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7 ConLawNOW 1 (2015-2016)

handle is hein.journals/akjopal7 and id is 1 raw text is: 









             PURSUING PROCEDURAL JUSTICE:
          REFLECTIONS BY AN ATTORNEY IN THE
                      TAMIR RICE CASE


                         Walter Madison1

       On June 11, 2015, attorney Walter Madison successfully
       petitioned an Ohio municipal court to make a finding of
       probable cause to charge police officers for the death of
       twelve-year-old Tamir Rice. He recounts the process that led
       to that decision, and the broader social and personal context
       behind it.

     I am no more happy about race relations today than I was in 1976.
In the seventies, the Youngstown Steel Mill blast furnaces always had a
pure blue flame. At that time, my conscious was reflective of those
flames. I was a kid from across the tracks, attending an Italian-Catholic
grade school. My cousin and I were some of the first African-American
kids to ever attend. We were different. We were unaware. My Afro,
my style, my taste in music were all foreign to each of my classmates.
My classmates were strange fruit to me as well. The things they talked
about. The way they wore their hair. The way they worshiped in a
different language. I struggled with why I had to be there. I could not
understand why I had to wear that ugly uniform to school while all my
friends wore sneakers and walked a stone's throw to our neighborhood
school. Ignorance (black and white) set out to make me feel I neither
belonged in my neighborhood nor in my school house. I was not black
enough anymore for my own neighborhood, but too black for school. At
five years old, I learned the Black and White truth of life. Simply, there
were two different worlds that I just could not escape.
     My situation was tough. I remember being called a nigger each
day at school. It became easier to answer and respond to the racial slur
than my own name. I was afraid. I was physically unable to defend
myself from the meaning behind the word. In my neighborhood, I was


    1. J.D., The University of Akron School of Law; Attorney, Akron, Ohio,
htt1:/iwww.waltermadison.com.

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