American Violet

The Hearne, Texas Chamber of Commerce website describes Hearne as a “people friendly town of 4,690, in Robertson County” offering “an opportunity to escape the hustle and bustle of the big city and enjoy Hearne’s peaceful, small town charm.” American Violet, a film released earlier this year, powerfully challenges that quaint description in its depiction of the story of Dee Roberts in the fictional town of Melody. Although the film is not a documentary, it is based on the real life experiences of Regina Kelly who was arrested in Hearne.

American Violet follows the legal battle and its effects on the life of a young, single mother of four who is falsely arrested as part of a mass drug raid targeting poor African-Americans in a small town in Texas. It is based on the real life experiences of Regina Kelly who was arrested in such a raid in Hearne. Regina Kelly explains what happened to her:

As I was getting ready to start my second shift as a waitress in a diner, the police showed up to arrest me. After 17 hours of waiting in a cold cell, unaware of why I was arrested, I was permitted to face a judge who then told me that I was being charged with the delivery of a controlled substance in a “drug free school zone.” My bond was set at $70,000. In order to be released and sent home to my children, I was given one option: plead guilty and accept 10 years of probation. But since I was convinced that a mistake was made and that they were looking for someone else, I refused to plead guilty to something I was innocent of. I figured I would just have to wait it out until they discovered their mistake.

What I later found out is that there was no mistake in their minds. They had the person they were looking for, and after several weeks in jail, my life was put into the hands of a court appointed attorney and a possibility of facing up to 99 years in prison. Over the past 9 years, my life has never been the same. Although somewhat victorious, I found out that what happened to me has, and is still happening, to people all over this country–many not as lucky as myself, and thousands locked up in prison for the rest of their lives.

American Violet clearly depicts an inherently flawed system. Rather than being a justice system, the legal system which Dee Roberts is put through is a tangled web of conflicts of interest and unethical behavior concentrating power in the hands of those perpetrating abuse upon those who have little recourse. At the time of the raid, Texas law permitted indictments based on the word of a single informant. That informant was easily found- or more accurately, created- through threats and physical abuse. That informant named others- as instructed by the district attorney- who were then arrested in a military-style raid. The individuals were targeted not based on evidence of criminal activity, but rather on race and economic status. Once these individuals were indicted, they were appointed public defenders because they could not afford to hire legal representation. They were then offered a seductively “easy” out- plead guilty, get probation, and get out of jail the same day- in exchange for complying with the system. Fighting back brought down the wrath of the district attorney upon a defendant. And with the good ol’ boys network of public defender, district attorney, cops and judge running the show, the odds were heavily stacked against anyone who chose to pursue justice through the legal process instead of taking the plea.

The cycle of abuse is perpetuated in part because those who have taken pleas become ineligible to vote. Screenwriter Bill Haney made this observation in an April 2009 interview:

There is a curious coincidence in the Jim Crow laws being overturned in the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and then Nixon declaring the “war on drugs” shortly thereafter. The number of incarcerations in 1971 was 200,000. Today it is 2.3 million.

There are 8 million Americans in the criminal justice system – either on probation, parole or in prison – it’s wildly disproportionate with people of color, people of low economic means and in the South.

And this have had tremendous voting implications. Almost 4 million Americans, because of their felony status, were not allowed to vote in the 2000 election, which we all know was decided by a few hanging chads. And even in the most recent 2008 election, there were 5 million disenfranchised voters.

A skeptical person would think there was a correlation – that the use of the drugs laws were in place to create systemic voter disenfranchisement. That idea was shocking to me as a American.

The abusive system was further perpetuated by the incentive structure set up by an $800 million federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program. Radley Balko explains how it worked:

Like the series of wrongful drug arrests in Tulia, Texas, the Hearne scandal was largely attributable to the federal Byrne Grant program, which not only creates the unaccountable, multi-jurisdictional drug task forces like those responsible for Hearne and Tulia, but then also sets artificial, improper incentives by tying future funding to the number of arrests and drug seizures a task force makes. Oddly enough, the Bush administration actually phased out Byrne Grants. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are bringing them back.

