Disparate Times
Scene Magazine
Dan Harkins
July 30, 2008
This article describes the disparities in drug prosecutions in Cuyahoga County, and refers to Citizens for a Safe and Fair Cleveland, as well as Dr. Mona Lynch’s report on selective drug law enforcement in the county.
Back in September 2001, as the nation recoiled from mighty blows at the hands of foreigners, the Rev. Marvin McMickle was settling into his new role as foreperson of a county grand jury, the engine of indictment for serious crimes committed by our neighbors. What he discovered still haunts him to this day – a “21st-century scarlet letter” he’d suspected but didn’t want to believe still existed for many of those who share the color of his skin.
Watching a handful of grand juries operating at once, two days a week, each hearing about 60 cases a day, McMickle soon perceived a disparity: Around half the cases were against low-level drug offenders, almost all of whom were black. At a tour of the county jail at the beginning of his term, McMickle “had to work hard to find a white face” on the other side of the bars.
In his report at the end of his four-month term, the longtime pastor of historic Antioch Baptist Church on Cedar Road was the first civic leader in years to indict the system and its crapshoot of consequences.
“The grand jury process had an apartheid feel to it,” he wrote to Common Pleas Judge Richard McMonagle in February 2002, with an “established pattern of quick indictment of persons on petty drug offenses. I am not condoning drug use, drug possession or drug trafficking. What I am concerned about are the random stops by police for alleged questioning on a traffic violation, a pat down or search of the car that results in the discovery of some infinitesimal amount of drugs, and a quick arrest. The arrest often results in confiscation of property, and, more importantly, the creation of a felony criminal record and the implications that has for voting rights and job opportunities down the road.”