How To Make Sure the Black Man Gets the Needle

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

(The following practice tips are based on the court order in a capital murder case appeal, State v. Bennett, in The United States District Court District of South Carolina, Charleston Division. The prosecutor in the case, the only occasionally drunken Donnie “Dr. Death” Myers, has tried more death penalty cases than anyone in the state.)

1. Get yourself an all-white jury.

2. Make sure one of the jurors is a people-pleaser who says if he has any doubts he’ll go along with the majority if they want to kill the black man.

3. Try the case before a judge who thinks that’s just dandy.

4. Put on a witness, unrelated to the murder case, and ask him about a dream he had, after the defendant put a beating on him, where Indians were chasing and trying to kill him, and the thing is, those Indians seemed to be black folk too.

5. Solicit testimony that while awaiting trial in prison, the black man had sex with a female prison guard and, wait, wasn’t she a white woman? You remember, the blonde-headed lady.

6. Argue that if the jury gives the black man life, “he’ll come back out. Meeting him again will be like meeting King Kong on a bad day.”

7. Point out several times during closing argument just how big this big black gorilla is. Why, he’s six-feet seven, three hundred pounds. Hands way bigger than some of them Presidential candidates.

8. Throw in a few names like “monster,” “caveman,” and “beast of burden” for good measure.

9. Do NOT get a juror so candid as the one Dr. Death got, who when asked after the trial why he thought Bennett had killed the victim, replied, “Because he was just a dumb nigger.”

 
(After hearing all this, and more, the federal district court overturned the death sentence. The big black monkey will still be in jail the rest of his life; Donnie just doesn’t get to see the needle stuck in him. Sadder yet, old Donnie is retiring and has sent his last black man to Death Row.)