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Jury awards $9 million in Texas beating case
LINDEN, Texas — A jury awarded $9 million to a black man who suffered permanent brain damage after being beaten and dumped in a field by four white men in 2003.
Billy Ray Johnson, 46, lives in a nursing home because of the injuries he suffered in the beating. In the criminal case, the men accused of assaulting him were fined and sentenced to probation and jail time, but none served more than 60 days behind bars.
In a four-day civil trial in District Court that ended last Friday, jurors found James Cory Hicks and Christopher Colt Amox responsible for Johnson’s injuries. Defendants Dallas Chadwick Stone and John Wesley Owens previously reached confidential settlements, attorneys said.
A jury of 11 whites and one black deliberated less than four hours before returning a unanimous verdict, said attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of Johnson.
“The jury told all of Texas and, indeed, the entire country, that Billy Ray is a human being who deserves to be treated with dignity — that the life of each of us … is truly precious,” said Morris Dees, founder and chief trial attorney for the Montgomery, Ala.-based law center.
Authorities in this poor, pine-locked east Texas hamlet had said that Johnson, well-known around town as a friendly but “slow” character, was lured to an all-white party where underage drinkers fed him alcohol and picked on him.
Authorities said Johnson, was taunted for the defendants’ amusement. He was found unconscious on an ant mound and had suffered a serious concussion and bleeding in the brain.
Jurors in the criminal cases against Amox and Hicks acquitted them of felony charges, instead convicting them of a lesser charge and recommending probation. Stone and Owens pleaded guilty to an “injury to a disabled individual by omission” charge.
Cherokees, federal agency in dispute over legality of vote
TULSA, Okla. — A recent vote by the Cherokee Nation to revoke the membership of descendants of freed slaves might not have been legal, according to the leader of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
The tribe disagrees with that assessment, however. A tribal spokesman predicted that Congress will reject an effort by one of its members to stop the tribe from receiving federal funds, the Tulsa World reported from its Washington bureau.
The two sides are debating the tribe’s right to enforce a 2003 tribal constitutional amendment and its March 3 vote to remove the descendants of the tribe’s freed slaves, known as freedmen, from tribal rolls.
Carl Artman, who heads the BIA, told U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., in a letter that the U.S. Interior Secretary must approve the 2003 amendment before it can take legal effect. The letter also said the BIA has taken no action on the March vote.
“We are concerned about the ramifications this will have on the Freedmen of the Cherokee Nation and will continue our careful evaluation of all facets of this matter,” Artman wrote in the letter, which came in response to an earlier letter from Watson and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who have called the Cherokees’ vote discriminatory.
A spokesman for Watson said the congresswoman is drafting a bill to keep the Cherokee Nation from receiving millions of dollars in federal funds. She wants the BIA to require the tribe to restore citizenship to the freedmen descendants.
Cherokee Nation spokesman Mike Miller said only the tribe, and not the BIA, can determine the requirements for tribal citizenship.
“The Cherokee people have fought for centuries to preserve our rights of self-governance, through forced relocation, genocide and outright land theft,” Miller said.
Miller said the March vote was not racial in nature.
“We proudly count African American Cherokees among our citizens,” he said.
British police group backs affirmative action to meet ethnic, gender targets
LONDON — Britain won’t meet its goals for adding more women and ethnic minorities to its police service for another 20 years unless it gives preference to potential recruits from those categories, senior law enforcement officials say.
The Association of Chief Police Officers, an independent body of senior police officials from England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said last Thursday that unless the law was changed to give priority to women and minority applicants, the government’s goal of a workforce comprised of 7 percent ethnic minorities and 35 percent females would not be met for another two decades.
While British law allows for so-called “positive action” — such as recruitment drives aimed at women or minorities — affirmative action is illegal in Britain. The only exception is in Northern Ireland, where Catholic applicants are offered preferential treatment in an attempt to make the force reflect the religious background of the whole population.
The association said that without affirmative action, raising the proportion of minority officers from 4.5 percent to 7 percent in two years would be difficult because low turnover made hiring new applicants difficult.
“The Police Service is almost unique in that most police officers serve for 30 years with the same employer,” the association said in a statement. “This means it takes a long time for the overall percentage of women and ethnic minorities to rise.”
Britain’s Home Office said it didn’t support the association’s proposals, and that under current legislation, discrimination of any kind was against the law.
“We support forces taking positive action to increase the number of recruits within existing legislation, but affirmative action is illegal,” a Home Office spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.
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