Due Process

by Scott Pratt

  “They moved her to another foster home, and she seemed to be getting along all right until she had an incident at school. She began reporting that two black boys were sexually assaulting her. There were multiple reports documented in the school’s files. The school administration either didn’t want to listen to her because of her past or they wanted to keep these two guys out of trouble. One was a football player and the other a basketball player. She wound up bringing a butcher knife to school and when the basketball player grabbed her breasts one day, she slashed his arm so badly he almost bled to death. They charged her with aggravated assault, adjudicated her to be delinquent, and shipped her off to Nashville until her eighteenth birthday. She came back here, started stripping and prostituting herself, and has had a couple of kids. Along the way, she earned a GED, an associate’s degree, and had enrolled at ETSU this semester. I’m guessing she’ll drop out. Her declared major is psychology.”

  As I listened to Stony describe the tortured life of this young woman, my mind wandered a little. I was thinking about how the world could be so random and cruel. She was born with physical beauty, something so many long for, and look what it had cost her. It had cost her a chance of having a normal, happy life. Had she not been born into poverty, had her parents stayed together, had her step father not been a child molesting pervert, her life would have most likely been far different. Maybe at some point in the future she would be able to settle down, like Sarah, and put the demons behind her. But something told me that time would be far in the future for Sheila Elizabeth Self.

  “So, she has a motive to lie about being raped by black men,” I said. “She probably hates black men.”

  “My guess is that she hates all men.”

  I nodded. “Can’t say as I blame her.”

  Stony was able to provide us with a copy of the results of her tox screen from the hospital the night she was arrested.

  “How did you get this?” I said.

  “That’s none of your business. I just thought you might like to have it.”

  “Absolutely. Thank you. Well, I guess this explains at least part of the behavior. Ecstasy and alcohol? Powerful combination, but we need the blood results from the lab. I managed to get an order from Judge Neese to get a sample from the lab the cops sent it to. Normally, since Kevin hasn’t been charged, I wouldn’t have been able to get it, but since the lab discards the samples after thirty days, she made an exception. We should be getting the results soon.”

  “Ms. Self has been talking quite frequently to Investigator Riddle,” Stony said. “I think he’s coaching her. He showed her a lineup on August twenty-ninth and she picked out three black football players, one of whom is your client. Riddle only showed her six photos, all of them black ETSU football players. I think there might be a secret recording of it.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I have friends inside the department, lots of them, and many of them aren’t too happy with the way Riddle is conducting this investigation. They don’t like Riddle personally, either. They think he’s a racist. Let’s leave it at that for now. If I have to tell you more later, I will.”

  “Was this secret recording audio or video or both?” I said.

  “I’ve been led to believe it contains both.”

  “Can you get your hands on a copy?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “What else?” I said, looking at Jack.

  “We have some cell phone videos of the party,” he said. “Kevin gave us some names, and we hit pay dirt on one of them. The video shows her showing up, disappearing into the bathroom for about eight minutes, the dance that wasn’t a dance, the argument, and it shows her stumbling out the door. She didn’t even go into the bathroom after the dance.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said.

  Jack was smiling.

  “It’ll go a long way toward discrediting everything she said.”

  “I talked to Erlene Barlowe, and no, Jack, I didn’t see anybody stripping while I was there. I did see more of Erlene’s breasts than I cared to, but that’s just the way it goes with Erlene. She wasn’t much help. She owns AAA Escort Service, though, and she’s on Sheila Self’s side. Erlene is extremely protective of her girls. She’s almost a surrogate mother to a lot of them, although being a semi-pimp doesn’t exactly go along with being a mother.”

  “Does Erlene think she was raped?”

  “She says she does, but I don’t know how sincere she was about it.”

  “What the hell is going on here, Dad?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to go see Mike Armstrong and try to stop this before it gets any worse. I don’t see how it’s possible there will be DNA evidence if she never even went into the bathroom after the dance. Mike needs to shut this down.”

  “Can Jack and I go with you?” Charlie said.

  “Have you ever had a one-on-one with Mike Armstrong?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Neither have I. I’ve talked to him a couple of times, but he’s only been the D.A. for six months, and I haven’t had a reason to meet with him one-on-one. Let’s just go make a party out of it.”

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5

  In a small, white block building that formerly served as a Pentecostal Church off Buck Mountain Road in the mountains of Carter County, Tennessee, Garrett Brown gathered with eight other men at nine o’clock at night. All but three of the men were locals from Carter County. They were members of the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. One was Brown’s closest friend, another his younger brother, and two were his cousins. One of those cousins was an investigator with the Johnson City Police Department named Bo Riddle. The other two outsiders were also brothers. They hailed from Pulaski, Tennessee, a town of about 8,000 citizens located approximately a hundred miles south of Nashville and thirty miles north of the Alabama state line. Pulaski was also the home of the Ku Klux Klan, and the two men who were visiting were leaders in what was now known as The Knight’s Party.

