By: Hugh B. Price
President
National Urban League
On September 20, a New York Times news story told of a remarkable pattern seen in the sifting of potential jurors for the last federal trial stemming from the sensational case of the savage sexual assault of Abner Louima by New York City police officers in a precinct station bathroom in 1997.
The Times story said that a noticeable"racial divide in perceptions about the case"was evident between black and white potential jurors. Generally, the white jurors had only very hazy recollections of the details of the case; but blacks' remembered even relatively minor details clearly.
"Many of the blacks described Mr. Louima's ordeal as they would a cultural touchstone,"the Times report noted,"like the case of the Scottsboro boys or the Birmingham church bombing."
In one sense, the jury questioning was for naught, because Charles Schwarz, the former officer federal prosecutors said helped in the attack, struck a deal that cancelled perjury and civil rights violation charges against him in exchange for a five-year sentence for a prior perjury conviction in the case-and the unusual stipulation that he cannot proclaim he is innocent during the duration of his sentence.
Yet, the"racial divide"about this case the jury questioning uncovered reveals something very important about the workings of history and justice.
Five years ago the unspeakably brutal assault Louima endured ushered in an intense period of highlighting and challenging police misconduct, especially against people of color, in New York City and other communities and states.
The officer who attacked Louima, Justin Volpe, pled guilty to the crime in 1999 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The Schwarz plea bargain this past weekend means that the legal system's effort to punish all of the criminals on the New York City police force responsible for that heinous act concluded with what can best be described as only a half measure of justice.
Federal prosecutors had tried through three trials since 1999 to prove that Schwarz was the officer who pinned Louima to the bathroom floor for Volpe, but federal juries could never agree on that (a jury in 2000 did convict Schwarz of perjuring himself when he said under oath that he had not escorted Louima away from the precinct's front desk toward the bathroom the night of the attack).
It appears that the plea arrangement was the best that could be hoped for, even though it means that the identity of the police officer who directly aided Volpe that awful night will remain, for the time being, unanswered.
It means several other things as well.
One is that, although the assault was committed in the midst of a busy police precinct, most likely witnessed by several other police officers, and its details were soon known to numerous other police officers who were in the station house that night, some number of police officers are still standing behind the"blue wall of silence,"disgracing themselves and their uniforms and the city they have sworn to protect and serve.
This is particularly bitter for many African Americans, and Haitian-Americans, of whom Louima is one, because the Louima case-coming before police racial profiling of people of color became an explosive national issue-crystallized African Americans' justifiable skepticism, borne of long experience, that the criminal justice system can be depended upon to protect them not only from criminals, but from arbitrary and unjust behavior by police, too.
But there is also another way to look at the half-measure of justice produced by the legal conclusion of the Louima case.
It is to believe that the search for justice in this case-that is to say, the search to understand and not forget its more profound meanings-will go on.
It is to believe that, in fact, the limitations of the legal system in this case underscore the historical role of two other forces: One is persistence. The other is persistence of memory.
The importance of persistence was evident in the refusal of federal prosecutors to succumb to the disingenuous"advice"of some that the public was"weary"of the case and that they should give up their efforts against Schwarz. The Times' story starkly shows that many blacks (and some whites, too) are not and will never be weary of pursuing justice.
And the importance of persistence was evident in the final statement this past weekend of Abner Louima himself.
He said: "This is not the way I wanted this to end. But
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