Читать книгу Black Rage Confronts the Law - Paul Harris - Страница 12

My skin is like my shadow,

I can’t seem to shake it.

—M. C. Identity, San Francisco

Street Music

In the years since William Freeman died in a jail cell, many lawyers have argued that there is a causal relationship between suffering from racism and engaging in a criminal act. Some of those attempts, such as Clarence Darrow’s defense of Henry Sweet for shooting into a white mob and Charles Garry’s defense of Black Panther leader Huey Newton for shooting a policeman, have been preserved in our legal literature. But most of those attempts have been lost to history. Lawyers less famous than Darrow or Garry have stood next to their clients and urged judges or juries to recognize racial oppression as an accomplice in crime. But before 1970, in these unsung trials, it is doubtful that the lawyers used the words “black rage.” Lawyers and the language they use are bound by their historical circumstances; the time was not yet right for the acceptance of a concept as threatening as black rage. But times change.

In the early 1960s the civil rights movement was struggling for the right of blacks to sit in the front of a bus, to go to the school of their choice, to eat at a lunch counter, to gain employment according to their skills, and to vote in elections. People such as Ella Baker, Bob Moses, and Fannie Lou Hamer organized in the South against America’s version of apartheid.

In 1962, the National Lawyers Guild opened a law office in Jackson, Mississippi, specifically to provide legal support for the hundreds of black people who were trying to register to vote and to destroy segregation. In June 1963 Medgar Evers, president of the Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was assassinated. Three months later in Birmingham, Alabama, four girls, ages eleven to fourteen, were killed when their church was bombed. Still, people refused to give up and organizing intensified. Martin Luther King, Jr., viewed as the national spokesman for the civil rights movement, called for integration, equality, and nonviolence. These were the dominant words in the public dialogue.

The courage and contributions of the civil rights workers would leave a lasting mark on the country. But in some ways the movement was failing. The right to sit in the front of the bus did not change the fact that the transportation system in Watts was hopelessly inadequate. The right to go to school with whites did not change the fact that in the North the proportion of black children going to segregated schools had increased since 1954. The right to eat anywhere one chose did not change the fact that food costs money and that, between 1949 and 1959, the income of black men relative to white men had declined in every section of the county. The right to vote did not change the fact that Californians voted nearly two to one to repeal fair housing laws. The right to be employed according to one’s abilities did not change the reality that in the major ghettos one out of three black men was either jobless or earning too little to live on.

Having black skin not only meant suffering economic and social discrimination, it meant a lack of positive identity, a vague but corrosive sense of shame, a hostility that vented itself on others in the community, and a volatile, building frustration that often destroyed the self as well as others. Roy Wilkins and the NAACP and Whitney Young and the National Urban League did not speak to the problem of pride; they spoke of integration. The philosophy of integration encouraged the black person to get rid of his ghetto accent, to speak like white people, dress like them, and accept their values and aspirations. Hopefully the white society would then accept the black person, and the end result would be a world of equality and brotherhood. But the means to that goal did not work. In fact, the means never were accepted by the majority of black people. Blackness and poverty, not integration, were the issues for the man and woman in the ghetto.

By 1964, a new voice was commanding attention. Malcolm X’s message of black pride and self-determination rapidly gained adherents, particularly among northern urban blacks. In February 1965 Malcolm was assassinated while giving a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. But his message found new ears and minds, and thousands began to advocate his ideas.

Meanwhile, the civil rights movement grew stronger. In 1964 the Mississippi Summer Project sent hundreds of students into the belly of the beast to register voters. By the end of the project, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been murdered, one thousand people had been arrested, eighty people had been beaten, three people had been wounded by shotguns, thirty-five churches had been torched, and thirty-one homes and stores had been burned to the ground. But the project was successful, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party sent delegates to the National Democratic Convention and forever changed the racist face of southern politics.

That same summer, the Harlem section of New York erupted in violence after a thirteen-year-old boy named James Powell was killed by a policeman. This was the first of five years of black uprisings, usually referred to as riots by the media and the government. Race riots were not new in America. After a white police sergeant was killed in 1917 in East St. Louis, mobs of whites marched on the ghetto, and thirty-nine blacks and nine whites were killed. That same year, in Chicago, a seven-day riot left twenty-three blacks and fifteen whites dead. In 1920 in Elaine, Arkansas, eighteen blacks and five whites were killed in racial fighting. In 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, twenty-one blacks and ten whites died. In Detroit, on June 20, 1943, a fight started between a couple of black youths and a white man. Soon white sailors joined in and within hours a major race riot was in progress. White mobs, estimated at over a thousand people, attempted to march into the black ghetto but were turned back. When the violence ended two days later, twenty-four blacks and nine whites had been killed. In the same month in Los Angeles, large groups of white soldiers and sailors attacked Mexican Americans and blacks in what was described by the media as the “zoot-suit riots.” Fifty people were seriously injured and some four hundred Mexican Americans were jailed. All these riots were marked by intensive fighting between people of different races. The Harlem uprising of 1964 was different, however, because it did not involve fighting between black people and white mobs. Rather, it was distinguished by blacks attacking the most visible signs of their oppression—police and merchants. It was a difference that would become clearer in the next few years.

In 1965, one year after the Harlem uprising, the ghetto of Watts, California, exploded to the cry of “burn, baby burn.” Millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed. Thirty-three blacks were killed as police, the National Guard, and the Army surrounded and marched into Watts. Only two whites died in the violence.

In 1966 there was a large civil rights march in Mississippi. At the march, one of the nation’s young civil rights leaders, Stokely Carmichael, coined the slogan “black power.” The television news showed images of young black people shouting “black power” as they marched through Mississippi for twenty-one days.

In the spring of 1967 black uprisings occurred around the country, including five days of violence in Cleveland and four in Boston. In July, Newark, New Jersey, broke loose with a fury that caused the governor to describe it as an “open rebellion” and “criminal insurrection.” One month after Newark, a storm of fire and violence hit Detroit. In many sections of the city, poor whites and poor blacks looted side by side; more than seven thousand people were arrested. During that summer there were over a hundred days of uprisings. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders summed up five years of violence: “While the civil disorders of 1967 were racial in character, they were not interracial. The 1967 disorders, as well as earlier disorders of the recent period, involved action within Negro neighborhoods against symbols of white American society—authority and property—rather than against white persons” (emphasis in original).

