Comments on Current Events In Criminal Law from the Federal Criminal Courts in Texas

October 01, 2007

THE MICHAEL VICK SAGA

A Criminal Defense Lawyers Perspective

Michael Vick and Don Imus. What do they have in common. Well, to begin with, soup for the goose, soup for the gander.

Both became well known public figures, celebrities of sorts – one as a highly proficient NFL quarterback and the other as a quasi shock-jock. Both used their special talents to become icons in their individual professions; both shocking and astonishing people inside and outside their respective media- driven careers with individual bad choices.

Then they both suffered an ignominious fall from public grace because of incredibly stupid personal behavior. Imus chose to refer on-the-air to the ladies of the Rutgers University basketball team as “nappy-headed ‘hoes” and Vick chose to fight dogs (pit bulls, mostly; some of whom were killed) and operate a gambling enterprise around this criminal enterprise.
But beyond these stupid personal choices, the two men enjoyed yet another bond – both were victims of orchestrated public outrage.

Some mainstream media commentators and sports-talk jocks have recently lamented about Vick’s fall from grace, pointing to the different public reactions to violence against animals as compared to violence against people. Good point, but a sidebar in the larger social/legal debate about Michael Vick.

It was organized African-American groups, especially Rev. Al Sharpton, who orchestrated public opinion against Imus and insisted upon having the “death penalty” imposed on his professional career. The shrill of his anti-Imus clamor was so loud, so emphatic that professional colleagues and personal friends quickly abandoned Imus. The weight of public opinion prompted major corporations to pull their advertising money from the coffers of both NBC and CBS who employed Imus. In a matter of days the radio/television personality was forced to walk out off the public stage in personal shame and professional disgrace.

The “Imus affair” was primarily a racial issue.

Most of the orchestrated public opposition against Michael Vick has been led by animal rights advocates, most of whom are white. While the “cruelty to animals” and “revulsion against dog-fighting” have been used as the social platform to wage the anti-Vick campaign, one can’t help but get the feeling that these concerned “white people” are actually disturbed by super rich African-American athletes who are constantly making “headlines” for violent behavior – murder, domestic violence, drug/gun possession, and gang affiliations. Their current vocal opposition against Michael Vick is reminiscent of the “Willie Horton” ads used in the George Bush/Michael Dukakis presidential election campaign in 1988. It appeals to base feelings of racism.

So it must also be said that the “Vick affair” is also a primarily racial issue.
There is a racial divide in this country. This racial divide was evident in the “Duke rape case” where African-American “activists” tried to transform an African-American nightclub stripper into a “working mom” just to get four middle/upper class “white boys” convicted for allegedly raping her. This racial divide was also evident, and continues to be evident, in the defeat of the McCain/Kennedy immigration reform bill and the political push to remove illegal aliens from this country.

Then there is that “animal rights” issue. Writing in the August 23, 2007 edition of the New York DAILY NEWS, Errol Louis wrote about this issue: “For the life of me, I can't understand why the public outrage surrounding Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick doesn't extend to other pro athletes and entertainers who would rather hurt people than dogs.

“If, as expected, Vick pleads guilty to conspiracy charges next Monday, he could wind up doing prison time, forfeiting tens of millions of dollars and perhaps ending his football career forever. “I have no problem with that. Vick is not the first man to face terrible consequences for whatever combination of folly, arrogance and pure evil led him to pour gasoline on his charmed life and carelessly strike the match. “But the parade of people and institutions condemning and shunning Vick have set a modern standard for selective outrage.”

Louis made an excellent point – one that was illustrated the following day when television’s Prison Break star Lane Garrison was sent to the California Institute for Men where he will serve 90 days for vehicular manslaughter. Last December Garrison was driving his Range Rover while drunk and killed a 17-year-old kid.

There are not enough killed pit bulls, no matter how inhumanely dispatched to “doggie heaven,” to compare to the single death of that 17-year-old kid. Yet Michael Vick, an African-American, will probably serve more time, and has certainly suffered more consequences in terms of public disgrace than Lane Garrison, who is white, will ever suffer.

It’s difficult ignore these racial comparisons so entwined in the “animal rights” issue.

And it is particularly difficult, as Errol Louis pointed out, to understand how an African-American “dog killer” can suffer greater social/legal consequences than a white “kid killer.”

But it was precisely these racial comparisons in the Michael Vick saga that awakened the social debate touched on by Louis: too many “concerned citizens” in this country have greater empathy for animals than they do for human beings. If the collective sorrow spawned by Barbaro’s dismise, the public concern triggered for the San Francisco “mother/child” lost whales, and the social outrage unleashed because of the dead pit bulls in the Vick saga could be transferred to putting computers in classrooms for disadvantaged children or preventing teen murders in Philadelphia, then the collective good of society would be better served.

So what about that goose/gander soup?

In December 2001 Anthony Garraway trained and fought pit bulls at his residence in the Town of Dickson and the Villiage of Endicott, New York. In January 2002 he was indicted for fifteen counts of prohibited animal fighting and six counts of animal cruelty. Following a trial by jury, Garraway was convicted and sentenced to a total indeterminate sentence of four years and ten months to eleven years imprisonment. See, People v. Garraway, 9 A.D.3d 506 (3d Dep’t 2004), leave to appeal denied, People v. Garraway, 817 N.E.2d 830 (N.Y. 2004).

The Garraway case did not even register on the social radar. Animal rights activists did not know the case existed. Even if they had, there was no political mileage in it because the case did not generate any media interest. Vick, on the other hand, is a subject of intense media interest – and those special interests groups that survive on media attention were inevitably drawn to the Vick saga like flies on manure. They could not resist the stink.

No matter whether one thinks it’s right or wrong, Michael Vick is going to suffer extraordinary consequences for his admitted wrongdoing because special interest groups have the ability through media-driven attention to not only shape but dictate public opinion – just as they did in the Imus and Duke rape-framed students case.

Dog-fighting is undeniably despicable but no more cruel than what is done to cattle at slaughterhouses or to the cute little monkeys at medical experimental laboratories. It can also be reasonably be argued that deer hunting, even big game hunting, is a cruel “blood sport.” In fact, there should be more social empathy for the deer than for pit bulls who are known to attack humans unprevoked, as evidenced by the recent attack on a sleeping woman in her bedroom by two pits bulls who broke into her house and unmercifully tried to kill her.

The Michael Vick case begs a rational perspective. He did not have Rin Tin Tin fighting Lassie to the death. He was fighting dogs bred to kill, anything – other dogs, a child in a backyard, or a helpless old lady trying to get her mail. Granted, it’s against the law – and Michael Vick should be punished for the same reason (and no other) that Anthony Garraway was punished. Michael Vick certainly should not be punished because some pseudo-intellectual notion tries to compare a pit bull bred to kill to a neighborhood “pooch.”

But even more to the point, Michael Vick should not be punished because he is a celebrity athlete, a multi-millionaire, or an African-American who parlayed special physical talents into superstar status.

Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.”

That Wolfean axiom always prevails when special interest, especially those motivated by a racial agenda, inserts itself into the nation’s criminal justice system.

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