The lawyers for the Duke players would have never consented to the interview without CBS’s 60 Minutes having approached them with a scam to do a hit on a Black, female, rape victim. The two hit men were the program’s Ed Bradley and Duke law professor James Coleman. This is the historic role of Black men.
(Alton Maddox Jr. says we must stand up for Black rape victims).
Before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, statutory law immunized any white man from prosecution for raping a female of African ancestry.
After the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, customary law now shields white men from rape convictions. Thus, in four hundred years, no white man has ever gone to prison in this country for raping a woman of African ancestry.
Every year, thousands of rapes go unresolved. Women are afraid to file rape complaints. In four hundred years, only one Black man has ever taken a singularly, well-publicized, public and uncompromising stance against the rape of a Black female. He was permanently suspended from the practice of law by whites and ostracized by Blacks.
No Black leader Christian, Muslim or Jew would join him in a fight to the finish. Three leaders came to the Brawley family and, afterwards, ran for the tall grass. The rape of Black women, historically, is the white man’s business. See, for example, President Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hennings.
Six white men raped Mrs. Recy Taylor outside of Abbeville, AL on September 3, 1944. Five months later, a white man from New York found six hygienic protectives on a white man’s private property, the crime scene. This finding confirmed the rape but her own Black people turned on her. Mrs. Taylor became disillusioned and went into exile.
In a criminal case, there are three telltale signs that a defendant’s action is orchestrated: (1) when a defendant appears before a grand jury without immunity and (2) when a defendant seeks a bench trial. In the same mode, a defendant who consents to a televised interview before trial knows that the interview is a puff piece.
This staged interview of the Duke defendants, designed to affect the outcome of a trial, is far more egregious than Janet Jackson showing her breast. The FCC jumped all over Jackson and CBS by initiating a sua sponte prosecution. Jackson exhibition of her breast in a porn-crazed nation is not exactly the same as three Duke University lacrosse players raping a Black woman.
The lawyers for the Duke players would have never consented to the interview without CBS’s 60 Minutes having approached them with a scam to do a hit on a Black, female, rape victim. The two hit men were the program’s Ed Bradley and Duke law professor James Coleman. This is the historic role of Black men. See Celia, the Slave.
Bradley fed the white defendants a steady diet of leading questions and asked Coleman to invade the province of the judge in distorting the rules of eyewitness identification. A judge, and not Coleman, will decide if the photo array and lineup were unnecessarily and prejudicially suggestive, given all of the circumstances in the case.
This determination will be made in a Wade hearing. Thus, Coleman conclusion is unfounded. Coleman’s chief complaint is that the prosecution failed to use fillers. No appellate court has ever ruled that the absence of fillers in a lineup or photo array is, per se, a due process violation.
I find it interesting that neither Bradley nor Coleman could find his tongue when the Central Park jogger defendants were being railroaded in Manhattan Supreme Court. DNA had exonerated the youth and the white, complaining witness failed to identify any of them.
Five young men were sent to prison for fitting a stereotype. More evidence exists in the Duke case than in the Central Park jogger case. Yet, no one complained when the youth had to stand trial. Four of the attorneys refused to ask the complaining witness any questions. All of the attorneys treated her with great deference.
While I was in the Central Park jogger case, I successfully steered my client away from a rape conviction. Lawyers were afraid to speak out except Colin Moore. I received licks from both Black leaders and the white media, in 1989, for describing the case as a hoax. Where was 60 Minutes?
During the height of the Tawana Brawley case, United African Movement conducted massive demonstrations in front of CBS headquarters on 57th Street in Manhattan every Wednesday evening. CBS had falsely claimed that Tawana Brawley hung out in a drug-infested area of Newburgh, NY and suggested that she was a prostitute and a crack addict.
The hit team included Mike Taibbi and a Black, female producer. Like in the Duke case, CBS was creating prejudicial pre-trial publicity. The common goal was the protection of politically connected white rapists. Tawana was actually a solid B student and a popular cheerleader in Wappinger Falls, NY. Despite media assaults, Tawana would later matriculate at Howard University.
While CBS was engaged in shenanigans, New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams was declaring, in the media, that no white man would be prosecuted for the statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old, Black female. Instead, his legal weapons were trained on her male advisors. They were detouring from the historic role of Black men.
If Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong raised the white flag tomorrow, he would have already showed up Abrams. This is the first time in four hundred years that a white prosecutor has accorded to a Black female legal protections which are routinely given to white females allegedly victimized by Black rapists.
In the state-sponsored murder of Michael Stewart and the racially motivated murder of Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, Abrams and Gov. Mario Cuomo viewed me as the architect of the human rights movement in New York. After having failed to send me to prison, in 1985, New York had to disbar me to put Blacks back under the leadership of Judas goats. Brawley was the conduit.
This country is a timocracy and Blacks must never enjoy either legal or political representation. Like the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, attorney Lynne Stewart violated this rule by practicing non-negotiability. She took her job seriously but, as a white person, she probably never envisioned her current plight. Black lawyers know better.
Stewart has lost her law license for vigorously representing imprisoned Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. I witnessed court officers in Brooklyn beat up William Kunstler for representing Davis (Adam Abdul Hakim) in a Bronx courtroom. Afterwards, Kunstler was arrested. Stewart was Kunstler’s co-counsel. She had already placed her legal career on a banana peel.
