A HOPE FOR THAT THIRD STAGE-TRUE CIVIL RIGHTS

A HOPE FOR THAT THIRD STAGE-TRUE CIVIL RIGHTS

Following along with the George Zimmerman trial from time to time as I worked on cases, and then when the verdict came I could not help but think of another trial, one that I attended throughout that occurred years ago, back in the days of the Movement.  It was down in Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta, Issaquena County, real Faulkner country.  I was there because a good friend of mine and law school classmate, who had been very active in the Movement was on trial on trumped up charges.  He was there working with The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and I had been drawn into the Movement, and went to Mississippi on several occasions because I was my friend’s friend and also because I was editor of my law school newspaper and in that capacity had to cover the law students from my school who were drawn into the Movement and its activities not only in Mississippi but elsewhere.  Mississippi was certainly, however, the point of the most intense focus of the Movement above everywhere else.

My friend had been beaten up by the Klan before he was tried on trumped up charges but had persisted.  The trumped up charge arose because although Mississippi had been compelled at the point where he was tried to integrate its public schools it had maintained segregated school buses.  My friend was following school buses to document this continuing segregation.  So he was charged first with reckless driving and then that was altered (with a ball point pen as the trial began) into violation of a state statute making it a crime to follow a school bus too closely.

A very historic thing happened for Mississippi as the trial approached and it was what then ensued in the trial itself and during its aftermath that the Zimmerman trial reminded me of.   As the trial of my friend approached the Movement had reached sufficient strength under remarkable leadership to a point where, for the first time since Reconstruction, blacks were in the venire pool and, as a result, blacks were on the jury.  In fact the jury was evenly split along color lines.  And the jury hung along racial lines.  This was a great day in American history.

It was what happened immediately after that Mississippi jury hung, while we were all, people of the Movement, black and white, still in the courtroom that came to mind as I heard the Zimmerman trial and heard its outcome.  After the jury hung in my friend’s trial, there was another trial that came on and went very quickly.  In it two young black men were on trial for poaching on a state game preserve.  To put it bluntly the two had been caught red-handed and were clearly guilty.  Yet in their case too the jury hung along racial lines.   At that point, Johnathan Shapiro, the lawyer who had represented my friend in his trial,(and who later became a very prominent civil rights lawyer of great acumen and reputation) leaned over from where he was standing and whispered loudly to all of us who were standing there: “Hopefully the third stage will be trial on the basis of the evidence.”

What was clear in the Zimmerman case was that the race hustlers, who have grown into a prosperous profession, wanted a verdict based on color as had happened all those years ago in Mississippi and yet, the Zimmerman case was decided based on the evidence.  I cannot say that we have yet reached that third stage that Jonathan Shapiro expressed a hope for all those years ago but we clearly have seen a sign that we can realistically hope to reach that stage.  To paraphrase from the words of Leviticus, we can hope to see cases decided not on the basis of who the parties are but rather on the basis of justice and truth, with all judge alike based on the evidence.  That would truly be a triumph for Civil Rights in the truest sense.