Jennifer Wilbanks, the "runaway bride," made one fatal slip. She accused a Hispanic male and a white female of having abducted her while jogging in Duluth, GA, and they had allegedly taken her across country to New Mexico. She also claimed sexual abuse. This is felonious conduct.

Of course, the Constitution forbids a selective prosecution. Until Bush 43 is impeached for lying about WMDs, every liar in the United States should be exempt from a criminal prosecution. The President-select is setting an example for aspiring criminals.

For four hundred years, whites have engaged in various shenanigans and, when apprehended, have conveniently scapegoated Black men. They are empowered to exploit racial prejudices and racial stereotypes. Since the testimony of a Black male is not worth a plug nickel, a conviction is guaranteed.

Glaring examples go back four hundred years. Nearly seventy-five years ago, two white female hobos cried rape when the local sheriff stopped a train near Scottsboro, AL, and found them in the company of nine Black boys.

Eight Blacks were sentenced to death after a kangaroo trial with intentionally ineffective assistance of counsel. Although innocent, Alabama destroyed their lives. About sixty years later, five Harlem youths would be sent to prison despite a lack of a complaining witness and the presence of DNA evidence exonerating them of raping a white female jogger in the Central Park Jogger case.

Susan Smith murdered her sons in South Carolina and the police went chasing for a Black suspect on a murderer's accusation. Charles Stewart murdered his wife in Boston and the police ransacked Roxboro looking for a Black suspect. White law enforcement officials refuse to learn from the lessons of history. Gwinnett County, an Atlanta suburb that includes Duluth, is one of the fastest growing counties in the United States, thanks, in part, to a heavy influx of Mexicans. When Blacks are unavailable, white women in the county will blame "Hispanics." Wilbanks was apparently lured to Las Vegas based on the advertisement: "What happens here, stays here."

After leading the police on a wild goose chase for three days, Wilbanks finally confessed. She was unwilling to exchange marital vows with her fiancé, John Mason. Instead she chose the oldest trick in the white woman's arsenal. Wilbanks' conduct amounts to a hate crime and racial defamation.

Federal and state legislatures have refused to pass laws against this ancient, heinous conduct. Yet, Congress could immediately pass the Mann Act to stop heavyweight champion Jack Johnson from freely consorting with white women in Jim Crow America. Congress also passed an ex post facto resolution to stop Khallid Abdul Muhammad from speaking his mind even though this kind of law is expressly prohibited by the Constitution. California passed the Michael Jackson Law to make it easier for California to transfer him from Neverland to state prison.

I literally begged New York to prosecute Tawana Brawley for allegedly filing a false report, especially since the state claimed that it had spent millions of dollars investigating a hoax. A prosecution would have backfired on New York, however. A Black female lacks the right to complain about a white male's sexual misconduct.

The state knew that it was easier for it to lie on someone than to prove that someone lied on Steven Pagones, an assistant district attorney who, according to classified FBI files, was the chief suspect in violating Tawana's civil rights. FBI agent Hilda Kogut, his girlfriend, headed the federal probe.

A criminal prosecution or even a juvenile delinquency proceeding would have automatically declassified the Brawley files and made them available to the public. Brawley would have had the right to cross-examine witnesses including Pagones and Robert Abrams.

Instead, New York immediately stripped me of the right to practice law. Pagones filed a defamation lawsuit seeking to prevent me from accusing him of kidnapping and raping Tawana and describing Harry Crist, Jr.'s death, another suspect and local policeman, as a homicide, which has no statute of limitation. Nonetheless, the nearly all-white jury gave me the green light to continue making the complained-about accusations with impunity.

If five whites and a juror of African ancestry could encourage me to keep the Brawley struggle going, I find it difficult to comprehend how Black elected officials can stand squarely with Eliot Spitzer, the current state attorney general, a protégé of Abrams and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who wrote a national op-ed piece demanding my disbarment.

Blacks must examine the divisive role of Black elected officials. Without the Voting Rights Act of 1965, these officials would not exist. The legislative history and intent of this voting rights legislation may provide answers. For the Black masses, our economic, political and social conditions have gotten exponentially worse since 1965.

Everyone should be upset over the handcuffing of a five-year-old girl at a school in St. Petersburg, FL. Only Dred Scott can explain the police conduct. The lack of a Black legal advocate, on the other hand, is inexplicable unless you are able to connect the dots. History is repeating itself. You must connect the present with the past. Tawana Brawley explains the cowardly turning of our heads away from Florida. New York sent the message that any Black who stands up for a Black female child will suffer a heavy penalty.

The world now knows that our Black children are unentitled to any kind of representation. Black children are being destroyed and we have no Black leader who can take immediate action without white permission. This is a badge of slavery. The white man is still the patriarch on the plantation.

The plight of this five-year-old child will only escalate. Her problems have just started. Florida is the only state with a fully privatized foster care and adoption system. Without strong Black legal advocacy, the mother will be declared unfit by a family court. Privatization is synonymous with big bucks and plantation politics. The Constitution lacks jurisdiction over purely private conduct. Stated again, our problem is a denial of the right to representation. It was also our problem in the ante-bellum South, where slave courts decided our fate if we were lucky enough to avoid lynch mobs.

April 26 is "Slave Day" in the United States. At the University of Georgia, in the 1960's, Black university employees had to participate annually in the re-enactment of slavery including the donning of ankle and neck chains with the slave driver cracking the whip. The finale, after the slave march through Athens, was the auction on the steps of the Clarke County Courthouse.

The key issue in Virginia's gubernatorial race is whether the candidates will recognize April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. Whites are attracted to slavery like Dracula is attracted to blood. Folkways and mores have imprisoned them.

The late Justice Bruce Wright, in a taped interview on "Like It Is," recounted his experience at a cocktail party in the "Silk Stocking" district. A law partner in a prestigious law firm told Wright of his fantasy to have him as his slave on a plantation. It bothers whites to have a person of Wright's intellect and integrity among them. He should be a role model for our children.

If Blacks understood the concept "badge of slavery" and of President Abraham Lincoln's signing of a hidden constitutional amendment permanently guaranteeing slavery, we would be smashing red herrings and avoiding Judas goats wrapped in David Walker's façade. www.reinstatealtonmaddox.com

© 2005 by AfroStaff