It’s no secret that the criminal justice system is a different beast depending on the color of your skin. Even in 2016, being black is as detrimental to a defendant’s case as whatever evidence the prosecutor presents to the jury.
North Carolina criminal defense attorney T. Greg Doucette is as astutely aware of the discrepancy as the general populous. The attorney, who also writes a legal blog, took to Twitter on Feb. 23 and bluntly offered his reflections on some of the more corrupted aspects of the American criminal justice system. In about 40 tweets, Doucette recalled a case in which he defended a 17-year-old black male charged with reckless driving, a Class 2 misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to 60 days in jail, a 12-month driver’s license suspension, and a fine of up to $1,000.
It’s best to read about what happened straight from the man defending the defendant.
Need to rant briefly. You've been forewarned.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
1. I get asked — often — if I hate police
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
2. I don't; I look at "police" generally like I look at teachers generally
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
3. When a teacher decides to rape a student, we don't demonize all teachers. Same w/ teachers who are woefully inept at teaching.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
4. But, at the same time, no sane person denies there are teacher-rapists and teachers who suck at their job
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
5. I view police the same; I'm willing to take a leap of faith and assume you're competent, until you prove otherwise
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
Allow me to interject for a moment, for attorney T. Greg Doucette just said something that should be clearly understood by everyone. Being aware of and mobilizing against acts of police brutality does not mean there is a “War on Cops.” The “War on Cops” has always been a flagrantly asinine talking point. While I’m not going to assume that 100% of the American populous does not have an anti-police sentiment, by and large, the reason why police action has been under scrutiny is because of certain police officers who abuse their authority and the capacity of their precinct.
No one has ever given a shit about Officer Friendly who writes parking tickets when he has to and is respectful to everyone he comes across. All the shits are given to cops like Eric Casebolt, the Georgia S.W.A.T. team that blew a whole in an infant’s chest with a stun grenade, and the North Port, Fla. K-9 unit.
6. Soooooo that brings me to court today
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
7. Client is a 17yo black male, "YBM" in defense lawyer parlance
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
8. My YBM client is charged with reckless driving to endanger, a very serious. He's terrified. Cried in my office explaining situation
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
9. Insisted he was just trying to avoid an animal that darted into the road, and swerved to the right
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
10. I pull the shuck, and read the officer's narrative of what happened:
"Neighbor saw driver doing donuts in street, nearly hit wife."…
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
11. Cont'd: "Skid marks show clear 360° circles. Driver claimed he was trying to avoid hitting cat."
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
12. Re-read that:
"clear
360°
circles"
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
13. Thankfully (how f*cking sad is it that "thankfully" is the appropriate word here?) his mom didn't trust the officer, and took pics
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
14. Which she kept, and sent to me
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
15. (Most of which were useless. Ppl take pictures of a lot of useless sh*t when they're terrified btw.)
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
16. The money shot: pic.twitter.com/9q1gSQa3mw
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
I’m no math wiz, but I don’t think the marks on that narrow residential road are “clear 360 degree circles.”
Again, I’m no math wiz, but those appear to be sharp angles indicative of someone trying to not run over a freakin’ cat!
Could someone even achieve “clear 360 degree circles” on a road that thin?
17. Now go back and re-re-read:
"clear
360°
circles"
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
18. What. The actual. F*ck.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
19. Do I hate police? No. I hate raging incompetent cowboys w/ badges financed by my tax money who clearly haven't had an eye exam recently
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
20. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
21. The DA was kind enough to dismiss the case without putting up a fight.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
22. My YBM client's family is out what they paid me. Client himself is traumatized. And basis for police mistrust gets a fresh exhibit.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
23. While the officer who (wrongfully) charged him — and pretty clearly lied on official court documents — will face -0- repercussions.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
24. This is what police brutality looks like. It's not just people having their rights violated and the sh*t kicked out of them.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
25. It's an innocent 17yo black kid trying to be a good human being and not running over a cat getting thrown headlong into our court system
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
26. It's having to come up with money you don't have, to defend yourself against charges that shouldn't have been filed
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
27. And recognizing that — but for photographs that someone had the foresight to take immediately — you'd have been convicted
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
28. Based solely on the word of a law enforcement officer who swore an oath to serve and protect who then lied to the court with impunity
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
The degree in which police officers commit perjury is hotly debated. In a 1996 Los Angeles Times article, then-San Jose Police Department chief Joseph D. McNamara said of police perjury, or “testilying”:
“Not many people took defense attorney Alan M. Dershowitz seriously when he charged that Los Angeles cops are taught to lie at the birth of their careers at the Police Academy. But as someone who spent 35 years wearing a police uniform, I’ve come to believe that hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement officers commit felony perjury every year testifying about drug arrests.
