Before I give Howard Witt an opportunity to respond to a critic from Paris, Texas, I should clarify a couple of things: 

First, my aim is to give all sides an opportunity to share their views.  Folks from Paris who take issue with Mr. Witt’s remarks are free to respond and I promise to publish any responsible remarks.

Second, I contacted Howard Witt about the mess in Jena, Louisiana after reading his early reports on the Shaquanda Cotton story.  I was impressed with his willingness to bring an obscure but troubling case to the attention of the wider world.  Although I have only met Mr. Witt on one occasion, he is on my mailing list and frequently sends me articles he has written with some relation to racial justice. 

In short, I am not trying to put anyone in their place nor do I want to slant the conversation to the advantage of either side.  Hopefully we are all searching for the truth and this exchange will shed needed light on an important subject.

Howard Witt Responds

Thanks for the opportunity to respond to the inaccuracies and falsehoods contained in this message. I understand that many town leaders in Paris believe I have been “pushing this story for a long time,” but in fact I keep returning to Paris because important developments keep happening there that are worthy of outside attention.

Contrary to the vehement insistence of some white people in Paris that I have some sort of personal agenda–a local Methodist minister at last week’s public meeting declared that I am a “Christ killer” because of my reporting–I’m actually interested in the struggles of this east Texas town as it grapples with its troubled history of race relations.

I’m not going to address the ad hominem attacks in the email. But the facts do need to be corrected. For anyone who’s interested, all of my collected reporting on Paris is available at www.chicagotribune.com/paris, and I stand by every word I have written.

Shaquanda Cotten had a long term history of relatively serious problems including an average of over an incident per day at school, all of which her mother chalked up to racism. The hall monitor was the last straw. She was almost 60 years old, barely five feet tall and left the school in an ambulance.

First, her name is “Cotton.” And let’s be clear: She had no prior arrest record. Yes, it is true that Shaquanda had a history of disciplinary write-ups, which I examined during my reporting of the story and detailed in my original March 12, 2007 report about the case. And Shaquanda’s mother and legal adviser challenged many of those write-ups as being petty and dubious. From my story:

“Shaquanda started getting written up a lot after her mother became involved in a protest march in front of a school,” said Sharon Reynerson, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid, who has represented Shaquanda during challenges to several of the disciplinary citations she received. “Some of the write-ups weren’t fair to her or accurate, so we felt like we had to challenge each one to get the whole story.”

Among the write-ups Shaquanda received, according to Reynerson, were citations for wearing a skirt that was an inch too short, pouring too much paint into a cup during an art class and defacing a desk that school officials later conceded bore no signs of damage.

The hall monitor Shaquanda pushed was examined at the emergency room and released. Her medical records indicated that she suffered no serious injury. This is not to minimize the wrongfulness of what Shaquanda did in laying hands on a school employee, but rather to try to maintain some perspective. The story was always about the proportionality of the punishment Shaquanda received-not whether she deserved to be punished in some way for her behavior.

Superville went the TYC route only after offering different options if her mother would give up custody so as to stop the enabling.

This is a slightly cleaned-up version of the falsehood that Lamar County Prosecutor Gary Young put forward after Shaquanda’s case gained national attention-a falsehood that Paris officials continue to propagate to this day. Young, through his spokesman Allan Hubbard, claimed that Superville had offered Shaquanda’s mother, Creola, the option of probation but that Creola had refused to cooperate. That was not true, as I was able to prove because I have a copy of the complete transcript from Shaquanda’s trial.

Here’s what I wrote about this in a story on March 31, 2007:

Hubbard also backed away from claims he and Young made this week in numerous media interviews that the judge in the case, Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, had had no choice but to send the youth to prison because her mother had testified that she would not cooperate with probation officials had the judge sentenced the teen to probation.

On Thursday, Young’s official Web site contained this assertion: “This juvenile’s mother (Creola Cotton) told the judge she would not comply with conditions of probation.”

