The tragic story of Brandon McLelland took a much-anticipated twist on Friday. McLelland was run over on a lonely highway outside Paris, Texas last September and, pinned against the undercarriage of the vehicle and apparently dragged down the highway.
But who was driving the vehicle that struck McClelland and was his death intentional? That was a question for investigators to answer. Shannon Finley became the prime suspect after law enforcement examined the undercarriage of his Dodge Dakota pickup. Ryan Crostley, a white passenger in Finley’s truck, was indicted as an accomplice.
Although law enforcement accused Finley of attempting to destroy evidence by hosing down the vehicle, no evidence of skin and blood was discovered.
The McClelland story is a cautionary tale for the civil rights community.
Due process is designed to protect defendants from a rush to judgment. Purported white racists are just as vulnerable to sloppy investigation and overly aggressive prosecution as purported black thugs. In both cases, criminal justice professionals reach a conclusion before all the evidence is in then twist the facts to support their pet theory. Had Shannon Finley been a member of a prominent Paris family the authorities would have been much more circumspect. Had Brandon McClelland been a highly respected businessman the DPS trooper who initially investigated the incident would have searched the death scene far more carefully.
It is always a bad sign when prosecutors try a case in the papers. Toby Shook didn’t get incriminating evidence from Finley’s truck but he made the press believe otherwise. You can’t blame the media for reporting what they are told–that’s their job. Shook was trying to job the system and civil rights folks like me let him get away with it.
Activists who have spoken out against Mr. Shook’s decision to drop the charges need to re-think their position. There is no case.
Friends of Justice works to restore due process protections to all Americans. The fact that poor African Americans are disproportionately victimized by a broken system doesn’t mean they are the only victims. Racial justice is equal justice.
Friends of Justice was reluctant to join the protests in Paris. We have seen the wheels come off too many bogus investigations. Instead, we opened this page to people on both sides of the controversy.
Americans who care about judicial fairness need to look beyond the Mississippi Burning narrative with its innocent black victims and its virulent white racists. Crude racial hatred hasn’t disappeared, but the species of racism that afflicts the criminal justice system is far more subtle and, as yet, ill-defined. The New Jim Crow inflicts a world of hurt because it doesn’t conform to the Hollywood paradigm or racial injustice.
In contemporary America, status drives the hate game far more than skin color.
Hate groups are proliferating in America and I’m glad organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center are monitoring their activities. But that is rarely the species of racism that sends poor people of color to prison. Low status black people are wrongfully convicted because they fit the thug paradigm. Skin color factors into the equation to be sure; but it isn’t the primary cause of wrongful prosecutions.
Shannon Finley is as white as they come, but he was easily stigmatized by his lack of education, his well-documented abuse of alcohol, his criminal record and his spotty work history. In short, Finley fit the profile of the southern white racist, the only type in America more despised than the dangerous black thug.
When I talk about racism I don’t have Shannon Finley in mind; I’m talking about people who vote, people attend church regularly, people who serve on juries. These folks don’t wear their racism on their sleeves, but they take a dim view of poor people and are willing to believe the worst about every poor soul the authorities hall into court. There is more continuity between the Old Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow than is commonly realized, but the social landscape has changed markedly (although not always for the better).
I’m not saying Shannon Finley is innocent. If he hadn’t been driving drunk, Brandon McClelland would have remained in the vehicle and the sad saga could have been averted. But Finley doesn’t have to prove his innocence; the state has to prove his guilt. The state couldn’t make its case so the charges were dropped. That’s the way the system is supposed to work.
But what if a truck driver hadn’t stepped forward with a story about hitting something on the road? What if a crooked forensics expert had decided to cooperate with the state’s story about blood and skin? Under those conditions, Shannon Finley would have been convicted.
He fits the profile.
The civil rights community needs to stop combing the Southland for Old Jim Crow stories. Sure, these narratives can still be dredged up here and there, but they don’t explain why so many poor people of color are going to prison. So long as we are chasing ghosts, flesh-and-blood inequities go unaddressed.
Friends of Justice 
Nothing about Finley’s profile indicates he was actually a racist. The assumption, by those who would make it, that a person who is white, poor, uneducated, alcoholic, and has a criminal record is a racist, is outmoded, unfounded and reprehensible.
Prosecutors intensely dislike “hate crime” legislation, which professional victim types love. It adds a number of near-impossible-to-prove elements, whereas traditional felonies based on the facts outside the mind of the accused are much simpler to prove, and more than adequate to address the wrong. Civil libertarians despise hate crime legislation for the obvious reason that it moves us closer to the Orwellian world of thought crimes. It also creates “special” classes of victims, offenses against whom are supposed to be more severely punished than those against “ordinary” victims. Altogether, hate crimes are a bad idea. This case might much more easily have been made as a vehicular homicide, based on alleged intoxication of the driver.
There are a number of reasons, none ultimately legitimate, for the grossly unequal incarceration rates by race. The legacy of slavery and racial discrimination means widespread poverty among the black population. This means they have much less real estate, less air conditioning, more people in each home, and thus spend more time out and about where their activities can be scrutinized in our domestic Drug War environment. White people are doing all of the same things behind their gates and doors, on their own property and leases, but law enforcement does not see it. Entitlement rules destroy the nuclear families of those receiving poverty-based entitlements, so that familial supervision and discipline suffer. Minorities’ often well-founded distrust of law enforcement, and its nonresponsiveness, or inappropriate responses to their concerns, and the fact that the new Prohibition deprives them of civil remedies, often leads minority individuals to take their conflicts into their own hands. And because the black residential areas are perceived as being “high crime” for these reasons, law enforcement efforts are concentrated there– it’s easier, cream-skimming– so that the skewed results tend to snowball. All Americans, and the American economy, will benefit vastly from an alcohol-and-tobacco model of drug regulation, i.e. an end to the Drug War as it now exists, but the black community will benefit most of all by ending the present siege on their communities.
Thanks, King. I agree with your diagnosis of the problem and your proposed cure.
Alan
Dear Alan,
Thanks for the summary of the Paris, Texas tradegy. I had followed it, and wondered why the prosecutor would be so positive and later capitulate. With your explanation, I am glad he did — finally. Glen
Did you notice Finley just received 17 years for his third DWI charge? He is gone for awhile, leaving two dead and many others disheartened in the wake of some 15 years of criminal activity. Never, however, in all that did he commit a racist act that we know of. He was however, violent when intoxicated. One black even sat with the Finley family at the trial.
Please write me if you have footnotes. No assumptions, please.