In 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support sanitation workers in their quest for better working conditions and higher wages. Integration into white society, melting into white America, would never again be the overwhelming focus of black politics.

In 1970 a book was published that had a transformative impact on millions of people of all races. Its title was Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. This was a book about the raw, ugly, brutal experience of prison. It was also about the strength, rage, and courage of one young black man. When he was eighteen years old, George Jackson had pled guilty to robbing a gas station of seventy dollars. He was sentenced to one year to life under California’s indeterminate sentencing law. He spent over seven years in solitary confinement. He became a symbol of resistance for prisoners throughout the country. In his letters we find words that could just as easily have expressed the anguish of William Freeman in Auburn State Prison:

If I leave here alive, I’ll leave nothing behind. They’ll never count me among the broken men, but I can’t say that I’m normal either. I’ve been hungry too long, I’ve gotten angry too often. I’ve been lied to and insulted too many times. They’ve pushed me over the line from which there can be no retreat. I know that they will not be satisfied until they’ve pushed me out of this existence altogether. I’ve been the victim of so many racist attacks that I could never relax again. . . . I can still smile now, after ten years of blocking knife thrusts, and the pick handles of faceless sadistic pigs, of anticipating and reacting for ten years, seven of them in solitary. I can still smile sometimes, but by the time this thing is over I may not be a nice person.

Seething anger in the prisons, on the streets. The anger has always been there, since the first young African man and woman were ripped from their families, kidnapped, and forced to cut cotton without pay. Resentment, bitterness, hostility, vehemence, and madness had been there for hundreds of years. Now, white America was for the first time forced to listen to this anger in its purest form—BLACK RAGE.

In the midst of these changes, on July 15, 1970, a workday like any other, black autoworker James Johnson walked into the dirty, hazardous Eldon Avenue Gear and Axle Plant in Detroit, Michigan. He walked strangely, hindered by the M-i carbine he had hidden in the pant leg of his overalls. He stepped over the oil slicks on the plant floor, the deafening noise from the machinery hammering in his head. Stalking the black foreman who had illegally suspended him earlier that day, he raised the M-i and fired. As the foreman fell and then struggled to get up Johnson stood over him firing again and again. Johnson then began to look for Jim Rhoades, the general foreman who had called him “boy” and had told the gate guard to take away the badge that allowed Johnson to come into the plant. Unable to find Rhoades he entered a room and began firing. When the M-i ran out of bullets two white men, a foreman and a job setter, lay dead. As Johnson walked out of the plant two union stewards approached him. He gave one of them his empty rifle. A few minutes later, he quietly gave up to the police.

Six months later, Steven Robinson, a twenty-nine-year-old black man, walked into a bank in the Fillmore district of San Francisco and pulled an unloaded .22 caliber derringer out of his overalls. He lined up the four women tellers against the wall and emptied each cash drawer into a striped laundry bag. As he went from drawer to drawer, two police officers, Jordan and Johnson, responding to the bank’s silent alarm, arrived on the scene. Officer Jordan slowly moved into the bank, aimed his service revolver at Robinson, and ordered him to drop his gun. After Robinson dropped his gun, the police began to handcuff him. The six-foot Robinson suddenly turned and grabbed the officer. The three men punched and kicked each other until finally one of the policemen got his baton against Robinson’s neck and choked the bank robber briefly into unconsciousness.

As they walked out the front door, a large crowd of black people from the neighborhood gathered around. Robinson, his hands cuffed behind his back, his nose streaming blood, stopped suddenly and held his head high. The two officers who were holding his arms came to an abrupt halt. Looking at the crowd, Steven Robinson shouted in a loud voice, “Why are black people without jobs or homes when there is so much money in America’s banks?” Many of the people in the crowd shouted their agreement and a few even began to applaud. The police hurriedly shoved Robinson into the squad car.

James Johnson and Steven Robinson went to trial, respectively, in the spring and summer of 1971. In both trials the political reality of what it means to be black in America became an essential part of the defense. These trials marked the modern development of the black rage defense.

“Black rage” is the term commentators and the media have used to describe a defense strategy that attempts to bring a very particular social reality into the courtroom. But while the term evokes violent, aggressive images, the black rage defense encompasses a broader view of African American life than just rage and violence. It includes pride in one’s heritage. It explains hopelessness and sheds light on the darkness of fear and abuse. Most of all, it says to the American legal system: You cannot convict me without hearing who I am and what shaped me. I was not born with an M-1 carbine in my hands. My childhood dreams did not include robbing a bank.

The black rage defense raises fundamental issues regarding crime, race, and justice. It forces us to grapple with questions the criminal justice system does not want to hear. Why does a person commit a crime? What is society’s responsibility for shaping the person who commits a crime? These and many other questions that lie festering in the juncture between race and the law will be addressed in the following pages. But first we need to get a grasp on the black rage defense. Therefore, let us look in depth at the Steven Robinson case. (The James Johnson case is discussed in chapter 4.)

San Francisco is a city divided up into distinct neighborhoods. After World War II, the city had two primarily black neighborhoods. One was Hunter’s Point, a remote district that was home to the Naval shipyards. The other, near the heart of the city, was called the Fillmore. Running through its heart was Fillmore Street. At one time Fillmore Street had been a thriving business and cultural section. But then urban redevelopment came along and much of the Fillmore ended up being divided into real estate parcels as many black people were moved out. April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, marked the death knell for the Fillmore. There was an uprising of black people who as in other cities, burned what was nearest to them. They burned down building after building along Fillmore Street, and for years afterwards the economics of the free market resulted in nothing new being built.

In 1969, among the rubble and vacant lots, a small community school was started. It was called the Malcolm X School, and the teachers taught the children black history and black culture along with a standard curriculum. They tried to instill in the children respect for each other and pride in themselves. Steven Robinson was music director at the school. He loved teaching even though there was no money to pay him.

The school was housed in the back of a church on Fillmore Street, but the church was slated to be torn down and the school needed financial help. Many of the children came to school without breakfast, and the staff could not always provide hot lunches. Steven watched the children trying to learn, reaching out for a better life. He cherished running the music program, integrating traditional African music into the curriculum and making jazz accessible to young minds.