  Garrett Brown had contacted Josiah and Tobias Gibson after reading the stories in the Johnson City and Elizabethton newspapers regarding the alleged sexual assault of a white woman by at least one, and possibly more, black football players from ETSU. He’d expected to see men dressed like soldiers walk through the door. Instead, these two looked like lawyers in their navy-blue suits and white button-down shirts.

  A thunderstorm had rolled across the mountains, and rain was pounding on the roof. An occasional crack of thunder made the small building shudder. Josiah Gibson, who was the older of the two brothers, stood and prayed to open the meeting. He was a small man, almost frail, with pale skin and a thin mustache above his upper lip. When he was finished praying, he said, “Brother Brown, we appreciate your invitation to visit with you and to pray about the situation in which we find ourselves. We also appreciate the attendance of the other brothers you’ve gathered. Our country is being taken from us, and we have to find a way to stop it. The constant growth of the immigrant population, coupled with the energizing of the Black Lives Matter movement, has slowly been pushing the white agenda to the side in the halls of our politicians. Before long, we’ll be pushed all the way out of the building. We must fight back through education and spreading our message to the masses. We must stop the advancement of the liberal agenda. We have to beat them at their own game.”

  “Forgive me, Brother Gibson,” Garrett Brown said, “but I called you because we have a crisis on our hands.” Brown was a bear of a man, a logger by trade, who wore a red flannel shirt, blue jeans and boots. His hands were massive and calloused. His hair was long, brown and greasy beneath a John Deere cap, and he’d grown a long, thick, bushy beard. “It’s very possible that a young white woman was raped by one, possibly more, niggers who play football for the university in Johnson City. If that happened, and we should know more very soon, then we’re not interested in spreading literature or educating anyone. We’re interested only in vengeance, the kind that will get the attenti
on of every black son of a bitch in this country.”

  “You’re looking for a war, Brother Brown?” Gibson said.

  “You’re damned right I am,” Brown said, his voice rising. “The climate is right. With all of the militant niggers out there feeling empowered by the liberal agenda that’s been stuffed down our throats for the past eight years, I think they’ll react violently if we lynch one of these football players and leave him hanging in a public place. The fight will be on, and white America is ready. I’ve been proud to be an American nearly all of my life. But in the past eight years, with that monkey in the white house, we’ve been neutered. At least, thank God, he wasn’t able to take our guns. We’re armed to the teeth and ready for what’s coming. I say we light a match to this powder keg we have right here under our noses. They think they sent a message in Ferguson? Wait until they see what kind of message they get from us when this steps off.”

  “You really think you can start a race war, Brother Brown? Here? Over this incident? My understanding is that the girl is a stripper and may be a prostitute as well.”

  “So? What difference does that make? She’s white, they’re black, they raped her, and that’s all that matters.”

  “You’re expecting black militant groups to gather here, armed, and start a shootout with white people?”

  “We’ll hold rallies in support of the lynching. I’ll send them emails and post on their websites. That’ll bring them out of the woodwork. They’re all over the country now: The Nation of Islam, The New Black Panther Party, All Eyes on Egipt Bookstore, Israel United in Christ. They’ll come, and they’ll be itching to fight. We’ll be itching to accommodate them. We have brothers all over Northeast Tennessee, chapters here and in Erwin and in Hampton and in Church Hill, and I have contacts all over the south.”

  “And you believe the government will let this happen?”

  “To hell with the government. They’ve been part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

  “If you start a shooting war, Brother Brown, the police will shoot, too. The governor may call in the National Guard. If it gets bad enough, I wouldn’t be surprised to see soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg or the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell come rolling in.”

  “White American soldiers are not going to fire on white patriots,” Brown said. “Besides, it won’t come to that. We’ll kill so many of them before the soldiers get here that they’ll crawl back in their holes and never come out again, and we’ll disappear into thin air.”

  “After you bury your dead. What is it exactly you want from us?” Gibson said.

  “A promise that when the shooting starts, you’ll bring as many armed men as you can gather and come a running. We’ll need to overwhelm them.”

  Gibson looked at his brother, who hadn’t said a word during the entire exchange, and then looked back at Brown. He sighed deeply.

  “While I understand your frustration and your anger, and while I sympathize deeply with you, I’m afraid that lynching will only take us backwards. Starting a shooting war will only take us backwards. Violence is not the answer. This fight has to be won in the halls of our lawmakers and in the hearts and minds of our young people.”

  Brown was stunned. This was nothing like what he had expected.

  “So you’re just going to turn us down flat?” he said. “You’re not going to help?”

  “We’ll help,” Gibson said. “Just not in the way you’d like.”

  “Well, what do you think about that, fellas?” Brown said. “The men from the birthplace of the mighty Ku Klux Klan are pacifist pussies. You’re no better than traitors.”

