by Kia Corthron
“Seventeen was my guess.”
“Well you don’t look much older, but if my investigation is correct, you and I are the same age. Twenty-five?”
She apologizes again for missing the meeting with the boys. She had been with the case the last two weeks, and had promised she would be there yesterday afternoon to make the introductions. When she spoke to Eliot on the phone last night, she told him about running into unexpected traffic problems. She’d found a pay phone and tried to get the message to him through the correctional facility staff but, Well, you know how that goes. She accepts full responsibility: her seamless drive last week had left her cocky, when she should have known to have allowed more leeway for her travel from Chicago just as he had from Indianapolis. She had spent her early childhood here in Red Bank, a small Georgia municipality in the rolling hills of the middle of the state with near equal Negro and white residents, and had known extended family of the boys, so when an old friend called to tell her about the situation, she rushed here the next day to provide any assistance she could. Unfortunately she was twenty-four hours too late: the children had been given their disposition orders the preceding morning. They would be confined to the state colored reformatory until they were twenty-one.
“I went to the parents who were completely distraught, having tried several local lawyers to appeal, all of whom turned them down. There is one Negro attorney in the county who advised them free of charge as best he could, but in addition to his regular overextended load, he was now involved in a few local high-profile race cases—defending the young people arrested for trespassing after they peacefully tried to integrate the public library, defending the Negro who asked his white boss for back pay and is suddenly, mysteriously accused of company theft—well, the poor man just had his hands full.” Of the other lawyers in the area, some didn’t want to be involved with a case so controversial, others claimed to be in the business of trying to keep adults out of the penitentiary and would not deign to lower themselves to juvenile law, the most dire consequences of which being a stint in reform school, “as if it were a trip to the circus,” Didi remarks, shaking her head. The local NAACP was sympathetic, but the legal defense team of the national organization refused to get entangled in what it termed a “sex case.” So she had plunged into researching private firms. Two were in Chicago, and a schoolmate from Indianapolis had suggested Winston Douglas. Before making the call, she had investigated the institution scrupulously (but quickly—there is the deadline to file for appeal), and when the case was accepted pro bono and the junior attorney recommended, she had scrupulously investigated him. She carried no delusions about taking on the job herself given her lack of experience, and is well aware that the prejudices to which a judge and jury may be inclined against her race and gender would only be compounded by her youthful appearance. What she needs to do is to start heavy drinking and smoking so as to age herself, and she laughs heartily.
Eliot could have likewise undertaken a more thorough background check on her but the effort seemed somewhat redundant, given that over the phone she freely gave away all manner of information about herself without prompting. She is not yet tied to a firm. She stayed in the city after graduating from the University of Chicago Law School a year ago, waitressing to pay the rent while studying for the Illinois bar which she passed in the summer. But despite her impressive academic record, she has become painfully aware that gender discrimination in Negro law firms is yet one more hurdle to clear, and consequently maintains her full-time position in the diner. Eliot thinks of the time taken off from her job to travel South, the long-distance phone calls, the hotel fees, and wonders how she has managed to cover her legal expenses thus far.
“Cuz I’m rich!” She laughs. “Really! My father’s a tailor, he owns three shops in Atlanta. We moved there when I was nine. He’s semi-retired now but still raking in the dough. My mother gave private piano lessons, not because we needed the money, but because what else would a Southern bourgeois colored woman do?” Then why does she need to waitress? “I’m not being carried! I support myself. But I am not in denial about my safety net. If I get in trouble, they’ll wire cash. Worst case scenario I can always go home. I am well aware at the end of the day when we collect our tips, for me it’s a matter of personal pride. For the other girls it means survival, and a slow week the lack thereof.”
The waitress comes, and Eliot is assisted in his order by Didi. As she gives hers, he notices a girl from the teenage table standing at the jukebox, contemplating. The waitress walks away as the room is suddenly filled with the initial chords of Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say.” A responsive gasp of delight from the younger patrons.
“When Mrs. Williams went to visit Max last week, she signed in with a friend who she explained had driven her. The friend turned out to be a reporter who sneaked in a camera. When the pictures hit the international press, well, you know the rest. Mrs. Williams looked at me worried, knowing the outcry had agitated the governor, Had she done the right thing? ‘Yes!’ I assured her, ‘and we have only begun to fight. From here on out the boys will be properly represented.’”
Eliot nods, gazing at his utensils atop the red-checkered tablecloth. He wonders exactly how “properly” represented these innocent children will be by a twenty-something lawyer whose only previous experience has been divorces and accident claims.
“You’re going to have a team.” Didi picks up her briefcase, pulls out a file, and hands it to him. “Two local whites. Diana Rubin and I met in an oral argument seminar. Both of us from this hick town but going to segregated schools, we didn’t know each other till Chicago. She’s smart, graduated top five percent. She suggested a local white man, and a local white man is always useful in the South. Steven Netherton. You’ll meet them both this afternoon.”
