Two Wrongs

Now comes the County Prosecutor, Bill Mason, defending himself against charges he took his eye off the ball in terms of the corruption flourishing all around him in the county. His response, in part, goes something like, “Hey, this is unfair, you guys in the media and at the law schools didn’t catch it or say anything about it either!” While I never thought I’d be defending Mason or any other prosecutor, to some degree he’s right: No watchdogs — public or private — were holding his feet to the fire or looking over his shoulder.

If, as Mason says, the corruption was hard to spot, part of the answer has to be that his attention was focused elsewhere. There’s only so many hours in a day, and when a good portion of them are spent merely beefing up prosecutorial numbers by focusing on petty drug cases, scant time remains to investigate suspected serious wrongdoing by friends, family, and party faithfuls.

However, for one of the wise old men of great stature in the local legal profession to suddenly (at the behest of local media) rouse out of his somnolence to spot the 800 pound gorilla of Mason’s alleged malfeasance begs the question of how could he not have spotted the 1000 pound gorilla of the unjust — virtually to the point of corrupt when dealing with minorities — county criminal justice system the Prosecutor’s Office was part of? How could the media not spot it? When it was revealed that pretext police stops of minorities are routinely engaged in (if only — or chiefly — persons of color are stopped and searched for drugs, of course you’re going to have seven times as many blacks in prison as whites) where were the great legal minds of Cuyahoga County saying this practice is wrong? Curiously silent.

When Rev. Marvin McMickle and retired Muny Court Judge C. Ellen Connally both (after serving as Grand Jury forepersons) wrote scathing reports of how unjust and tainted they found the entire process to be toward minorities … where were the great legal minds of Cuyahoga County saying the process needs to be fixed? Missing in action.

When Courts were directed to keep records of how persons of color are treated when they appear before the Bar of Justice … and they totally ignored the Supreme Court because they didn’t want to be embarrassed by the inequalities such recordkeeping would reveal … where were the great legal minds of Cuyahoga County saying we can’t allow a two-tiered system of justice? Nowhere to be found.

When the new county charter was being crafted and the opportunity existed to fix the deeply flawed process by which we elect judges to the Common Pleas bench (a move that would assist in insuring fairness for all who appear before Lady Justice), again, where were the great legal minds of Cuyahoga County saying that you can’t fix one part of a flawed system and leave another part broken? Standing mute.

There’s an old saying: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” And, while Bill Mason certainly is wrong if indeed he overlooked corruption in the county, his accusers — senior members of the county’s legal profession — just as certainly are in no position to criticize the prosecutor for what they say amounts to “willful blindness,” not when they’ve engaged in the exact same behavior for years.

These old codgers, who have stood silently by and allowed our criminal justice system to turn into a mockery under their watch need to climb back up their Ivory Towers, nod back off, and dream warm and fuzzy dreams of a form of justice that never was … at least not for black folks. How could Court reform have been left off the table, and, more importantly, how could these legal elders have allowed it to happen?

There’s another old saying … regarding people in glass houses throwing stones. All of the dollars involved in the county corruption probe probably come to a couple a million. Break that figure down over ten years, and divide that number by the number of county residents, and it comes to probably less than 39 cents per resident per year. Nonetheless, collectively we’re screaming louder than Lil’ Richard singing “Tutti-Frutti.”

Now, compare that 39 cents to the costs minority families have had to endure due to our flawed and unfair justice system. There really is no comparison, yet we’ll fix one flawed county system and leave the other alone, and still have the temerity to call it “reform.”

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.

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