Since the Malcolm X School could not put Steven on salary, he looked elsewhere for employment. Having been trained as a draftsman, he went to many job interviews at architectural firms. But there seemed to be no place for a black draftsman. After a number of failed attempts he sought out the help of the Bay Area Urban League. The League’s veterans’ affairs coordinator thought highly of Steven and was able to obtain a position for him. The work situation turned out to be difficult. He was not accepted by the white employees, and when the firm’s business slowed down he was let go. He got another draftsman’s job, but again he was laid off. In early 1970 he was without work and unable to find a job. He continued his volunteer position at the Malcolm X School, but he became more and more frustrated as he watched the young, gifted black teachers confronting the overwhelming problems of poverty and dislocation.

Fortunately, Steven had met a wonderful woman named Elaine. He took her and her eight-year-old daughter into his heart and the couple was soon married. They lived in a small apartment and struggled to survive. After he became unemployed their situation worsened. Elaine could not find work, and in the fall of 1970 both she and their daughter Kamisha developed a persistent, deep cough. Steven took them to the Blackman’s Free Clinic, where they were examined and given antibiotics. But neither of them got better. Steven worried that they might have tuberculosis like his uncle, and he took them back to the clinic. This time the doctor recommended they see a specialist. But they had no money for a specialist. Elaine asked Steven if she could apply for welfare. His response was angry and bitter. “No wife of mine will ever take the white man’s handout,” he shouted. “I can take care of my family; I’m the man of the house.” They had discussed and argued about accepting welfare before; each time Steven’s pride was wounded and he would retreat into a shell of silence. This time the frustration of days of knocking on doors for jobs that were not to be seemed to rush out of him in a torrent of words. Elaine understood that his failure to provide for them went to the core of his being. There would be no more discussions.

Christmas passed. The New Year brought only more frustration. Steven allowed Elaine to go to Sacred Heart Parish on Fillmore, where Eugene Judge, president of the Sacred Heart Conference, had won the respect of the community for his work. Judge gave Elaine a food package and offered to help obtain a new stove for them. A week later Steven fixed a car for a neighbor. He was paid twenty dollars and given a .22 caliber derringer for the other ten dollars he was owed.

Kamisha’s cough had not gotten better, and now there was a new worry—Elaine was pregnant. Instead of joy and excitement Steven felt only anxiety and anger: anger at himself for failing to protect his family, and at society for limiting his dreams.

Elaine was worried about her husband. He wasn’t acting like himself. They argued. He yelled at Kamisha. He was distant and strange. On the evening of January 21, 1971, Steven left the apartment, simply saying he was going to a friend’s house. He hung out with his friend listening to music until after midnight. Then he started home, but confused, he found himself two miles away, near Golden Gate Park. He fingered the unloaded derringer in his pocket. He thought of robbing a bank. Yes, that way he could take Kamisha and Elaine to a specialist and could buy a new stove. He wandered for a long time, along the streets of the Western Addition and along the confused pathways of his mind. He soon found himself in front of a burned-out, boarded-up building near the bus stop at Eddy and Fillmore streets. That ugly building had been standing like that for two and a half years. The vacant, garbage-filled lots were all around him. Why didn’t white investors build something here? he wondered. Black people needed jobs, needed homes. How many years would the Fillmore stand as a monument to the black rage of 1968 and to the white neglect of always? Steven’s thoughts, usually precise and organized like his drawings, were jumbled and hazy. But his emotions were powerfully clear—rage boiled inside him.

He spent the rest of the night at his friend’s apartment thinking about his father, his own life in Chicago, his failures in San Francisco. He fell asleep in the early morning. Upon waking, he got dressed, grabbed a pillowcase and began walking down Fillmore Street. He saw the Malcolm X School but could not bring himself to go in. He stopped and talked to the hardcore unemployed young black men who hung out in the tiny park on the corner of Ellis and Fillmore. He passed the old winos and saw the contours of his own future in the faces of all those jobless men. He saw the pawnshop and decided to pawn the derringer to buy some food for Elaine and Kamisha. He stood in line, but the pawnshop was crowded and it seemed to be taking forever. He left, walked another block, and stood in front of the First Western Bank. He saw that the bank was empty. Then, as if propelled, he was inside the bank.

The next morning Steven sat in a jail cell on the seventh floor of the courthouse known to Bay Area radicals as “The Hall of Injustice.” At the same time Dee Reid sat at her kitchen table scanning the San Francisco Chronicle for an article about the bank robbery. She had been in the crowd when Steven had been taken out of the bank. She had seen him pull up suddenly, stopping the two policemen in their tracks. She felt that he had carried himself with dignity and had spoken with pride. As a community activist she wanted him to have good legal representation. She found the short news clip and wrote down Steven Robinson’s name. She recalled a small radical law firm called the San Francisco Community Law Collective and one of its lawyers, Paul Harris. She looked up his number and called.

I was sitting in our storefront office, across from Mission High School. Bernadette Aguilar and Ricky Jacobs were hard at work, Bernadette interviewing a woman in Spanish about her car accident, Ricky editing and typing a brief in a draft resistance case. The other attorney, Stan Zaks, was talking to Francisco, one of the members of Los Siete (a leftist group named after seven Latinos who had been charged with killing a policeman). Francisco had been harassed by police for passing out the organization’s newspaper, Basta Ya (Enough Already!). I took Dee Reid’s call and agreed to go to the jail and interview this bank robber.

The loud, harsh clanking of the steel doors, the stink of food and sweat—I was entering San Francisco County Jail, where federal prisoners were held in custody. Steven and I met in one of the tiny, airless rooms set aside for lawyer-client conferences. Steven was both mistrustful and happy. He didn’t know me or Dee Reid, but he sure needed a lawyer and didn’t want a public defender. We went over the facts briefly. I agreed to take the case, hoping I could get the federal magistrate to appoint me so I could get paid. I told him I’d meet him at the bail hearing and would get some references from people at Sacred Heart and the Urban League. He said that the teachers at the Malcolm X School would not talk to a white lawyer they didn’t know without him first paving the way.

As I left the jail I had no idea how I would fight the case. He had been caught red-handed. So I focused on the bail hearing and two days later persuaded the magistrate to release Steven on his own recognizance.

Over the next two months I got to know Steven and Elaine. As I learned of Steven’s life, a plan began to form in my mind. I did not call it a black rage defense, but I did believe I could fit together three elements: Steven’s personal life history, what it means to be black in America, and the law of temporary insanity. I grew more and more excited. I read Black Rage by black psychiatrists William Grier and Price Cobbs. I reread Wretched of the Earth by Algerian psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. These books have a common theme: Oppressed people fill with rage, which they turn upon themselves, causing mental illness and crime.

