Black in today’s Georgia
Jun 8th, 2007 by Paul Moor
All my long life, probably nothing has so consistently galvanized me as injustice, of whatever kind. As the son of two almost lifelong Mississippians (with, to cite only example, a first cousin - a high-school Principal - who once, when I mentioned the Supreme Court’s decision against racial segregation, summed up his sentiments in these six words: “The Supreme Court kiss my foot!”), I have a particular allergy in connection with racial bigotry or any other variety deriving from anything innate.
From a sort of book review earlier this week I quote the four opening paragraphs:
“In 1986, Carlton Gary, a black man, was convicted of the 1979 rape and strangulation murders of seven elderly white women in the small but prosperous (for some) town of Columbus GA. Some of these women had ties to an exclusive group of wealthy and influential white families called The Big Eddy Club. Since then, Gary has been sitting on death row. He now waits for his final appeal.
“Those initial crimes were horrific. But, the criminal justice system failings that followed were equally deplorable: Forced to produce and convict a killer, a frustrated and increasingly embarrassed set of local law enforcers, detectives and prosecutors subjugated crucial defense funds and evidence. Also eviscerated was the ‘due process’ clause of the 14th Amendment that states, ‘nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’
“With elegant prose and striking narrative, award-winning journalist David Rose investigates the deprivation of that due process and recounts the human and systemic toll of this crime within a crime in his book ‘The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice.’ The book is a vivid and thoroughly captivating exploration of the American criminal justice system. It is also impossible to put down.
“‘The Big Eddy Club’ is as much about Gary’s clash with the Southern justice system as it is a condemnation of the system’s racial and economic bias — a particularly cruel reality when it’s not merely one’s liberty, but one’s life, at risk. . . .”
The legally sophisticated - or merely curious - can read the March 8th, 2005 “Plea Agreement” in the original document of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Raleigh Division.