She sighs. “Juvenile justice. It rang some distant law school bell, but the system is so preposterous I didn’t really grasp it until this crash course in firsthand experience. When young offenders’ law came about in the eighteenth century, the idea was that the state would act as parens patriae, a stand-in parent, that no longer would a small child be imprisoned with grown men, hardened criminals. All well and good, but the trade-off was the state took away the youngster’s due process. No right to counsel, well. If Max and Jordan’s families had had the financial means and a reasonable amount of time maybe, but the boys were held incommunicado the first six days, not even their mothers could see them, let alone an attorney. You knew that.”
“My boss told me.”
“And on the seventh day, the parents were called in just long enough for Judge Sawyer to sentence away the boys’ childhood. ‘Disposition orders’ in the delicate parlance of the juvenile court, as if the confinement of a human being for well over a decade were not a sentence but rather a father telling his child to go to his room until he has grown a beard. So a: no attorney, b: the case is based on unsworn hearsay testimony, that I had to drag out of the probation officer who, believe it or not, is considered the child’s advocate, which brings me to c: There’s no written record of the proceedings! Perfectly legal for a juvenile hearing, apparently we’re lucky to have been apprised of any charges as they could just as well have claimed ‘The judge deems the boys delinquent,’ oh there’s specificity, try and appeal that! And this is the treatment the white youth face. Multiply that by the fact that these are Negro boys, the victims so-called, white girls. The hysteria! Crime of the Century, my God. They burned crosses in the yards of the boys’ families every night until the judge’s decision.”
She takes a sip of water, then sets her glass down with a hint of force. “So. Let us talk strategy. Fortunately you will be appealing to a different court and a panel of three new judges in Atlanta. One place you might start: The parents had no idea what was going on with their little boys after the arrests, every day they came to the police station begging to see their sons and were refused. These circumstances obviously precluded t
he opportunity for them to secure an attorney. Another thing. While most local people couldn’t give a fig about international opinion, the brouhaha does seem to have unnerved the governor, there’s always the possibility of a pardon. Meanwhile, Diana and I consulted a former professor in Chicago. On his advice she’s quietly speaking to some highly regarded local citizens in the hopes that they can approach the judge for leniency. Further, and here’s where you can use the vagueness of the system to your advantage, in a year you can come back to Judge Sawyer to tell him how well the boys have been doing at the reformatory and to ask him for a modification in his disposition orders. I would hope—”
“A year?”
“Unfortunately our professor felt it would not be appropriate to approach the judge any sooner. At that time you can stress that the past twelve months have successfully rehabilitated the boys, while any longer could reverse that rehabilitation, as few would argue reformatories, conceived in good faith, have declined into vocational institutions for training criminals. Of course with any luck you will appear before the appellate court before that. And we will naturally hold out hope that all will go well there, yet we need to be realistic about—”
“Are you working for the prosecution?”
Didi looks at him, momentarily dumbfounded. Then sits back, her eyes narrowing. “No. I am not working for the prosecution. I am—”
“But you’re suggesting two children who played an innocent game stay locked up a year till we come crawling back to the judge pleading his mercy, his ‘modification’ of the disposition orders. What modification? Get them out at eighteen instead of twenty-one?”
“Mr. Campbell. I certainly would hope the modification would mean immediate release, I’d like—” She sighs, shakes her head. “While those poor little boys were being held incommunicado, being beaten by police everywhere but their faces knowing the children’s clothing would conceal the bruising elsewhere, while all this was happening on the inside, on the out there were nuts around here screaming, ‘Rape! Try em like adults! Set an example!’ The courts seriously bandied about the possibility a while, and do you know what the penalty is in the South for a black man convicted of raping a white woman?” Eliot stares at her, his silence severe. “It is an appeal, Mr. Campbell. There is no room for challenging the law’s morality or lack thereof, an appeal as you know is about examining procedure or interpretation of the law, so it would be in the boys’ best interests for you to grasp, not to condone but to grasp, the mind-set that resulted in those children’s confinement. Otherwise I’m afraid you will find yourself skipping from landmine to landmine in Dixie.”
“I don’t need to take a course in the peculiar practices of the Deep South, in the twenty-four hours I’ve been here I’ve already worn my shoes out stepping off the damn sidewalk for whites.”
“Good. Because like it or not, as far as that judge is concerned the boys are guilty. And the appellate judges you’ll be facing will be just as Georgia as Sawyer. Max and Jordan did kiss those little white girls, which the state, in accurately representing its white constituency I would submit, has deemed the toddler equivalent of rape, and feels exceptionally charitable in its grudging reduction of the charges to seduction, assault, and lewdness.”
“Those kids can’t even spell that, let alone know what it means.”
“According to the Code of Georgia, seduction—”
“I know what it means! I was musing on the insanity to apply it to a second grader.”
“No argument here.”
“Even at the outstretches of anyone’s imagination, that seven- and nine-year-olds would understand what seduction is, it was instigated by the girl.”
“That’s according to Jordan and Max. According to the probation officer who spoke to Ginny’s father who spoke to Ginny and that’s as close to an affidavit as you’re going to get, Jordan started it. At any rate, the officer claims while in custody the boys confessed that they did all the kissing, not the girls.”
