Veritas vos liberabit?

In a Constitutional Law of Civil Rights class, I presented a Supreme Court case called Powell v. Alabama, about the "Scottsboro boys" - nine black men, aged 13 to 19, accused of raping two white women on a train traveling through the Jim Crow South. The boys were captured by civilians in Alabama and immediately sent to prison, where they weren't allowed to talk to each other or any sort of counsel - until the day of their trial. Because of public anathema toward the Scottsboro boys, no attorney was willing to take on the case, and the judge vaguely appointed "all of the Alabama bar" to represent the defendants. On the day of trial, a real estate lawyer--who was neither a member of the Alabama bar nor a defense attorney, and who was wholly unfamiliar with the case--stepped up. The boys were tried in turn, on the same day, for a crime bearing a capital penalty. Lacking adequate defense, on the basis of circumstantial evidence and of testimony riddled with hearsay and falsehood and inconsistency (one of the victims eventually retracted her accusation altogether), each of the boys was sentenced to death, by a tainted jury that had taken mere moments to deliberate.

While the case eventually got up to the Supreme Court--which in a watershed moment called the convictions unconstitutional because of the inadequacy of the counsel provided--the Scottsboro boys languished for years in prison, waiting out an endless appeals process. Some died in prison, while others spent years clearing their names.

The parallels between this case and the one that wrenches apart the tiny Alabama town in To Kill a Mockingbird (which, I should mention, I absolutely loved--by far my favorite of the books I have read so far for this project) are uncanny. The stark difference, of course, is that mythic paragon of decency and justice: Atticus Finch. He is the attorney for Tom Robinson, a black man similarly falsely accused of assaulting a white woman. The town torments Atticus's family for his collusion with this no-good criminal--for his betrayal of the white race. Atticus's tomboyish, precocious daughter, Scout Finch--who is even more winning of a protagonist than Oscar Wao--narrates the racial prejudices of the 1930s South with the innocent, matter-of-fact voice of an eight-year-old: in one classroom scene, she is asked to define a democracy, which she does, as "equal rights for all, special privileges for none." Her teacher nods in approval and writes "WE ARE A DEMOCRACY" on the board; Scout is disturbed after observing this same sanctimonious teacher out on the steps later in the day, criticizing Atticus for having the gall to defend a Negro as he did.

At trial, in a closing plea to the jury, Atticus near-whispers, "Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal...this is not an ideal, but a living, working reality."

Perhaps, in the sense that everyone has the theoretical right to a fair trial, et cetera. But in reality? Well into the 21st century, we still treat as questions what should be settled facts: that everyone is free from unconstitutional search and seizure (looking at you, Arizona), that everyone has the right of due process, and that these are rights that cannot be derogated in any case--national security pressures notwithstanding. The law itself, as Obama observed, can be applied to reward the powerful and punish the powerless, the disenfranchised, the poor.

What Atticus speaks to, I think, is still an ideal--what should be, rather than what is. Kind of like Atticus himself.