Next June 14 will mark two years since Marc Wilson, in a fit of road rage, pulled out a gun and shot through the backglass of a truck full of teenagers, killing 17-year-old Haley Hutcheson. He fled, tried to cover up the crime, and, once discovered, told changing stories until, with the help of race-hustling attorneys Francys Johnson and Mawuli Davis, concocted a tale of racist White teenagers trying to run him, a black man, and his White girlfriend, off the road, whereupon he “stood his ground” and shot in self-defense. From the beginning, the defense has sought continuances for one reason and another, and even staged a courtroom contretemps that got Johnson found in contempt and, ultimately, got the original judge recused from the case. This last continuance — to August 22 — will hopefully be the last.
As has become the norm in this country, the defense in this case is trying to use race to pervert the criminal justice system. They are trying to taint the jury pool and intimidate the court by claiming that Judge Ronald Thompson’s denial of immunity to prosecution to Wilson on the grounds of self-defense was racially motivated. They are trying to put the victims on trial by attacking their character. Ever since the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles thirty years ago, the threat of black riots in response to an unwanted jury verdict has been an extortion ploy used by race-hustling attorneys to intimidate juries. Ever since the O.J. Simpson trial twenty-seven years ago, also in Los Angeles, black jurors using the criminal justice system to acquit patently guilty black defendants has become a real threat.
There are lessons in all this to be heeded by District Attorney Daphne Totten and her prosecution team as the Marc Wilson trial approaches. There will be jurors, particularly black jurors, who will lie on their questionnaires and during voir dire to get on the jury to, at least, hang the jury. Johnson, Davis, and their buddy black activist James Woodall will try to stage protests and bring in big-name race hustlers to intimidate the jury and the court. Mrs. Totten and her assistants will have to deal with jury selection, but, rest assured, the local militiamen and their confederates will be on the ready to thwart any efforts at intimidation.
It is time for the court, the prosecutors, and the people of Bulloch County to stand firm against the race hustlers, and make sure that these vermin do not use race to get a cowardly, back-shooting murderer off.
Vigilance and fortitude, friends and neighbors. Statesboro is not Los Angeles, and these slimy race hustlers are going to find that out.