I knew that rhetoric alone would not persuade a jury. Yet the truth of these books, written by men who had examined and treated hundreds of people, could not be denied. There was a link between social existence and acts of criminality. There was a nexus between racism and crime. Steven Robinson had broken the law, but he was not a criminal. He was not classically insane, either, but his mental state at the time of the crime could fit within the then prevailing definition of temporary legal insanity. I felt I had a defense. Steven didn’t agree.

“How many jury trials have you had?” Steven asked me on April Fools’ Day.

“None,” I replied, “but I spent a year as a law clerk for Federal Judge Alfonso Zirpoli, and I watched lots of trials and discussed and dissected them with the judge.”

“How old are you, Paul?”

“I’m twenty-eight, but I won my practice trial in law school at Berkeley, and I’ve won both judge trials I had in federal court.”

“Do you know anyone who has done the kind of defense you are suggesting?” Steven asked.

“No, but Clarence Darrow brought the reality of racism into court when defending Henry Sweet, who shot into a mob outside his house. And Charles Garry did the same when defending Black Panther Huey Newton for shooting a cop. Of course, those were self-defense cases. This is different.”

“It’s too different—it wont work,” said Steven.

And then he left. He really left. In twenty-eight years of practice, Steven Robinson is the only client I’ve ever represented who jumped bail.

Six weeks later Steven was arrested in Savannah, Georgia. He and a friend had been stopped for a traffic violation. When the police found a gun in the car, they ran a warrant check and found out that Steven was a federal fugitive. He was returned to San Francisco County Jail, where I once again sat with him in the small, airless interviewing room. Steven was depressed and could not be consoled. He had no hope; he just wanted to plead guilty and do his five years in prison. A black rage defense was the furthest thing from his mind.

A few days later I walked through the long Kafkaesque hallways of the federal building on my way to court. I could not help but recognize that in this hallowed building of the law, all eight judges were white, all the U.S. attorneys were white, all the federal public defenders were white, all the probation officers, bailiffs, law clerks, and secretaries were white. Everyone was white except the defendant.

We stood in court facing U.S. District Court Judge Stanley A. Weigel.¹ Judge Weigel was a liberal in matters of civil liberties and civil rights, but he was strict with criminals and even stricter with lawyers. He was an intelligent and thorough jurist. His Yale law clerks read every motion and brief and prepared detailed memos for him. A lawyer had to be completely prepared when appearing before him. He also had a reputation for running a dictatorial courtroom. He would fine a lawyer for the violation of any one of over a hundred technical, local court rules. At times, he would lash out at attorneys, humiliating them in open court. One lawyer I knew often threw up before working a trial at which Judge Weigel presided. But you could rely on him to give a defendant a fair trial.

The judge began to take Stevens guilty plea: “You know you have a right to remain silent and not incriminate yourself,” he said. “Do you waive that right?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Steven.

“You have a right to call witnesses in your behalf. Do you waive that right?”

Yes, I do.

“You have a right to confront and, through your lawyer, cross-examine all witnesses. Do you waive that right?”

Yes, I do.”

“You have a right to a jury trial, a jury of your peers. Do you understand that right?”

“If I had a jury of my peers, I would be found not guilty,” replied Steven.

There was a pause as the judge stared at the defendant. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“If I had twelve people who were really my peers they would understand my action,” Steven answered.

The Judge leaned forward, his eyes piercing into mine. “This is not a guilty plea. Counsel, I thought you told the court this was a guilty plea?”

I had been taken completely off guard by Steven’s statements. I quickly asked for some time to confer with my client. The judge motioned to the U.S. marshals. “Take the defendant and his lawyer, and put them in the holding cell until they straighten things out.”

For half an hour Steven and I sat in the cell behind the courtroom as once again I explained my idea of a political, psychiatric defense. Once again he refused, feeling it was hopeless. He said he would plead guilty and answer all the judge’s questions the way the judge expected. We returned to court and went through the litany of rights one waives when one pleads guilty. But when the judge got to the part about a jury of peers, there was only silence. Then Steven spoke out clearly and strongly. “If I had a jury made up of people from Ellis and Fillmore Streets I would be found not guilty!”

Judge Weigel was seconds from exploding. “This is not a guilty plea. I refuse to accept the plea. You are going to trial!”

At the time, none of us expected that a new defense would be the consequence of Steven’s pride and stubborn refusal to accept the legitimacy of a white legal system.

The next month was a busy one. My second child, Jamie Carmen, was born, and two weeks later I had my first jury trial, four counts of post office embezzlement. The assistant U.S. attorney and the postal inspector were sure of conviction, but the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty on the first two counts and was divided on the remaining two counts. When Steven heard the news, he seemed to relax; maybe his young lawyer did know what he was doing.

Our law collective had a summer program in which five law students, including one from back East, worked in the office. We couldn’t pay them, but we offered involvement in every aspect of the cases. Two of the students, Willie Phillips and George Colbert, attended Hastings Law School in San Francisco. There were more than three hundred students in their graduating class, yet they were two of only six African Americans. They wanted to work on Steven’s case, so we sat down and started to divide tasks. Since Steven was in custody we needed to have as much contact with him as possible. I obtained a judicial order allowing Willie to visit him in jail. George began to do the investigation, including trying to get an interview with the bank manager. We brainstormed. Was it possible to explain the life of Steven Robinson to what would probably be an all-white jury? Was it possible to make this robbery a political case in the broadest sense—that is, bring political reality into the vast, intimidating federal courtroom? Our instincts told us yes. We began to mold our idealism into legal strategy.

Lucy Harris, my wife, had some background in psychology. She went through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (second edition), the official publication of the American Psychiatric Association, and found a mental condition called transient situational disturbance.² It seemed accurately to describe Steven’s actions: a temporary “cracking up” caused by situational stress. The psychiatrist who had been referred to us by Price Cobbs, coauthor of Black Rage, agreed to examine Steven. His conclusion was that Steven’s robbery of the bank was a result of a transient situational disturbance. The pieces were falling into place.