When Stewart was sentenced on October 17 for providing material support to terrorists, U.S. District Court Judge John Koetl commendably described Stewart as a lawyer to the poor and unpopular. She is an exception. Lawyers are trained to maintain the status quo.
Koetl added, It is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Stewart performed a public service not only to the court but to the nation. Instead of receiving the anticipated thirty years, she received a prison sentence of only twenty-eight months. Her representation of the poor and the unpopular were considered mitigating factors.
When I was permanently suspended from the practice of law, more than a decade ago, the Brooklyn Appeals Court pointed out Maddox leadership contributions to the African-American community, his involvement in civil rights causes and the numerous character witnesses that were presented on his behalf.
Instead of dismissing Abrams bogus disciplinary complaint, this intermediate appellate court proceeded to permanently suspend me from the practice of law. My pro bono representation of the poor and the unpopular were considered as aggravating factors. This is a double standard.
If I had actually committed a crime or violated a disciplinary rule, my current residence would probably be in Potter’s Field. The perennial representation of the poor and the unpopular is reserved, in only exceptional circumstances, for white lawyers.
When Justice Thurgood Marshall was an NAACP lawyer, he received a regular paycheck. Most civil rights lawyers in the South received funds from foundations. No white lawyer, in American jurisprudence, has ever approached my pro bono efforts.
Steven Pagones was an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County when Tawana Brawley was kidnapped and raped in November 1987. The FBI, Dutchess County Judge Judith Hillary and the Dutchess County district attorney’s office fingered Pagones as a suspect in January 1988.
Their findings were secretly transmitted to Abrams and Cuomo who, subsequently, publicly announced the absence of a suspect in March 1988. The public believed them. When I corrected them by pointing to Pagones, World War Three erupted.
Pagones criminal status was a state secret when I publicly fingered him in March 1988. I was treated like Lewis Scooter Libby in Plamegate. I had leaked a state secret. This leak put a wrinkle in the state orchestrated cover-up. New York believed that I owed a duty to protect the rapists.
Harry Crist, Jr. was a white police officer. Within ninety-six hours after Tawana was found on November 28, 1987, Crist was murdered. Tawana also fingered him. Abrams claimed that it was a suicide and any criminal investigation of his death was unwarranted.
The lack of a statute of limitations for murder explains my permanent suspension.
Abrams suppressed the autopsy report for a decade. When it finally surfaced, at the defamation trial, the autopsy report and the pathologist testimony showed that Abrams had not only covered up a crime to protect the murders but that I had been falsely accused and wrongfully suspended from the practice of law.
Without support from the Black community, the political establishment decided that I could still be iced. The courts have denied me a hearing on prosecutorial misconduct and newly discovered evidence. This hearing is routinely given to evicted tenants and imprisoned defendants, among others, to avoid a miscarriage of justice. It would expose Cuomo and Abrams.
My experience in the Brawley case has shown me that Blacks are gullible and are ready to believe any false allegations made by a white person or the white media. The Duke rape case will never be believed because Blacks were already clamoring for some negative information to walk away from its rape victim like Blacks did in the rape of Tawana Brawley and Mrs. Recy Taylor.
In the meantime, Blacks are gearing up to make New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer the next governor even though he refuses to release the Brawley files and is endorsing Andrew Cuomo, as state attorney general, to continue to cover up what his father, Gov. Cuomo, initiated in 1988. If Brawley is a hoax, what is New York hiding?
Blacks are now arguing that no corroborating evidence exists to support the Black female accusations in the Duke rape case. No corroborating evidence existed to support the incriminating statements of the youth in the Central Park jogger case. Yet, they were convicted of rape.
The law requires that corroborating evidence must exist to support an incriminating statement by an accused but the law requires no corroborating evidence to support the testimony of a complaining witness. A white woman uncorroborated testimony has always been sufficient to send a Black man to the gallows.
Blacks are turning the law on its head to accommodate white supremacy. We are our own worst enemies. The bottom line is that Blacks are opposed to any person who seeks to destroy plantation slavery. Blacks are still searching for a back door.
Instead of being a hero, D.A. Mike Nifong will become a goat and Blacks will be leading the charge against him along with Bradley and Coleman. If we had a real Black leader, Nifong would be a footnote. Blacks are not ready for prime time. Our value system still leads us to punish a good Samaritan and reward a Spitzer and a Cuomo.
Attorney Chokwe Lumumba was given a six-month suspension for talking back to a white judge. The Mississippi Supreme Court is now requiring him to prove that he has been rehabilitated. He was supposed to have been reinstated to the practice of law in April 2006. He is still able to practice law in Michigan. His e-mail address is [email protected].
An organized effort is afoot to punish me for my pro bono writings. I have been summoned to appear in the Grievance Committee for the Second & Eleventh Judicial Districts, Renaissance Plaza, 335 Adams Street, Suite 2400, Brooklyn, NY on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. for a disbarment hearing.
UAM’s weekly forum will continue November 1, 2006 at the Elks Plaza, 1068 Fulton Street (nr. Classon Ave.) in Brooklyn in a show of Black solidarity before November 7. Take the A train to Franklin Avenue. UAM will host Steve Cokely Wednesday, November 15. For more information call UAM, 718-834-9034. See: Grievance Complaint at: www.reinstatealtonmaddox.com
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