These are not cops who take bribes or commit other crimes. Other than routinely lying, they are law-abiding and dedicated. They don’t feel lying under oath is wrong because politicians tell them they are engaged in a “holy war” fighting evil. Then, too, the “enemy” these mostly white cops are testifying against are poor blacks and Latinos.”
If cops lie about drugs, who can rightly say they don’t lie about other things as well?
It’s also important to take a look at some police actions for what they are: “noble-cause corruption.” In Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice, attorney and professor Joycelyn M. Pollock cites a 2000 book by John P. Crank and Michael A. Caldero titled Police Ethics: The Corruption of Noble Cause, noting “the noble cause of police officers is ‘a profound moral commitment to make the world a safer place to live.'” Pollock elaborates by stating that “officers will do what it takes to get an offender off the street, even if it means employing a ‘magic pencil’ — that is, making up facts on an affidavit to justify a warrant or to establish probable cause for arrests.”
Now, throw everything in a blender. A black 17-year-old behind the wheel of a car, some trademark North Carolinian prejudices, A-Type personality police officers fighting a “noble cause,” and some skid marks on the road and you have a cocktail that tastes like a miscarriage of justice.
29. The State doesn't care of course. For every one case dismissed, hundreds more plead guilty. Court costs are $188+ apiece
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
30. A day's worth of traffic cases can finance an ADA's salary for a year. Likewise for a clerk or a judge.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
31. Guess what that means for legislators? They can cut preexisting court funding and put it somewhere where it'll buy them more votes
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
32. So you've got a court system that ends up somehow being underfunded despite charging a sh*tload of money for minor offenses…
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
33. Police routing more and more people (predominantly young and black) into the court system, patting themselves on the back
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
34. (For protecting us from eeeeeevil 17yo YBMs trying not to hit cats while driving)
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
35. While the politicians fiddle as their constituents burn, because people naively assume things like this would never happen
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
36. Welcome to the clusterf*ck that is our criminal justice system. I filed to run for the State Senate precisely b/c of this bullsh*t.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
37. It doesn't matter if you put an R or a D or a U beside your name — this is wrong.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
38. Sorry for taking up your TL. For reasons I don't understand, I'm *still* in disbelief that this sh*t *still* happens, when I know better
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
Criminal defense attorney T. Greg Doucette hit the nail on the head as far as how jacked the system is. We all know that the American criminal justice system is more akin to a Ford Edsel than a well-oiled machine. This isn’t to say that there aren’t times when the process works as it should and justice wins the day, but the flaws in the criminal justice system are well-studied, pretty obvious, and happen with stunning regularity.
But we depend on police for our safety, so society has a favorable bias when it comes to cops. For example, justifications for deadly force are all over the place and any guidelines that exist are, by and large, poorly enforced. While the public gets up in arms when police officers kill an unarmed individual, or kill anyone under sketchy circumstances, it appears that police departments, the very institutions that have taken oaths to protect and serve their people, are largely unconcerned. Ethics, if any, appear to be different depending on where they’re located, who’s on patrol, and shit, the temperature, maybe.
This is why a 12-year-old black boy with an airsoft gun in Cleveland, Ohio is killed by police officers just after their squad car comes to a stop and a Tennessee woman wearing body armor while shooting at passersby and police is taken in peacefully and without injury. This is why a young black man in Ohio — an “open carry” state — gets lit up by police while walking through a Wal-Mart with an airsoft rifle, but it’s perfectly acceptable for sketchy-looking white people to walk into a Dallas, Texas Chipotle restaurant like they’re grabbing a burrito in Fallujah.
The differences in these cases are that the people who were killed, Tamir Rice and John Crawford III, should not have been killed. But they were… because they were black. The criminal justice system is a different beast when you’re black and being black is almost like a charge in itself, compounding the additional charges in hundreds of thousands of dockets in thousands of jurisdictions from Boston to Los Angeles and everywhere in between, resulting in a disproportionate inmate population, a disproportionate subjection to poverty, and disproportionate disenfranchisement that over time cripples the desire to see change as broken spirits repeat “what’s the point?”
Police brutality doesn’t require a “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative or a hashtag or a bullet lodged in a vital organ or an assortment of billy-clubs cracking skulls. As criminal defense attorney T. Greg Docuette said above, police brutality also manifests as a police officer who knowingly commits perjury with the intention of putting a black 17-year-old male behind bars and kicking down the first domino in a vicious cycle that sees his life, and the lives of those around him, steadily screwed over by every system the United States has in place.
It’s a life sentence for a first offense and it happens all the time. Yet, we’re still stunned every time we hear about it.
39. I'm now going to clog my arteries with Bojangles in the hope/prayer that I won't still be flamingly pissed after lunch.
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
40. "clear 360° circles" ?
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) February 23, 2016
Featured image is from the Open Clip Art Library, via Wikimedia Commons, available under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.