I sat with Steven and tried to get him to remember everything he could about that fateful morning of January 22. He could vividly remember the faces of the unemployed men hanging out in the tiny park. He remembered going into the bank and stuffing the cash into the pillowcase. He remembered the crushing baton across his throat, squeezing out the air. He recalled walking out of the bank, seeing the crowd, tasting the blood dripping from his nose into his mouth. He remembered saying something about lots of money in the bank and poor children in the neighborhood. He could not remember much else. And he could not explain why he robbed the bank. By now it was eight o’clock at night and I had to get home to my family. As the deputy led him back to his cell, Steven asked me to call his wife and daughter.

That night, I laid down with my two-year-old son Josh and told him a story about our family dragon until he fell asleep. I tucked in my new daughter, said good night to my wife, and opened the investigation file George had given me. Why had Steven robbed the bank? Had he intended to get money for a doctor for Kamisha? Had he intended to get money for the children at the Malcolm X School? I was asking the wrong questions. Steven had not made a rational decision to commit the crime. He had no conscious intent; he was driven into the bank. The question to be asked was: How had life shaped Steven to compel him toward this criminal action? How had his unique individual experience interacted with the racism of our society to produce this explosion? I had to understand his experience if I hoped to help a jury, one composed not of his peers, to understand his actions.

I began reading George’s thorough interview with the bank manager, Mr. Hanston. Steven had pulled his unloaded gun on an employee of the bank, twisted his arm behind his back, and forced him behind the tellers’ windows. He told Hanston that if he moved he would blow a hole in the employee’s back. At the same time, as the police arrived in the bank, an FBI agent telephoned. Hanston told the agent that the police were wrestling with the robber, and the agent said, “Why don’t they just shoot him?” Yet for all this violence, the bank manager felt that Steven didn’t want to hurt anyone, and that he seemed to be “a very proud man.”

Suddenly something jumped out at me. Hanston said he thought the robber “must be crazy to stay here so long and to take this much time going through each drawer, he was going to be caught for sure.” I reread this quote from George’s report, and I began to think it was strange that Steven had robbed the same bank he used to cash his occasional checks. Wouldn’t they recognize him? And how did he think he was going to get away? He had no car, and the bank was right in the middle of an area frequently patrolled by the police. Maybe the robbery was a cry for help. unable to get a job, Unable to get a job, unable to care for his family, too proud to accept welfare—was this Stevens unconscious way of reaching out? Certainly, that was something a jury could understand. But first I had to spend more time with Steven. I had to discover the motivating forces in his life.

The first day of trial is always nerve-racking. There is an initial jockeying for position between the prosecutor and the defense lawyer, and between the judge and the defense. This power struggle continues throughout the trial. The judge controls the courtroom, but the lawyer must carve out space in which to put forth his arguments. If he fails to achieve this, the dynamics of the courtroom will crush the defendant.

You walk into court with your stomach churning and adrenalin surging through your body. You have to control the wild forces, focus your energy and not give in to the fear that your mistakes will send your client to prison. The two most traumatic moments in a trial are at the beginning and at the end. At the end you and the defendant stand as the verdict is read and his fate decided. At the beginning, after voir dire (the questioning of the jury), the twelve actual jurors are accepted. At this precise instant, you realize you are stuck. The trial has begun. Everything you have prepared for has become real.

Steven and I looked at the twelve jurors. Eleven whites, one Latino, one under thirty, no one from the Fillmore. The one potential black juror had been dismissed by the prosecutor, John Milano. Milano was one of the two top criminal trial lawyers in the United States Attorney’s office. He was experienced, skilled, and had a killer instinct. Judge Weigel surveyed his courtroom and invited opening statements.

Our strategy was to communicate the black experience to the judge and jurors. First, we needed to reduce the overwhelming whiteness of the courtroom, the white judge, jurors, lawyers, FBI agent, U.S. marshals, bailiff, calendar clerk, law clerk, and court reporter. I obtained permission for the two black law students to sit at counsel table, since they were working on the case. And we also had the students from the Malcolm X School attend the daily court sessions. The students and their teachers filled half of the courtroom’s large seating capacity. As part of our strategy I ended my opening statement with these words: “Whether you find Steven Robinson guilty or not guilty, we hope that at the end of this trial you will have begun to understand the intensity and the profound nature of the black experience in America and Steven Robinsons reaction to that experience.”

After opening statements there were five segments to the trial. First, the witnesses from the bank and the police officers testified. This testimony was straightforward and not surprising, since we had admitted to the robbery in our opening statement. Our issue was not whether he had robbed the bank, but why he had done it.

Second, the two psychiatrists testified, one for the government and one for the defense. The psychiatrist called by the prosecution testified that Steven may have been in a “neurotic state of depression” but was not insane at the time of the crime. There were two flaws in his testimony. First, his definition of legal insanity was limited to psychoses. This was not the actual law, which was much broader. In 1971, the federal test of insanity was “a mental disease or defect which caused the person to not know the difference between right or wrong, or lack the substantial capacity to conform his conduct to law.” A “mental disease” was not restricted to a psychotic condition.

The psychiatrist also admitted, under cross-examination, that he had never read Black Rage. This emphasized his second mistake—his denial that it was necessary to take racial environmental factors into consideration when diagnosing Steven Robinson.

The psychiatrist called by the defense wasn’t much better. It seemed that he had not read all the reports and documents with which we had provided him. Though he had been articulate and confident in his office, we felt his presentation on the witness stand was weak (an observation confirmed by the jurors with whom we spoke after the trial).

Fortunately, our strategy did not rely on psychiatric testimony. This is a mistake many lawyers make: hoping the expertise of the psychiatrist will persuade the jurors. In fact, “expert witnesses” on each side usually cancel each other out. Also, the psychiatric testimony often paints the defendant as so crazy that the jury cannot identify with the defendant and does not want to find him or her not guilty.

Expert witnesses, by virtue of their expertise, are allowed to state their opinions instead of sticking to observable facts. For example, a psychiatrist can give his opinion as to whether a person is suffering from a mental illness, or an orthopedist can give her opinion as to the cause of a fractured leg. In our case, however, we relied more on “lay witnesses,” that is, people who had observed facts relevant to the issues in the case. These lay witnesses were the third segment of the case. We called the veterans’ affairs coordinator from the Bay Area Urban League, who testified about his attempts to get Steven a job. Although we did not attempt to prove the pervasive job discrimination in the Bay Area, the impact of his testimony underlined the existing racism. We then called Elaine, who testified to the family’s illnesses, how her husband wouldn’t let her apply for welfare, and how strange he had acted during the week before the robbery. The last witness was Mr. Judge from Sacred Heart Parish, who testified to providing a food order for the family and to Steven’s obvious need to be the main supporter of his wife and child. These witnesses took no more than half a day of testimony. Jurors get bored sitting in those chairs all day long. We did not want to lecture them about racism; we did not want to create a classroom atmosphere. White people know there is discrimination. We didn’t feel we had to hit them over the head with what they already knew in their hearts. The idea was to get them to look into their hearts.

