, it is far more graceful than police officers or the military blasting their way across human terrain. Here at home, SWAT teams continue to tear down the proverbial power lines.
In a sign of hope, the new commander in Ferguson, Captain Ron Johnson, of the Missouri State Highway Patrol (who grew up in Ferguson), immediately seemed to grasp this issue when he assumed leadership on Thursday. “We all want justice. We all want answers,” he told the Associated Press. “It means a lot to me personally that we break this cycle of violence.”
In reckoning with police militarization, the economic side of the phenomenon should be considered. The connection may not be obvious to those who’ve never had the gas or water or electricity in their homes shut off. But these forces operate in tandem—the tear gas and the tickets; the weaponry and the warrants—compromising a wide range of fundamental rights that seem, in Ferguson and beyond, to have gone up in smoke.
By: Sarah Stillman, The New Yorker, August 15, 2014
“Political Apartheid”: Keeping Black Voters In Their Place
The Republicans who now control the legislatures and governorships in the deep South are using the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to create a system of political apartheid.
No state demonstrates this better than Alabama, where in 2010 Republicans took over the State Senate and House for the first time since Reconstruction. This is a signal example of the decline of black power in the South.
Mike Hubbard, a Republican from Auburn, who is speaker of the Alabama House, engineered the 2010 takeover of the legislature. He was forthright in his 2012 book — “Storming the Statehouse: The Campaign that Liberated Alabama from 136 years of Democrat Rule” — about his techniques for displacing white Democratic incumbents:
“We needed to find our targets and the candidates to take them on, so I commissioned an in-depth study of voting patterns in various districts represented by white Democratic legislators across the state.”
Before the 2010 election, there were 60 Democrats in the Alabama State House, 34 of them white, 26 black. Now, there are 36 Democrats, 26 of them black, 10 of them white. In the State Senate, the number of Democrats fell from 20 – 13 white, 7 black – to 11 Democrats, 4 white, 7 black.
Once Alabama Republicans gained control of the levers of power, they wasted no time using the results of the 2010 Census to reinforce their position of dominance. Newly drawn lines further corralled black voters into legislative districts with large African-American majorities, a tactic political professionals call “packing and stacking.” Redrawn district lines minimize the potential of coalitions between a minority of white voters and a solid core of black voters. Under these circumstances, white Republican voting blocs remain dominant.
At the core of this strategy is an unexpected twist: Republicans in Alabama and in many other states have gone out of their way to protect black legislative districts and black legislators from Republican or white Democratic challenges.
Have Republican legislators in the South become civil and voting rights champions? No. They are promoting the interests of African-American voters in order to enhance the ability of Republican officials whose real targets, white Democrats, are struggling to cope with the steady decline of loyal “Yellow Dog” supporters.
To achieve this goal, Republican state legislators purposely keep the influence of Democratic-leaning minorities to a minimum in districts with white majorities. Alabama is a state where 80 percent of whites voted Republican in the 2004 presidential elections; 90 percent did so in 2012.
“The most important part of the plan was to preserve minority districts,” said Jim McClendon, the Republican state representative from Springville who co-chaired the Alabama redistricting committee. In a phone interview, McClendon rejected suggestions that the Republican goal was to make it harder for white Democrats to win re-election to state legislative office: “No, not at all. The voters are making it tougher on white Democrats.”
Out of a total of 105 State House districts, 27 have black majorities, one of which is represented by a white Democrat. In those districts, the average percentage of black voters is 66.4 percent, far above the percentage election experts now consider critical if the goal is to insure that minorities have the ability “to elect their preferred candidates of choice,” as the Voting Rights Act puts it.
In a federal court challenge to the state’s Republican-drawn redistricting plan brought by the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, Theodore S. Arrington, a professor emeritus of political science from the University of North Carolina and an expert in election law, testified on Aug. 12 that 50 percent plus one vote would be enough in Alabama.
In redrawing the State Senate and House lines after the 2010 Census, the number of black “influence” districts – majority white districts with enough blacks so that minorities and a relatively small percentage of whites could together elect a Democrat – were kept to a minimum, and in some cases eliminated altogether.
