The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 92, No. 161, Ed. 1 Tuesday, August 14, 2012 Page: 4 of 8
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Tuesday
August 14, 2012
Mysterious gunshot leads to many questions
Any time a suspect dies in
police custody, there's sure to be
trouble. As, indeed, there should
be. The mysterious death of
Chavis Carter, 21, of a gunshot
wound to the temple inside a
locked patrol car in Jonesboro,
Ark., was certain to attract out-
sized scrutiny from the news
media.
Even without the ever-com-
bustible racial angle - black vic-
tim, white cops - the Sherlock
Holmes aspect of the tragedy
Naturally aroused interest.
Briefly, Carter and two white
kids in a pickup truck with
Missouri plates struck local resi-
dents as suspicious, cruising
around with no headlights at
9:50 on a Sunday night.
Jonesboro officers responding
to a 911 call confirmed die iden-
tities of two of the three young
men by running their driver's
licenses. The identity of the
third, who had no ID but called
himself Larayan Bowman, could
not be verified. The others
claimed they'd met him only that
night.
After finding a small amount
of marijuana in “Bowman's”
pockets, officers placed him
unrestrained in the back seat of a
patrol car. After he admitted his
real name, they
determined that
there was a
bench warrant
for Chavis
C h a c o b i e
Carter's arrest
on a parole vio-
lation out of
DeSoto County,
Miss.
According to
the Memphis Commercial-
Appeal, Carter had failed to
comply with the terms of a drug-
diversion plan after pleading to a
single count of selling marijua-
na - hardly a one-man crime
GENE
LYONS
According to their written
report, officers took Carter out of
the patrol car, placed him under
arrest, searched him, handcuffed
his hands behind his back, and
then locked him inside with the
vehicle's windows tightly closed.
Several witnesses observed it all.
An aunt of Carter's arrived at the
scene, presumably summoned
by cellphone. Informed of the
charges, she drove off.
As the officers walked toward
the second patrol car to inter-
view the other suspects, the
report says, “I saw a vehicle
driving north on Haltom and
then heard a loud thump with a
metallic sound. I thought the
vehicle had ran over a piece of
metal on the roadway.” They
subsequently gave Carter's two
friends a warning, and allowed
them to drive away.
Only after returning to his unit
did one officer smell gun smoke,
and find Chavis Carter “in a sit-
ting position slumped forward
with his head in his lap. There
was a large amount of blood on
the front of his shirt, pants and
floor. His hands were still cuffed
behind his back.”
As Carter was still breathing,
officers called EMS, which took
the grievously wounded man to a
hospital where he died that night.
A subsequent search of the
patrol car found a .380 caliber
Cobra pistol - a cheaply-made,
semi-automatic weapon recently
reported stolen in town.
Admirably responsive to the
news media - local reporters say
they had a full report from the
Jonesboro PD on their desks first
thing Monday morning police
chief Michael Yates hasn't neces-
sarily helped himself by describ-
ing the tragedy as “bizarre” and
saying it “defies logic at first
glance.”
Because at second glance, the
Sherlock Holmes aspect of
Carter’s death strikes me as not
so mystifying at all. Analysis of
text messages on his cellphone
appear to indicate Carter had
carried a gun earlier that night.
It's common for suspects to ditch
contraband in the backs of patrol
cars; not uncommon for cheap
semi-automatic handguns to dis-
charge accidentally. As tempting
a storyline as it makes to suggest
otherwise, any reasonably agile
young man can do all kinds of
seemingly improbable things
wearing handcuffs.
Despite the incredulity of jour-
nalists like The New York Times
columnist Charles Blow regard-
ing Carter's alleged "suicide,"
the term Jonesboro cops have
used is “self-inflicted gunshot
wound” - not the same thing.
Preliminary investigations aided
by dashboard cameras, audio
recordings and witness state-
ments indicate that neither offi-
cer went anywhere near Carter
subsequent to his being placed
in the patrol car. That's not to
hold them blameless. A proper
search should have found the
gun.
The department has invited
the FBI to conduct a separate
probe. At minimum, a painstak-
ing investigation is required to
maintain - or, if necessary, to
restore - public confidence in
the integrity of law enforcement.
Contrary to insinuations in the
national media, this isn't 1935,
and Jonesboro - a pleasant col-
lege town of roughly 70,000
whose previous big police scan-
dal was a state trooper letting a
(black) football player slide on a
pot bust - is hardly the kind of
place where a racial atrocity
would be covered up. If nothing
else, it would be terrible for
football recruiting.
“We are not here to hurl accu-
sations,” said the Rev. Adrian
Rogers of Jonesboro's Fullness
of Joy Church at a rally in
Carter's memory. “We don't
know what happened. We are
not here to hurl conspiracy the-
ories. We are here to pray.”
Amen to that. The last thing
this country needs is yet another
racially inflammatory media
spectacle.
Arkansas Times columnist
Gene Lyons is a National
Magazine Award winner and
co-author of "The Hunting o)
the President" (St. Martin's
Press, 2000). You can email
Lyons at
eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.
TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is the 227th day of 2012
and the 56th day of summer.
TODAY'S HISTORY: In
1935, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt signed the Social
Security Act, fulfilling a 1932
campaign promise.
In 1945, President Harry
Truman announced Japan's
unconditional surrender and the
end to World War II.
In 2003, 50 million people in
the northeastern United States
and Canada lost power in one of
the largest blackouts in U.S. his-
tory.
TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS:
Steve Martin (1945- ), comedi-
an/actor/writer; Danielle Steel
(1947- ), novelist; Gary Larson
(1950- ), cartoonist; James
Homer (1953- ), composer;
Earvin "Magic" Johnson (1959-
), basketball player/businessman;
Halle Berry (1966- ), actress;
Mila Kunis (1983-), actress; Tim
Tebow (1987-), football player.
TODAY'S SPORTS: In 2007,
Braves manager Bobby Cox was
ejected from his 132nd major
league game, passing the record
previously set by John McGraw.
TODAY'S FACT: The New
York Times reported in 1945 that
an estimated 2 million people
flooded New York City's Times
Square following the announce-
ment of Japanese surrender in
World War II.
TODAY'S QUOTE: "I
believe that entertainment can
aspire to be art, and can become
art, but if you set out to make art
you're an idiot." - Steve Martin
TODAY’S NUMBER: 12 -
NBA All-Star game appearances
by Magic Johnson.
TODAY'S MOON: Between
last quarter moon (Aug. 9) and
new moon (Aug. 17).
<ma
CO(Of/\\(SXot/[ u>n-
Ghosts of past politicians reflect on ‘soul of nation’
House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi has an old story that she
likes to tell about her days as
speaker of the house: "My chair
was getting crowded," it begins.
She was at her first White House
meeting as the first woman
speaker when she found Susan
B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice
Paul and Sojourner Truth,
among others, all sitting in her
chair. "I could hear them say: 'At
last we have a seat at the table.'
And then they were gone."
Ifs too bad Anthony wasn't
able to stick around long enough
to have a conversation about the
trajectory of modem feminism
and Pelosi’s role as a leading
advocate of legal abortion.
Anthony and other suffragettes,
after all, recognized the rights of
the vulnerable unborn as clearly
as they did their own rights as
women.
At about the same time as
there was buzz about Pelosi's
sisterhood seance, President
Obama was in Denver, being
introduced by Sandra Fluke, the
Georgetown Law activist who
KATHRYN
LOPEZ
has become the
poster gal for
the controver-
sial health-care
mandate.
Obama made
the point, that
this mandate is
both equivalent
to and at the
core of women's
health, but insisted that he had
reached a reasonable compro-
mise with Catholic schools and
hospitals.
The truth of the matter is quite
different, however. Even the
University of Notre Dame,
which once honored Obama, is
now suing him to protect its reli-
gious rights, and a former key
ally, Sister Carol Keehan of the
Catholic Health Association, is
rejecting administration claims
an acceptable accommodation
has been drawn up.
The primary women’s health
claim that is at the heart of this
drive - in which managing fertil-
ity has become a “preventative
service” as part of Obamacare's
regulatory scheme - is one that
would be foreign to the women
who crowded Pelosi's chair.
Let's look at Charlotte Lozier,
a 19-century physician whose
life Chuck Donovan is currently
honoring, having just established
the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an
educational outgrowth of the
pro-life political group the Susan
B. Anthony List.
“Lozier secured a medical
degree, against the staunch
resistance of the scientific estab-
lishment of her day, served as a
vice president of the National
Working Women's Association,
bore three children of her own,
stood for women's suffrage
alongside Susan B. Anthony and
other contemporaries, and was
profoundly pro-life,” is how
Donovan makes the introduc-
tion. Lozier “viewed abortion as
an assault on the healing profes-
sion and clearly did not see it as
a pathway to women's equality
or freedom,” Donovan explains.
Lozier, Donovan, emphasizes,
“fought against a tide that told
her she could not be a mother
and pro-life feminist and still
win a degree in medicine. We
have something of the opposite
problem now; we are told ... that
women cannot realize their
ambitions in the world of work
without having abortion avail-
able. Charlotte Lozier and her
allies rejected that idea - in an
era where women's options for
dealing with sexual behavior,
pregnancy and career opportuni-
ties were far narrower than they
are now.”
Donovan cautions against the
perils of leaving these issues
entirely to politics. “The goal
must be to make progress no
matter who is in power. If con-
sciences are dulled, we have to
sharpen the instruments we're
poking with. But consciences are
not political property.”
Of course, this necessitates
well-formed consciences in the
first place, in order to address
these issues with moral honesty
and scientific truth.
Which brings us right back to
the presidential election this
year, which Obama has made a
battle over conscience rights,
forcing a fight over the defini-
tion of religious liberty.
Has this become a fundamen-
tal American value? Insisting
that women are only free when
we've all been forced to embrace
abortion, sterilization, and con-
traception as basic health care?
A value so fundamental that reli-
gious liberty can be cast aside,
redefined, and subject to puni-
tive fines?
Pelosi's spiritual visitors can
offer some guidance here, if
we're up for a longer reflection.
And one trailblazing doctor in
particular, who was known to
demonstrate as much compas-
sion as conviction in her work to
protect the lives of children and
mothers and the integrity of her
medical profession, may have a
winning prescription. “Free”
contraception propaganda
obscures what we really face
today: choices about matters of
basic freedom, cultural con-
science, and the soul of our
nation.
Kathryn Lopez is the editor-at-
large of National Review Online
www.nationalreview.com. She
can be contacted at
klopez@nationalreview.com.
Barack Otam 202-224-5622
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1950-1974
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Gray, Janie. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 92, No. 161, Ed. 1 Tuesday, August 14, 2012, newspaper, August 14, 2012; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1052408/m1/4/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.