The fourth and most important segment of the trial took place when Steven took the stand. Cases are often won or lost by the defendant’s own testimony. Too many times a lawyer takes the credit for winning a case, but blames the client if he loses.

There are two different theories on how to relate to a client. The prevailing theory was put forth succinctly by my trial practice teacher in law school at Berkeley: Never explain the case to the client, because one of two things will result. The client will understand you and wonder why he is paying you so much for something so simple. Or he won’t understand you and therefore will waste your valuable time asking questions. Our law collective rejected this elitism. We were committed to demystifying the law and dignifying the client. This required the full participation of the person we represented. Yes, it took more time. But it was rewarding to see clients in crisis able to overcome their fears and anxieties, to help clients educate themselves about how the legal system actually worked, and to engage with them as partners in a joint effort to achieve some measure of justice. It was also more effective than having a client who felt isolated, alienated, and completely at the mercy of forces beyond his or her comprehension and control. An empowered client can offer a different point of view from the lawyer’s, who is often limited by his professionalism. And although 90 percent of the clients’ suggestions are inappropriate or useless, the other 10 percent are often gems that help win the case.

In Steven’s case, once he was encouraged to participate in his own defense he began to play an active role. He agreed with or deferred to our judgment in almost all decisions. But he had two points he felt very strongly about. First, he refused to blame racism for his crime. Second, he would not say he was “insane” at the time of the robbery. He would not use that word. Fortunately, we agreed with him.

Our strategy was to argue that racism is a major factor in the equation that causes a person to strike out. A different strategy is to blame racism for one’s predicament. The former has the potential to open people’s eyes to the powerful impact of environment. But the latter points the finger at others for one’s failings and results in closing people’s eyes to social reality. We chose the course that retained Steven’s dignity and pride, and rejected the course that led to pity and victimization.

Steven took the stand as our last witness. In a typical bank robbery trial, the issue is whether or not the defendant in fact robbed the bank. He may have the defense of alibi. For example, “I was in the park with friends at the time of the crime.” So, the dispute is whether he was in the bank or in the park. The defendant’s mental state is not an issue, nor are the factors that shaped his behavior. Therefore, no testimony is allowed as to the defendant’s social background. In a psychiatric case, however, the issue for the jury is whether or not the person who admits robbing the bank was suffering from a mental state that is considered insanity under the law. A person who was “insane” at the time he committed a crime is not considered morally responsible, because he did not have knowledge of the consequences of his behavior or was not in rational control of his behavior. In such a trial the entire life of the defendant becomes relevant because it has formed his mental state. Therefore, the psychiatrist and Steven were allowed to testify to Steven’s life experience.

Steven was born on the south side of Chicago in September 1941. His parents were divorced at an early age, and he lived with his mother and grandmother. He lived a life fairly typical of a black child in the ghetto on the south side of Chicago. His mother worked at various unskilled jobs, earning less than a dollar per hour. His grandmother cleaned white people’s homes as a domestic. For the first ten years of his life, Steven rarely saw his father. His uncle, however, took him to zoos, museums, and the ballgames. When Steven was ten years old, his uncle, the most important male in his life, whom he loved dearly, died of tuberculosis.

At fourteen Steven moved in with his father. As he grew older, people commented on how much he looked like his dad, and Steven identified with his father. His father, for all his harshness and discipline, cared deeply about Steven and loved him. But their poverty continued. They lived in hotels, always moving from one to another. They often had to live in slums infested with roaches and rats. Steven’s father, like so many black men, just could not provide economically for his family. Steven swore to himself that he would never fail his family like his father had.

After high school, Steven joined the Air Force, where he was an air policeman. He was honorably discharged and returned to Chicago, where he worked seriously on his music. He became involved with a community organization of musicians who played high-quality live jazz for free throughout the ghetto. Soon thereafter he moved to San Francisco and met Elaine and Kamisha, who were to become his wife and daughter.

Steven specifically testified to his wife’s and child’s illnesses and how his failure to afford a specialist affected him. He testified to walking the streets the night before the robbery and how he felt the next morning. He was not overly emotional. The only time he showed the depth of his feelings was when he said that the last month before the robbery was like experiencing water torture: “The drops of water were falling onto my forehead, one drop at a time, until I felt like I could no longer bear it.”

By the end of the direct examination, he had come across to the jury as the person he was, a man of quiet dignity who had temporarily cracked under pressure.

The cross-examination by the prosecutor was skilled and effective in showing that Steven understood the nature and consequences of his actions, but it did not shake our position that he was not in control of those actions. The one dramatic moment took place when the cross-examiner asked Steven if he thought he was insane at the time he robbed the bank. Steven, refusing to be stereotyped as a dangerous nut, said, “No, I was not crazy. But, I was not myself.”

Closing argument was scheduled for the following day. In modern courts lengthy orations are a rarity. Judges, particularly federal judges, strictly enforce time limits on attorneys. The lengthy O. J. Simpson case was an aberration. Most criminal trials resemble an assembly line, with the judge as foreperson, pushing the attorneys to finish the case as fast as possible so he or she can crank out another case. Judge Weigel warned us to keep our closing arguments under an hour. Actually, this was not unfair. In a week-long case—most criminal trials take less than a week—forty-five minutes to an hour and a half is usually plenty of time. The idea is to communicate with the jurors, not to bore them.

There are many goals of a closing argument. Among the most important is organizing the evidence into a coherent whole that supports your theory of the case—your explanation of why the evidence points to the innocence of the defendant. Passion is also a component of a closing argument, but it should be combined with logic and common sense. You have to make the jurors want to decide in your client’s favor. In Steven’s case I knew that I had to create a desire in them to find him not guilty. I also knew that I had to give them reasons to acquit. Both desire and rational arguments were essential so that when they went into the cauldron of the small, uncomfortable jury room, the jurors who wanted to acquit would have logical reasons to use in persuading the other jurors.

