Racism in Williamson County: How far have we come?

Georgetown, Texas (just up the Interstate from Austin) is very proud of the fact that in the 1920s, the local DA (and future governor), Dan Moody, led a successful murder prosecution against the KKK for what amounted to murder and organized crime. Several Klansmen were sent to the pen, and the event helped propel Moody to state office. In fact, Georgetown regularly performs the play "You Can't Do That, Dan Moody!" to celebrate this proud moment where white citizens finally stood up to the Klan. In fairness, the community's disgust with the Klan had more to do with their promotion of lawlessness and their killing of a white man than it did with a rejection of the Klan's position on racial superiority and threats to the black community.

The story makes for a nice whitewashing of the past, but the reality of racial dynamics in modern-day Williamson County is much more disturbing, much less noble, and frankly, repugnant. The prosecutor's office routinely gives much better offers to similarly situated white defendants than their black counterparts, based on a story that ran in the Austin Chronicle in September 2004. The reporter looked at two sets of defendants: 9 African Americans originally charged with distribution of crack cocaine in an alleged drug ring in Tyler and 2 White men arrested for their alleged involvement in separate methamphetamine manufacturing operations. The black defendants got harsh results: one defendant who had prior felonies received life in prison from a Wilco jury. The offers from John Bradley's DA office weren't better either: 50 years in prison for a 57 year old man, 5 years for a first time offender who sold .79 grams (less than a paper clip), and 15 months in state jail for another first timer for selling .12 grams (!!!!!).

Surprisingly (that's my tongue in my cheek there), the white defendants were made good deals. One defendant was charged with possessing with intent at least 400 grams of methamphetamine, had numerous firearms in his trailer at the time of arrest, and had what detectives called several apparently stolen trailers on his property. In an unrelated arrest, two other men were charged with possession of between 200-400 grams and were cooking when the cops showed up. Despite the fact that two of these guys had long rap sheets, they were offered 1deferred adjudication (a kind of pretrial probation) with 180 days in jail as a condition of the probation. (One defendant got 7 years in prison.)

I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about why these cases turned out differently, but would Dan Moody still be proud? Would he do that, John Bradley?