But a review of the full court transcript shows no such testimony. In fact, Creola Cotton repeatedly answered “yes” when asked in court whether she would comply with any conditions of probation that the judge might impose.

On Friday morning, after an inquiry about this discrepancy by the Tribune, the district attorney’s Web site was altered to read: “Through her actions of non-cooperation, Ms. Cotton told the judge she would not comply with conditions of probation.”

He, of course, did not sentence her to seven years but gave the normal “indeterminate” sentence which would have allowed for her to be released at any time after she showed any remorse and indicated she might be able to interact in society. The Tribune knows this but continues to print misleading commentary.

I have written nothing misleading about this. My stories consistently reported that Shaquanda was sentenced to “up to 7 years” in youth prison. As far as the Texas Youth Commission allowing Shaquanda to be released any time she showed remorse, my subsequent reporting showed that TYC officials actually extended Shaquanda’s sentence because she was found with “contraband” in her cell-an extra pair of socks.

Leaving alone the question of whether personal assault or the property crime of arson is more serious, the Tribune either didn’t bother to print or didn’t bother to learn that the “white” arsonist was also a victim of domestic assault and was acting out and that every psychologist and advocate that dealt with both cases recommended the sentences that Chuck handed out. They also didn’t follow up and learn that the “white” girl didn’t make her probation and went to TYC. And while no one knew what was going on at TYC at the time that girl was assaulted while under TYC jurisdiction.

Utterly false. In fact, the only reason why the writer knows about what happened to the “white arsonist” is because I was the reporter who broke the story of what happened to her-how she ended up in prison, where she was sexually assaulted by a guard. Here’s an excerpt from my October 9, 2007, story:

This is the story of what happened to the white girl in that saga.

It appears she has suffered a fate far worse than Shaquanda’s.

The emotionally troubled teenager, who has been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, was sent to the same youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, where Shaquanda was incarcerated, because she subsequently violated her probation twice.

While there, the teenager — whom the Tribune is not identifying — was allegedly sexually molested by a male prison guard, who then threatened her to keep her quiet, according to documents and witness statements examined by the Tribune. The girl self-mutilated her arms with a knife, carving the word “Why” into her flesh, her mother said.

The last case [Brandon McClelland] is more troubling but once again the Trib ignores facts and details that confuse the situation. There were two white guys and a black guy, the black guy was killed in a horrible manner, they were also friends of some duration who were out drinking together. I don’t know whether it’s a hate crime but I know it was hard for the DA to figure what to make of it so they farmed it out to the former chief prosecutor from Dallas–the guy Watkins beat–which I think was a good idea.

I did not ignore any of the facts the writer mentions, which were detailed in my October 5, 2008 story.

But the writer is certainly choosing to ignore facts. The local prosecutor, Gary Young, did not “farm out” the case to Dallas because “it was hard for [him] to figure what to make of it.” He recused himself because, as a defense attorney, Young had previously represented one of the accused McClelland murderers in a questionable homicide case-and he only announced this recusal after the publication of my story detailing this relationship. An excerpt:

Family members and other critics are also concerned about the impartiality of Lamar County District Atty. Gary Young, who five years ago, before he was elected prosecutor, served as Finley’s court-appointed defense attorney when Finley pleaded guilty to manslaughter for shooting a friend to death.

Young has declined to state whether he will recuse himself and other prosecutors in his office from handling the McClelland case.

Although the victim in Finley’s 2003 manslaughter case was white, race played a role in the incident. Finley told police he was sitting in a pickup with his friend in a park when two gun-wielding black men supposedly walked up alongside and tried to rob them. Finley said he grabbed his friend’s handgun and fired at the robbers, but instead shot his friend.

An autopsy determined that the victim suffered three gunshot wounds to the head, but the district attorney at the time accepted Finley’s contention that the shooting was an accident and offered him a plea bargain on a reduced manslaughter charge. Finley served three years of a 4-year prison sentence. The alleged robbers were never found.