“Oh you mean in between getting slugged by a couple of two-hundred-pound cops?”
“I presume before the beatings. Those big white policemen would have made those helpless little Negro boys aware in no uncertain terms that things would go easiest on them if they confessed. And after easily securing those confessions, then they would have pummeled them. But try proving any of that to the judges.”
“Confession or no it was clearly consensual, no evidence of force.”
“Seduction needn’t involve force. And consensual? I wouldn’t advise it. Negro males and white females, you’re nudging the miscegenation laws right there.”
“Again I would like to ask, are you representing those little boys or the state.”
“And I would like to ask how you plan to approach the appeal.”
“I never said anything about appeal.”
She frowns. “Well we can’t motion for acquittal. Sawyer will say there was no trial and therefore no conviction to acquit, he merely disposed the children as is consistent with the juvenile court. Are you suggesting a new trial? Again we cannot motion for a new trial when technically there was no first—”
“Habeas.”
Didi stares at him, stunned. Then abruptly breaks into laughter. Then abruptly stops laughing. “You can’t be serious,” she says because she sees that he is.
“This whole thing is ludricous, I’m getting it thrown out and having those little boys released pronto.”
“A habeas corpus.”
He stares at her. She chuckles. “You’ve rather flabbergasted me, Mr. Campbell. I did not come prepared to consider such a radical plan of action. Especially as a court would never consider granting a writ, the Great Writ no less, until all other avenues have been exhausted. You think they would overlook the fact that you’ve completely circumvented the appeals process?”
“You just elaborated at length upon the fact that there are no court records, and sans court records an appeal, an investigation into whether procedures were administered properly, is impossible, so it would appear the extraordinary remedy of habeas is applicable here.”
She leans forward, elbow on table, chin in fist. “A habeas begins at the same court level as the original hearing.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And are you also aware that in this small town, in this small county there is no separate juvenile judge? Sawyer was pulled from the two men representing the Superior Court. That means when you file your habeas there’s a fifty-fifty chance it will go right back to him.”
Now it’s Eliot who is taken aback. He considers this latest information before countering. “With a habeas I can introduce new evidence, something I could not do with an appeal. Habeas I can start from scratch, maybe Sawyer’d see reason since this time there would actually be a defense lawyer in the picture to present reasoning for him to see.”
“And all the while we’re waiting to see if the habeas is granted, the clock is running out on our chance to file for appeal and guarantee new judges.”
“A writ’s heard quicker. If it’s granted, the boys won’t be lingering in the kiddie state pen a year or three waiting for an appeal.”
“And if you’re granted the writ and the judge still doesn’t buy it.”
“Then I appeal the habeas. To the state appellate. And if that doesn’t work to the state supreme court, and if that doesn’t work to the U.S. Supreme Court did I say something funny? You think this case is funny?”
“Oh no, I don’t think the case is funny, Mr. Campbell, if I was smiling in any dubious fashion I wasn’t making fun of the case, I was making fun of you.”
“I did not drive six hundred miles through the damn Bible Belt just to try and appeal phantom proceedings, to play kangaroo court!”
“That’s the point, Mr. Campbell, you did come down here, you aren’t from here.” She falls back against her chair. “Kangaroo cou
rt!” She laughs again. Eliot’s silent breathing is slow and heavy. “Well maybe it’s fortunate you weren’t around for the original hearing. Flaunting all your Northern values might have had half the white citizenry ready to commission the design of a tot-size electric chair.”
“Don’t give me that naïve Yankee crap! I grew up below the Mason-Dixon, damn Jim Crow town.”
“Sweetie, South Carolinians call North Carolinians ‘Yankee’ so you haven’t exactly pulled out your Dixie credentials with Maryland.”
He is caught unawares. “You did do your research on me.” She smiles. He sighs, sits back. “Seven and nine years old, no attorney representation and their so-called confession holds up.”
“The Fifth doesn’t apply to children. Nor the Fourteenth, nor any of the rest.” She caresses her flowered linen napkin between her thumb and pointer. “When I said they had no visitors their six days in jail, that was a slight exaggeration. Apparently on the third night two local Ku Kluxers in full regalia entered their cell, terrorizing them. Just a prank, good ole boy fun.”
“When I go back to Sawyer on hands and knees as you have counseled, perhaps I can use that little anecdote to clarify that the boys have been most ‘rehabilitated.’”
“I grew up here, Mr. Campbell! A child of Red Bank, a Georgia girl till college. If you believe I am thrilled about any of what I have suggested to you, you are sorely mistaken about me, about Southern Negroes. There are certain mores that are untouchable, chief among those being the preservation of white womanhood, and white womanhood starts when a white woman is born. Those innocent little boys walked into a lion’s den they knew nothing about. It’s done and cannot be undone, that’s the tragedy. I don’t want to exacerbate it by leaving their fate from here on out in the hands of self-righteous adults who prioritize some utopian ideal over Southern reality.” His hard eyes turn to the floor. “I’ve noticed your penchant for the first-person singular. Do you plan then to go it alone, without a team?”
