In a street fight, you get street justice

IT IS NOT a crime to hate black people.

Let's get that out of the way from the start. It might be morally reprehensible, as would any bigotry based on race, creed, color or any number of factors. It might even have been called a sin, back in the days when we had sin.

But it isn't a crime. And the disturbing thing about Jacob Tyler Fortney and the other white men accused of killing Noah Jamahl Jones is that some folks believe that they hated black people, and they wanted them prosecuted for that -- not for what happened on the night of July 24, 2005.

That was the night Jones lay dying on a Pasadena street after a brawl involving him, three of his black friends and six white guys, including Fortney. The incident happened outside a house where a party was being held. Also in Fortney's group was Joshua David Bradley, who had charges against him dropped after he agreed to testify against Fortney, who was acquitted Thursday.

Scott E. Burton Jr., Gregory M. Florentino, David Michael George and Richard Elbert McLeod are the remaining defendants accused of manslaughter in Jones' death. In light of Fortney's acquittal, it's uncertain whether cases against them will proceed.

If they do, can they please be based on what happened the night of July 24, 2004, and not anything else?

Probably not, if some folks have their way. The issue of race hovered over Fortney's trial from Day 1. Race has been mentioned as a motive since the night Jones died. Some black leaders in Anne Arundel County asked for a Justice Department investigation to determine if a hate crime had been committed.

Activist Carl O. Snowden, who is also an aide to Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens, is one of the people who believe race was involved.

"The Justice Department's responsibility is to see if race played a factor," Snowden said yesterday. "Nobody can say with a certainty whether race played a major factor because the Justice Department hasn't investigated yet. Jones' family felt race was a factor based on prior events which led up to that night."

Snowden said some of those events included racially motivated fights between friends of Jones and members of the group comprising Fortney, Bradley, Burton, Florentino, George and McLeod. Snowden, who said he attended the trial, recalled that Jahlil Best, a black guest at the party, testified that he went into the home of Michael Steinbach after seeing the Fortney group arrive and that Best knew they "had a reputation of not liking black people."

Snowden pointed to other racial factors not related to the events of July 24, 2004. The jury was all-white with two black alternates who both said they would have voted differently than the jurors who opted to acquit Fortney.

"I think that suggests the makeup of the jury may affect the type of justice you get," Snowden said. "A more diverse jury may have made a difference. Anybody who suggests that race doesn't play a factor in this case doesn't live in the 21st century."

But jurors are charged to give verdicts based on the facts of the case. In Jones' death, the salient facts are what happened the night of July 24, 2004. Not what happened before. And what happened was that Jones went to Steinbach's home with three others, including Marion Shepherd. If anybody bears some responsibility for what happened to Jones, it's Shepherd.

Shepherd pistol-whipped Steinbach, which set off the brawl. Once that happened, any speculation about the motives of Fortney -- or Bradley or the four others -- became moot. I asked Snowden if Shepherd's actions weaken the case for any racial motivation on the part of the six white men.

"It could," he said. "But here's what I would say to you: I don't think if you had a reverse situation where you had six black defendants who had allegedly beaten a white person to death that nobody would have been held accountable. Somebody can be held criminally responsible for what happened that night."

That's going to be difficult. What happened that night sounds like what happened the night that friends and associates of Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis got into a brawl in which two men were fatally stabbed in Atlanta. Everybody involved in that fracas was black, so there was no race angle to muddle things.

But based on the testimony of prosecution witnesses who were friends of the men killed, it was the so-called victims who started the fight, not members of Lewis' party. What I said then applies now: When people engage in street fights that might leave somebody dead, sometimes street justice is all the victim ever gets.

Related topic galleries: Riots, Defense, Firearms, Laws, Defendants, Murder, Ray Lewis

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