Preparing a closing argument is an exciting part of the trial experience. A good lawyer will have developed a theory of the case well before the trial begins. She will also be familiar with the prospective witnesses and their testimony and will have inspected the physical evidence. Therefore, she can and should write 70 percent of the closing argument before the trial begins. After the testimony ends in the actual trial, the attorney can finalize the argument, making changes consistent with how the evidence was presented and capturing the tone of the trial in argument.

That night, after my family was asleep, I sat down at the dining room table and put on my music tapes labeled “For Closing Argument” to energize and inspire me. I listened to Paul Robeson, the man after whom I was named, sing folk songs like “Joe Hill” and “The Warsaw Ghetto.” I played Jimmy Cliff’s reggae beats “The Harder They Come” and “Born to Win,” and George Winston’s version of Bach’s Jesu Joy of Mans Desiring. By midnight, I had finished writing the argument out on my yellow legal pad. Then I stood up and practiced delivering it aloud. The argument was a little less than an hour long. I delivered it aloud in its entirety two times, and at two o’clock in the morning I went to bed, so exhausted that sleep quickly overcame my adrenalin.

The next morning tension filled the courtroom. The bank robbery, Steven’s flight to Georgia, the attempted guilty plea, the two months of intense preparation, the week of witnesses and argument, the specter of five years in prison—all of the elements that make a criminal trial an authentic human drama came together the morning of closing arguments.

The U.S. attorney speaks twice; he goes first and last because in a criminal trial the state has the burden of proof. Sandwiched between his two speeches to the jury is the defense’s one chance to persuade them. The prosecutor, John Milano, was excellent. The essence of his argument was that the rational, calm acts of the defendant in robbing the bank were indicative of preparation, knowledge, and purposeful thought, not a sign of insanity.

Prosecutors will often try to influence the jury’s emotions by suggesting that if they acquit the defendant it will cause an increase in crime. The message is that they must find the individual defendant guilty in order to deter hordes of other criminals. This type of argument plays on the fears of the jurors and finds fertile ground in insanity cases. The prosecutor will tell the jurors that if they accept the logic of the defense, then all kinds of criminals will commit horrible crimes, claim insanity, and get off. This was just the kind of argument Van Buren made in the William Freeman trial. The U.S. attorney in Steven Robinson’s case took the same tack. He forcefully argued that if the jurors accepted the defense’s theory they would be exonerating all poor, angry, frustrated black men who rob banks.

Milano finished the first part of his closing and sat down next to the FBI agent.

Judge Weigel looked at me and said: “Mr. Harris, are you ready to proceed?” I had already stood up and was walking toward the jury box. I stood about six feet from the jurors and walked back and forth every once in a while as I talked to break up the monotony that comes with speaking to an audience for more than a few minutes. There are many outstanding speakers among trial lawyers, but few Sidney Poitiers or Richard Burtons. The idea is to be oneself, not to get lost in formal debating style. The idea is to communicate with those twelve people who are at the heart of our greatest democratic institution: the jury—twelve people chosen basically at random from the general community. Unlike many European systems where professionals trained in the law decide the case, the American jury consists of twelve lay people who are called upon and given the right to judge another human being.

I tried to speak to their common sense, logic, and compassion. “There is no such thing as ^cblack psychology/” I said. “In order to examine Steven Robinsons behavior, we look at three factors. One, basic psychological principles which apply to all people regardless of skin color. Two, the historical experience of black Americans. Three, the unique, individual life experience of Steven Robinson. We must merge all three in our attempt to explain the actions of Steven.

“In order to truly understand this case we must understand the concept of black manhood. The black family was attacked by slavery. This was no accident; there was a conscious decision to separate families and separate people from the same tribes. In modern times, unemployment, the difficulty that black men in particular have in obtaining and keeping jobs, continues to weaken the family. Black manhood consists of providing for one’s family, in succeeding in the outside world.³ It is grounded in self-respect and self-worth.

“Steven taught at the Malcolm X School. Why is Malcolm X such a hero in the black community? Let me quote to you from actor Ossie Davis’s eulogy at Malcolm X’s funeral: ‘Malcolm was a man! White folks do not need anybody to remind them that they are men. We do!. . . Protocol and common sense require that Negroes stand back and let the white man speak up for us. . . . But Malcolm said to hell with that! Get up off your knees and fight your own battles. That’s the way to win back your self respect!’”

I walked to the far end of the jury box and continued. “Of course, self-respect is important to all people. Of course, providing for one’s family is important to all of us regardless of the color of our skin. But for a black man, given America’s racial past, it is an essential part of his identity. It defines him.

“The prosecutor has argued that by finding Steven Robinson not guilty you let all black bank robbers go free. This case is not about all black men who rob banks. You are listening to the evidence of that man’s life who is sitting right over there. He is not a hypothetical person. He is real. People commit crimes for different reasons. Our defense is not a simplistic racial defense. You are sitting in judgment of one man, one individual.

“To some black men, the concepts of manhood and pride may not be crucial. But to Steven, it was the measuring stick of his life. Let’s look at the evidence. Steven was too proud to let Elaine go on welfare. He had too much self-respect to return to Sacred Heart Church for charity. Elaine was too sick to work. She borrowed money from her parents, but could not tell Steven. Look at his continual attempts to find work, going to the Urban League over thirty times to find potential job interviews.

“Let us look at the evidence of Steven’s relationship with his father. He loved his father so much. He identified with him, happy that people would comment on how much he looked like his dad. Yet he resented his father for leaving his mother and him and for never being able to provide for them. Remember how Steven, at thirteen years old, swore he would never fail to protect his family as his father had failed.

“Remember the bank manager’s testimony. When the police were taking Steven out of the bank, he asked Steven if he could get him anything as his nose was bleeding. And what did Steven reply? He said ‘No.’ Then he looked right at Mr. Hanston and said, A man has got to try!’

“It is impossible to understand Steven or his act of bank robbery without understanding this interplay of black manhood with Steven’s own personality.”