Regina’s story absolutely blows me away every time I think about it. By steadfastly maintaining her innocence, she risked everything she had including her personal safety, her freedom, and her four little girls. And in addition to refusing to take a plea bargain, Regina Kelly was the lead plaintiff in a civil suit filed with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a Baylor University law professor, and a local area attorney on behalf of fifteen Hearne residents arrested in the raid.

A 2002 ACLU press release explains the complaint:

The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a class action lawsuit charging racial discrimination in an undercover drug bust that led to the arrest of 15 percent of African-American men between the ages of 18 and 34 in Hearne, a rural community of 5,000 in eastern Texas.

“Our clients have experienced a gross miscarriage of justice,” said Graham Boyd, Director of the ACLU’s Drug Policy Litigation Project and lead attorney in the case. “The arrests were based on nothing more than the word of an informant who had no history of reliability and who was himself facing serious criminal charges.”

Regina Kelly v. John Paschall, was filed on behalf of 15 African-American residents of Hearne who were indicted in November 2000 on drug charges after being rounded up in a series of unlawful paramilitary drug “sweeps.” The case closely resembles the notorious 1999 drug bust scandal in nearby Tulia, where 45 people — all but three of them African-American — were arrested and indicted on bogus drug charges. According to the ACLU’s complaint, “for the past 15 years, based on the uncorroborated tales of informants, Task Force members annually raid the African American community in eastern Hearne to arrest the residents identified by the confidential informants, resulting in the arrest and harassment of innocent citizens without cause.”

I was inspired by the story to check around a bit and find out more about what really happened and the aftermath for those involved. I learned that the other plaintiffs named in the civil complaint included a man arrested at the funeral of his 18-month-old daughter and several people with timecards and witnesses verifying that they were at work at the time they were alleged to have been participating in drug deals.

Although the same district attorney is still in office, the mass drug roundups in Hearne have stopped. Texas law has since been changed such that cases can no longer be prosecuted on the word of only a single confidential informant.

The arrest is still on Regina’s record even though the charges against her were eventually dropped. In one video I saw and unfortunately can no longer find, she explained that she could not get a job in Hearne even after the charges were dropped and the civil suit was settled because employers were concerned that if they hired her, they would suddenly come under close scrutiny and pressure from the district attorney and cronies who are still in power. She finally moved away from Hearne earlier this year.

A local business owner in Hearne told the Texas chapter of the ACLU what happened to him when he put up a poster in his business advertising the first screening of the film which took place in Hearne, TX:

Being a coffee shop kind of a place- a cafe- we like to think of ourselves as a neutral zone so to speak, and just about everybody who’s come in here wanting to put up something… we say go ahead… I object to an officer coming in to my place of business in uniform and pressuring me, to, uh, that I shouldn’t have that poster there.

This fine gentleman refused to take the poster down.

The District Attorney has said that the prospects of him viewing the film are slim: “I’d have to be handcuffed, tied to a chair and you’d have to tape my eyes open.”

American Violet has made the rounds on the movie festival circuit including such venues as the Telluride Film Festival and South by Southwest, and it was screened this past spring at a few theaters in major cities across the United States. Sadly my repeated suggestions that it be shown at a local theater in Missoula, MT fell on deaf ears. The movie was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in October and is available through Netflix and on iTunes. Also in October, Regina Kelly was honored at a special ceremony in New York with the Baldwin Medal of Liberty from the ACLU.

I highly recommend getting a copy of it, viewing it, and sharing it with your family and friends. I believe this film will give even the most hardened Drug War supporters some food for thought. Then consider dropping District Attorney Paschall a note that you saw the film and are passing it around. If the film was so objectionable to Mr. Paschall- who hasn’t even seen it- that his henchmen are sent to pressure people under color of legal authority to get posters advertising it pulled down, then it has probably done something very, very right.