  Brown pulled a long-barreled revolver from the small of his back and pointed it at Josiah Gibson’s head. The room went silent.

  “I’m going to give you and your mute brother ten seconds to get out of here,” Brown said. “And if I hear another word out of that pie hole of yours, I’ll shut it permanently.”

  The brothers scrambled to the door and disappeared into the storm.

  “That right there is exactly what I’ve been talking about,” Brown said to the others after the door had closed. “They’re the reason we’ve gotten to this point, the reason we’ve lost all of our power. Literature. Education. Hearts and minds. What a bunch of bullshit.”

  He looked around the room at his men.

  “I can count on you when the time comes, right?”

  Each man in the room nodded and murmured something affirmative.

  “That’s good, because if one of you decides you don’t have the stomach for what’s about to happen, you’re gonna meet Mr. Smith and Wesson, and the meeting won’t have a happy ending.”

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6

  Jack, Charlie and I walked into Mike Armstrong’s office at 9:00 a.m. sharp on Friday. He’d been reluctant to meet with us, but when I told him I had something important he needed to see, he finally relented.

  His office was a pig sty. It was dusty, there were boxes and files piled haphazardly all over the room. Nothing hung from the eggshell white walls, not even a law degree. The place smelled of stale coffee and there was an almost nauseating aroma emanating from a trash can next to his desk. It had to be some kind of rotting animal flesh. Unfinished chicken he’d eaten at his desk and thrown away, maybe? Whatever it was, I had to say something about it.

  “Something’s dead in here,” I said after I introduced Jack and Charlie and we all sat down.

  “Really? What do you mean?”

  “Do you have a problem with your sense of smell?” I said.

  “I have a condition called congenital anosmia. I was born without a sense of smell. That’s why I look like I’m starving to death. I can’t smell, so food doesn’t have the same taste for me that it does for others. I just don’t enjoy it.”

  “I think you didn’t enjoy some chicken or fish or cat food and you tossed it in that can,” I said. “Can I get it out of here?”

  “Sure, go ahead if it bothers you,” Armstrong said.

  I picked the can up and took it out to his secretary.

  “This stinks to high heaven,” I said.

  “I’m his secretary, not his maid,” she said.

  “Would you mind, please? We’re trying to have a meeting.”

  She gave me the stink eye, one that matched the odor emanating from the trash can, and jerked the can out of my hand. She plugged her nose and strutted away.

  I walked back in and sat down. Armstrong had a mole on his forehead that was extremely distracting, he was butt ugly, a totally unattractive political candidate, and yet somehow, he’d managed to get the county commission to appoint him to finish out Tanner Jarrett’s term when Tanner resigned and moved to Washington. I didn’t get it, but when it came to the behind-closed-doors workings of the Washington County Commission, a lot of things didn’t make sense.

  “I don’t have much time,” Armstrong said.

  “I’m sure you’re busy,” I said. “This won’t take long.”

  I asked Jack to take out his phone and play the video of Sheila Self’s arrival at the party, her performance, and her premature exit.

  “You’re about to play me a video?” Armstrong said.

  “It was taken by a witness who was at the party.”

  “You won’t get it in if we go to trial,” he said.

  “Why? The witness is willing to testify to what she saw and that she took the video herself. She’ll authenticate it. It’s admissible and it blows your entire case out of the water.”

  “I don’t want to see it,” Armstrong said.

  “Why not?” I said. “Don’t you want to know what really happened?”

  “I know what happened. I have a statement from my victim. We’ll soon have DNA evidence to back up her story.”

  True to form, that made me angry, and when I became angry, I wasn’t particularly given to diplomacy. I leaned forward and pointed at him.

  “You’ve screwed up is what you’ve done. You’ve been r
unning around talking to every reporter in the country, you’ve been on television, on the radio, in papers and magazines, and you’ve backed yourself into a corner. You don’t give a damn about the truth at this point. This is about saving face, getting these boys convicted, and getting yourself elected so you can feed at the taxpayer’s trough for another eight years.”

  “Get out,” Armstrong said. “All three of you, get out of my office. Now.”

  I stood and looked at Jack and Charlie. They both seemed calm, but I could tell they were also confused and angry.

  “If you don’t stop this charade, you’re going to wind up facing the ethics board,” I said. “I won’t call them, but somebody will. What I’m going to do is blow your case up and I’m going to make sure everybody knows what you and your skinhead investigator are doing.”

  He covered his ears with his hands. I couldn’t believe it. He actually put his hands over his ears like a five-year-old.

  “Are you kidding me?” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Next, he started singing, “Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out,” to the tune of “Heigh Ho” from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” It was one of the most bizarre displays of behavior I’d ever seen from a district attorney. Hell, it was one of the most bizarre displays of behavior I’d ever seen from anyone.