Editorials
Prater Consistently on Right Track
Prosecutor Merits Community’s Strong Support
Oklahoma County District David Prater, having won election by a large margin about four years ago, has consistently been on the right track as he has gone about doing his job, all the while stalwartly pursuing justice without bias or favor, as would some modern-day Eliot Ness.
The district attorney has courageously performed his job as his conscience has led him to do as he chose to prosecute for first-degree murder a pharmacist who shot and killed a young masked robber trying to hold up a local drug store.
The district attorney has charged (also with first-degree murder) the other young robber and the adult man and woman who prosecutors believe were behind the robbery and put the two teenagers up to the crime.
The pharmacist is white, and both robbers and others believed associated with the crime are Black.
District Attorney Prater has been lambasted from every conceivable side because he has seen fit to prosecute the pharmacist, with some of his critics saying that the district attorney should have left him alone, even though the prosecutor believes strongly that there is evidence that the pharmacist responded to the robbers with excessive force, if you will, since he shot the masked robber with a shotgun once in the head, felled him, pursued and fired at the other robber, and returned to the store, retrieved another gun, loaded it and then shot the felled robber five additional times in the chest and abdomen.
Interestingly, among those who were supportive of that decision to prosecute the pharmacist were many of those leaders in the Black community who now have chosen to blast District Attorney Prater for continuing to follow the same course after unveiling what he believes to have been ethical (and “corrupt”) violations committed by the judge in that case.
It seems clear to us (and should seem clear to any other reasonably intelligent individual) that the prosecutor had good cause to ask that the judge (who happens to be Black) to step down from the case, and that the district attorney had sound reasons to say later that he had uncovered what he believes to have been improper conduct on the part of the judge, all of which led him to believe she would not have conducted a fair trial in the pharmacist case.
A source probably connected to the district attorney’s office followed up the judge’s removal from the case by saying the prosecutor is likely to file ethics complaints against the judge with the Oklahoma Bar Association.
Well, all of that was followed by reports that the judge, prosecutors believe, promised a defendant not connected to the pharmacist case who was scheduled to appear in her courtroom that she would not sentence him to any jail time, and also gave him the names of three defense attorneys, who, she allegedly said, knew how to operate in her courtroom (or something to that effect).
What is more is that one of the three defense attorneys the judge allegedly recommended just happened to be on the defense team of the pharmacist on trial for first-degree murder.
So, with all of that background information, what in Heaven’s name were that small group of mostly preachers and self-declared “leaders” talking about on Friday when they gathered to pose and posture and pontificate for media cameras?
Basically, they confirmed that--as far as they’re concerned, the district attorney was “damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.”
On the one hand, those same preachers and so-called leaders had earlier applauded the district attorney for prosecuting the pharmacist, but, now, they were condemning him to someplace other than Heaven for daring to ask for the recusal of a judge who may have been on her way to favoring that pharmacist (for God knows what reasons!) in her court rulings, etc.
Of course, seemingly what always happens when such misguided people as these preacher-leaders get together in one place, they start making all kinds of idiotic racist accusations, and that leads to all kinds of bombastic and stupid threats (upon which they could not deliver if it ever came to that).
So, it came to past that Rev. John A. Reed Jr. was saying that he and the other “leaders” have their collective “eyes on” the district attorney, and, if he doesn’t behave, then they would cause the fires of Hell (presumably) to rain down upon him.
“It is in times like these that one sees who their true allies and true enemies are,” Rev. Reed pontificated, claiming that the prosecutor had somehow abused his power by asking the judge to step aside.
How idiotic!
How sad!
Rev. Reed and all the other preachers and wannabe leaders he managed to gather together for Friday’s news conference (many of whom have serious ethical issues about which practically everybody in the Black community are well aware) ought to be ashamed of themselves, but, apparently, they cannot be shamed.
Nevertheless, they are an aggregate embarrassment to the Black community, and succeeded with that news conference in eroding what semblance of credibility they might have had. So that, forevermore, perhaps the entire city will recognize them for what they truly are, and permanently place them in that proverbial dunce corner that bans these 24 preacher-leaders from ever again showing their faces in the arena of public comment and discourse.
At one point during this show of bravado and silliness, Anthony Douglas chimed in with the remark that, as state leader of a civil rights organization, he would be leading a demonstration to demand that the newly-named judge in the pharmacist case televise the court proceedings (something the judge who had removed herself planned to do).
P-L-E-A-S-E!
With that morsel of asininity, Mr. Douglas confirmed himself to be just about as unsuited for leadership as the ultimate misfit and foolish one: one Roosevelt Milton (who, as a “civil rights leader,” succeeded in getting himself summarily removed from his state leadership post by the national office of Mr. Douglas’ organization). (Somehow or another, people like Mr. Douglas will have to come to grips with an essential truth: everything is not about civil rights, and some things are about what IS right!)
Clearly, District Attorney Prater is a good man, and he did the right thing by prosecuting the pharmacist in this case. He did the right thing by charging the others involved in this robbery with first-degree murder. He did the right thing when he asked the pharmacist trial judge to step aside. If people like the self-declared leader-preachers will just keep their mouths shut and leave this prosecutor alone, he will continue to consistently pursue justice and do the right thing!
