Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness by Laura Coates

 

Eleven of us met on Saturday July 15th to discuss Laura Coates' book, "Just Pursuit." The book consists of sixteen descriptive essays of her experiences working as a federal prosecutor.

Robin started us off with, "One thing that was sort of interesting was that I felt like there were many different themes, different chapters had different sorts of themes. They weren’t always about white supremacy. Sometimes they were about the power of these judges. There were many different themes, some of them about the arbitrariness of these judges and the lack of justice in our system."

Wendy clarified with, "the impact of these judgements that were announced."

Bonnie called our attention to "Chapter 9 with the kid getting the long sentence. In chapter 1 she sticks up for this guy that was going to be deported but then in chapter 3 she didn’t help the Black defendant. What I found interesting is that she mentioned the Milgrim Study: a study done after WWII. Everyone said the German people were following the Nazis because they were under orders. In the study there were people on one side of a glass that were actors then the people on the other side, who were given orders to give electric shocks to the actors for wrong answers. Of course, the electric shocks weren’t real.  The actor on the other side would scream, but the participants kept shocking them. She brought up this Milgrim study when she did not stick up for the Black defendant. She brought up Milgrim to say there was some hierarchy that she had to answer to."

Wendy said she was very struck by her comment that the victims also need someone to look after them. The dilemmas she constantly faced, doing a job where the defendants were mostly Black. In the case you’re talking about she knew that she had so much room to play with. She made the decision to not push as hard on that case because she knew she had another case where no one was going to represent this individual. She needed any kind of chips she had in the game. 

 

Laura Coates 

Bonnie helped us recall the incident by saying, "and the one where the Black judge seemed to have a choice to be more lenient than he ended up being."

Robin followed with, "And he was in turmoil over it. The one where there were the two Black men who killed a third and the parents of the victim didn't want them to get long sentences. He said, 'I’m an old man.' Coates said, 'You’re not old,' and he said, 'I am after this.' I really don’t quite understand why he made that choice."

Barb M. elaborated further, offering, "I was just going to say something about the parents of the murder victim asking for leniency for the two guys. I can see the judge saying, 'My sentencing requirement is 20-30 years or whatever and they did kill this person.' The parents are asking the judge not to take two more lives. Our system is based on chips: who holds the chips."

 

Marian pointed out that there were two different stories where leniency was advocated. One was the parents of the son who was murdered but the other one was the woman whose car was stolen, and she was very articulate saying for some people this would be a big inconvenience “but it’s not for me because I have another car and I have great insurance, that was my husband’s car and he left me well-off and why don’t you just let this guy go?” 

Em mentioned the incident with the 13-year-old who wanted to have sex with the older teen and there was some indication that the young man was intellectually challenged. The father was not going to allow any leniency in that case.

Connie added that the daughter had lied about her age…for her parents to just go after this guy, not considering their daughter’s part  and not giving their daughter any say in this, to me that was the injustice in that particular case…for the prosecutor to have the presence of mind to ask to speak to the daughter alone without the parents there was critical because you need to get the full story. Being charged with a sexual assault and being on that registry when this guy really didn’t know he was doing anything wrong. He didn’t know her true age. That was one of the cases where it wasn’t just a racial issue.

Shelara said, "The father’s issue was that everyone found out about it. He said, “My wife was stupid enough to call the school and tell them and now everyone knows.” 

Connie followed up, saying, "the father was going to risk the young man being on that registry for the rest of his life."

Robin elaborated, "We don’t really know what happened. The prosecutor wasn’t going to prosecute but we knew the father was going to go higher. Just like that horrible case where the white college student wanted her Black roommate to be charged with something and the author said, 'No way am I going to prosecute.' Then her white male superior comes in and starts falling for the college student’s story." 

 

Barb M. told us "There’s a book I just picked up. It’s by Richard Dreyfus. It talks about the dumbing of our kids over the last 50 years in our schools. We don’t even teach them physics. It was intentional to dumb down our kids, making them more like cattle. By us dumbing down Americans, we made them more likely to be susceptible…after a while we won’t even talk about gun violence."

Shelara asked Dora, "Do you think it was an effective strategy to push for integration or should we have asked for equity to get access to the resources so we could keep our own schools? "

Dora answered, "At this point in my life, I’ve concluded that it was better for us to have kept our own schools because we had the teachers and the community behind us.  

Shelar continued, saying, "Thurgood Marshall and others debated about 'separate but equal.' I think back to the book when the Black defense lawyer comes to Coates and says, 'Why are you a prosecutor?' We need each other in all areas of the legal system. We need Black defense attorneys, we need Black prosecutors, we need Black lawyers who become judges, we need Blacks in the police departments, but the caveat to that is you cannot be corrupted by the illusion of white supremacy."

Barb M. gave us, "Laura Coates is an enigma. She had to learn to play the game, otherwise she wouldn't be there. She had to learn to compromise her values. She had to weigh what chips she needed to get where she wanted to get. She had to throw away two people to save ten. You must learn to play that game."

  

Robin added, "And Laura Coates did play that game, but she could only tolerate it for a few years. She couldn’t stay."