Before redistricting, for example, there were five majority-white State Senate districts in which there were potentially enough blacks, Hispanics and other minorities to form an alliance with white Democrats to win in November. According to documents provided by James Blacksher, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the federal court case brought by the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, these State Senate districts had an average percentage of minority voters of 35.9 before redistricting; after redistricting, the average percentage of minority voters in the five most integrated majority-white districts fell to 29.5. In other words, there was a significant decline in the number of majority-white state legislative districts in which minorities might have enough votes to form an alliance with still-Democratic whites.
McClendon, the Republican state representative from Springville, now plans to run in 2014 for State Senate in District 11. Before redistricting, the voting age population of that district was 65.5 percent white; after redistricting, it is 81.9 percent white, virtually guaranteeing a Republican victory.
In the State House districts with majority white populations, only two had minority populations exceeding 30 percent, 32.0 and 34.5 percent.
None of the 78 majority white State House districts falls into the racial “middle ground” with minority percentages in the 36 to 49 percent range. These are the kind of state districts most likely to produce biracial coalitions, and most likely to elect white Democrats, not only in the South but nationwide.
Arrington testified that the intent of Republican redistricting was to prevent blacks “from forming effective cross-race coalitions” both in elections and in the state legislature. “If you’re restricted to just 25 to 30 percent of the districts in the Legislature, and you have no ability to form coalitions with whites, then your ability to participate politically is restricted. It’s not participating equally in the political process,” he said.
Blacksher, the lawyer representing the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus in its suit, said in a phone interview that the Republicans’ goal is “to make all Democratic seats black, all Republican seats white.”
According to the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus,
“Republican lawmakers packed black voters into 27 House districts and eight Senate districts. The redistricting plans ‘purposely perpetuate and attempt to restore Alabama’s historical policy of segregating African Americans in party politics.’ ”
McClendon flatly denied such intent: “that wasn’t part of the plan,” he told me.
The Republican redistricting plan has had some unexpected consequences, with significant racial ramifications, one of which grows out of the state’s unusually strong restrictions on the powers of city and county officials. Alabama does not have home rule and requires instead that the state legislature approve virtually all local laws, including laws governing Jefferson County, which encompasses Birmingham.
The Alabama Legislative Black Caucus contends in a jurisdictional statement asking the Supreme Court to take up the case that
“The legislature enacted plans that place Jefferson County in 18 House districts, only 8 of them majority-black. All of the majority black districts lie entirely inside Jefferson County, but 6 of the 10 majority-white districts cross into 6 other counties. The 2012 Senate plan puts Jefferson County in 8 districts, 3 majority-black and 5 majority-white. All 3 of the majority-black Senate districts lie entirely inside Jefferson County, but all 5 of the majority-white districts cross the Jefferson County boundary to include parts of 11 other counties. Altogether, 155,279 non-residents vote for members of Jefferson County’s House delegation, and 428,101 people residing in other counties vote for members of the Jefferson County Senate delegation.”
The consequences are substantial, according to the statement:
“White legislators will continue being able to block local revenue bills, whose defeat has helped drive Jefferson County into bankruptcy and has closed Cooper Green Mercy Hospital for the poor.”
One solution would be for Congress to amend the Voting Rights Act to more explicitly address the political reality that African-Americans in the South are now mobilized and turn out in far higher percentages than was the case when the Act was written in 1965.
Arrington testified before the Middle Alabama Federal District Court that because of increased turnout, blacks in Alabama are, in fact, able to elect politicians of their own choosing in districts that are 50 percent or less minority – that the 60-70 percent levels that civil rights leaders called for decades ago are no longer required.
Changes in African-American political mobilization actually offer much stronger potential for integrated politics than in the past, when black political representation required supermajorities of minority voters. The elections of Barack Obama to the presidency, of Cory Booker to the Senate in New Jersey and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts clearly show that such biracial alliances are now achievable.
Republicans, however, will do what they can to prevent pro-Democratic trends from emerging in regions they dominate. After successfully winning control of the South, Republicans will not let go of the reins. In that famously vicious political blood sport, redistricting, they will exploit their ability to deploy the cloak of civil rights to maintain and strengthen a politically advantageous segregation of the races.
By: Thomas B. Edsall, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, November 6, 2013
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