I took a deep breath and reminded myself to slow down. The court reporter had already interrupted me once, telling me I was talking too fast for her to take down my words. I spent the next fifteen to twenty minutes dissecting the testimony of both psychiatrists and relating it to what the judge would instruct them was the applicable law of insanity. I ended that part of the argument by putting up a poster on an easel from the Malcolm X School that had earlier been admitted into evidence. I had made a motion to allow the jury to visit the school to see the difficult conditions it operated under and which had contributed to Steven’s breakdown. Although the school was only eight blocks from the federal building, the judge had denied the motion. This was not considered a major trial, and judges almost never allow juries to visit crime scenes or any other relevant locations in regular trials. Even if a viewing would be helpful to the jury’s deliberations, judges feel it takes too much time. There is often more concern for the administration of justice than for justice itself.

As a compromise, Judge Weigel allowed me to introduce three photos of the school building and the poster into evidence. On the poster was a poem by one of America’s greatest poets, an African American named Langston Hughes. The poem was entitled “Raisin in the Sun.” I recited the poem to the jury:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

“On January 22, 1971,” I said, “Steven Robinson exploded, and that explosion propelled him into the bank!”

I was nearing the end. I discussed the evidence that pointed to a conclusion that the robbery was an unconscious cry for help. I explained “reasonable doubt” and told the jury that the government had the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Steven was not insane at the time of the bank robbery. I told them that the prosecutor had the last word, but asked them to please think about what I would say in response if I was allowed to answer his arguments.

I then paused, looked into the eyes of the two or three jurors we thought were the most favorably inclined toward Steven, and began my final comments. “We hope that this trial has given you a window into the black experience. Unlike some people, we believe that you can begin to understand what it means to be black in America. Steven does not want your sympathy. If you are persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the government has proved he was not temporarily insane at the time of the robbery, then find him guilty. Steven asks not for sympathy, but for empathy. Empathy is when you understand another person.

“Looking at all the evidence in this case, can you say that the prosecution has proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Steven Robinson was in rational control of his actions when he robbed that bank? Can you say that?”

I sat down, feeling as if all my energy had been sucked out of me. Steven gave me a small smile of support. After the prosecutor’s rebuttal the judge spent forty-five minutes reading the “jury instructions” to the jurors. These highly legalistic, formal rules are suppose to tell the jury how to apply the laws relevant to the facts of the case. Finally, when the jury instructions were over, the twelve people were led into the jury room. The case was now out of our control.

The jury deliberated for two days. Finally the jurors returned to the courtroom, Steven was brought down from the cells in the United States Marshal’s office and we all congregated for that anxious moment when the clerk reads the verdict. Those few minutes are painfully intense. I often have wondered why I go through this pain time after time. Then the clerk read the verdict: “Not guilty.” There was shocked silence on the prosecutor’s side of the courtroom and a profound, quiet joy on ours.

In 1971, federal law in almost all jurisdictions did not require that a defendant acquitted by reason of insanity be put in a mental institution unless there was evidence that he was dangerous to himself or society. Since Steven’s defense was based on temporary insanity, and there was no question that he was recovered, he should have walked out of the courtroom a free man. But he still had to face the charge for jumping bail, so he was taken back to jail. The judge set a date for a plea and sentencing on that charge in thirty days. Even this problem did not lessen his happiness, and the happiness of his wife and daughter.

The law students and I rushed to the elevator to try to get some feedback from the jurors. After a few minutes, I spoke to the young man who had held out so long for a guilty verdict. “Why did you change your vote?” I asked. The man replied, “Well, I wouldn’t have done what he did, but I can see how he felt he was backed up against the wall.” At that moment I knew we had broken through racial barriers. It was just one small case, with an unknown defendant and a young lawyer. But I felt that a foundation had been built for a defense that broke down racial walls by helping jurors understand another person’s life experience.

Thirty days later we were back in court on the felony charge of failure to appear. The prosecutor adamantly argued for substantial prison time, but the judge had been favorably affected by the evidence in the trial, the defendant’s testimony, and the jury verdict. The sentence was five years probation.

A few days later I called three of the jurors to find out what had taken place in their deliberations. They told me that the first vote was seven for guilty and five for not guilty. The foreperson, Susan Lowenstein, was one of those favoring acquittal. Lowenstein had been very moved by the trial, both intellectually and emotionally. She argued that Steven’s testimony showed his remorse and that the crime was inconsistent with his prior life. The second vote was seven for not guilty, four for guilty, and one undecided.

On the second day some racial issues came up that had not been part of the trial. For example, it turned out that eleven of the jurors were against busing in order to achieve integration. But Lowenstein kept the focus on the case itself. Many of the jurors accepted our theme that the robbery was a cry for help. The third jury poll was nine for not guilty, one for guilty, and two undecided.

The one holdout admitted that his mother was a bank teller and had been held up twice. Lowenstein pointed out that he had not told the lawyers this fact on voir dire, and that it sounded like he was biased. Shortly thereafter there was another poll, which was unanimous for acquittal.

Months after the acquittal, one of the arresting police officers vented his frustrations in a publication of the Police Officers’ Association. His article was picked up by a conservative columnist for a San Francisco newspaper. Under the heading “Caught Red-Handed” the columnist wrote, “The defense attorney argued that his client was innocent because of ‘diminished capacity’ caused by social pressures. These pressures seemed to be that he was black, out of a job and needed money. . . . He walked out a free man.” The columnist followed up with another piece in which he printed letters he had received from readers who were outraged at the acquittal and blamed the judge and jury. Neither of these columns mentioned “black rage.” I had felt it was presumptuous for a young white lawyer who had only completed two jury trials to give my defense a name, much less a name as controversial as “black rage.” But other lawyers who heard of the trial began to refer to it as the “black rage defense.”

I was a member of the National Lawyers Guild. One benefit of being active in an organization is that it puts you in touch with others in similar fields and spreads your ideas. The National Lawyers Guild began in 1937, partly as an integrated alternative to the racially segregated American Bar Association. The Guild had been a place for left and progressive lawyers, and by the time of the Steven Robinson case its membership included law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers. Many people in the organization were enthusiastic about the Robinson trial, and with their encouragement I spoke at law schools throughout the Bay Area, using the phrase “black rage defense.”

After completing two more black rage trials, I began to speak at a few legal education seminars and consult with other attorneys around the country. Very slowly, the concept of a black rage defense began to enter the country’s courtrooms and the legal literature.

Years later, a Hollywood screenwriter interviewed most of the participants in the trial and wrote a screenplay. By that time Steven had successfully completed his probation and had left the Bay Area. By refusing to plead guilty to a white legal system he had been a catalyst for a defense that challenged that very system.