A blood-boiling incident

A black family driving from Atlanta, Georgia to Chicago to attend a funeral is stopped by highway police in Tennessee. The reasons given are that the car has tinted wndows and was proceeding in the overtaking lane.

The incident escalates into their five children being taken into care with the authorisation of a local judge…

In a subsequent call that was recorded, Judge Perry then called Coffee County Sheriff’s Department Investigator James Sherrill on his cellphone to discuss removing the children.

“Well, the problem is mama is not going to give them up without a fight,” Sherrill told Perry. “If we get in the middle of this, there’s going to be a damn lawsuit for sure.”

Perry then suggested arresting Clayborne for disorderly conduct, then assured the deputy, “You won’t get in a lawsuit because … I’ve got judicial immunity.

“Verbal order good enough?” Sherrill asked. “Absolutely,” Perry replied.

Not so, and it did indeed lead to a lawsuit. Attorneys for the children’s mother say that Children’s Services officials,

after the children were removed, then tried to “cover their tracks” by submitting false and inaccurate paperwork to make it look like they had submitted a petition to the judge before he issued his verbal order.

They also cite prejudicial ex parte emails between a DCS lawyer and the judge the day before the family had its first hearing in which the lawyer characterized the plaintiffs “as racists, as violent and aggressive people” and advised the judge on how to keep the family from suing in federal court.

The article here in Atlanta Black Star is written carefully, but it is tempting to draw uncomfortable conclusions about how the law and officialdom work in practice. Consider also the case of the Debelbots.