What you need to know about Johnnie Cochran

What you need to know about Johnnie Cochran by ALTON H. MADDOX JR. Special to the AmNews Originally posted 4/6/2005 O.J. Simpson and Sean Combs paid Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. the highest compliments. Given the substantial legal fees that they paid to him, they may still be unaware that Cochran gave his life to save theirs. A well-paid defense lawyer should not also have to be a good Samaritan.When a prosecutor has a Black criminal defendant in the scope of his high-powered rifle, the prosecutor, like a hunter, will pull the trigger. This is especially true for a Black defendant on a “Most Wanted List.” White supremacy alone will doom a Black defendant. Prejudice is icing on the cake.Cochran patterned his life after Justice Thurgood Marshall. This career-driven pursuit has its limit. Marshall was reportedly in cahoots with J. Edgar Hoover in the tradition of Joel Spingarn. Military intelligence is necessary to keep the Black community in check. Many civil rights leaders today pursue the same paradigm. To live the high life, you must go along to get along and your every action must be scripted. These leaders ultimately side with the political lords. They exhibit the same traits as W.E.B. DuBois did in his early days with the NAACP.Simpson is lucky to be alive for allegedly killing his white wife. Leo Frank, who was Jewish, was convicted of killing a white, Christian girl in Georgia. The last words he heard from the mob were, “Hang him, hang him, hang the Jew!” Even the U.S. Supreme Court looked the other way. It was a two-year ordeal for Frank.Ted Kirkland of Buffalo should be the next police commissioner in New York City. We share information about the state of the race. In performing his duties as a police officer and a parole commissioner, he reminded me of Justice Bruce Wright. Recently, Justice John F. O’Donnell of Buffalo Supreme Court sentenced two husbands. The white husband, Robert Piwowar, murdered his wife. In January 2005, he was given 24 years in prison. The Black husband, Ulner Lee Still, beat his white wife. She suffered no life-threatening injuries. He received the bad news in December 2004. He must do 36 years of hard labor.For Simpson, there was only one “humanitarian” on the “Dream Team,” as Michael Jackson described Cochran. Based on legal history, I knew that Cochran’s days on earth would be abbreviated. He was guilty of obstruction of justice. Whites are still steaming.If Cochran had refused to join the team, I believe he would still be alive and Simpson would be in prison. Don’t get psyched out by media hype. After being energized by Crispus Attucks, whites died for the right of representation. Blacks are dying for the lack of it.Lemrick Nelson is still on the hate list. In a televised state prosecution, his attorney, Arthur Lewis, engineered his acquittal on charges of murdering Yankel Rosenbaum in Crown Heights. Rudolph Giuliani went bananas. David Dinkins’ mayoralty came to a screeching halt.The grievance committee warned Lewis to stay away from Nelson’s federal civil rights prosecution or start scrambling for his grits every morning like “Alton Maddox.” The fix was in. Lewis listened. He personally reported this warning to me. Nelson was convicted in federal court.The system was not through with Lewis, however. He still had to pay for obstructing justice in the state prosecution. After a state jury acquitted Nelson, Lewis’ neck was immediately placed in the noose. The slip of the rope was delayed to make sure that Blacks would be unable to connect the dots. Like Cochran, his life was abbreviated and social security went out the window.Cochran was toying with his legal career when he represented Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) in 1972 for murder. If Geronimo had been acquitted in 1972, Simpson and Combs would be in prison. When Cochran was finally able to secure the former Black Panther’s release from a California prison, young Blacks were referring to Malcolm X as “Malcolm the Tenth.”On the eve of the Tawana Brawley defamation trial in Poughkeepsie, Black radio was, once again, barring me from any appearances. I contacted Cochran in late 1997 and asked him if I could come on Court-TV and discuss the upcoming trial. He not only answered in the affirmative but he also arranged a debate between me and Eliot Spitzer, who was a private attorney and already a vociferous foe of Tawana’s struggle for justice. Spitzer spent his TV time commanding a co-defendant to turn his back on Tawana.Nobody is perfect. Cochran had his critics. Amadou Diallo’s mother questioned his commitment to her son’s case. I still preferred for Cochran to have continued to represent the Diallo estate even though some of the police reforms, promised to activists in the Abner Louima case, never gained fruition. Nonetheless, it is unrealistic for Blacks to put the weight of our problems on one person’s shoulders. Black leaders have failed to fashion a Black agenda. Cochran did achieve some police reforms in California and in New Jersey. He also opened up new doors for lawyers.His sheer presence at the defense table in the prosecution of Combs was the final nail in his coffin. When Robert Morgenthau indicts you, he wants your scalp. Remember Tupac Shakur? His sudden release from prison was questionable. Unfortunately, we are unable to connect the dots.When a lawyer simply sits at the defense table and another Black man is acquitted, that is too much power for any lawyer to enjoy. This was the same assessment of Malcolm X. If the jury were hung up on Cochran before the Combs trial, it reached a unanimous verdict on him after Combs’ acquittal. As I said before, my analysis of Cochran is based on history. Fifteen years ago, a Brooklyn grievance committee summoned me to its offices amid the trial of People v. Sharpton on the disciplinary complaint of Robert Abrams. He was also the prosecutor in the Sharpton trial, which was the subject of a 67-count indictment in Manhattan Supreme Court.Robert Strauss, the committee’s general counsel, had told the New York Times in 1988 that the Abrams complaint could not be investigated because of the attorney-client privilege. No client, sitting on a hot seat, should ever waive the attorney-client privilege, and no attorney should ever be punished for client laryngitis. I was.After two months of a four-month trial, it appeared that Rev. Al Sharpton would walk away scot-free. Accordingly, the privilege had to take a hike. I was the only person who could obstruct justice and save Sharpton. The minimum sentence for obstruction of justice is your life.Members of the Black community accompanied me to the Star Chamber proceeding on May 7, 1990. Strauss greeted me and gave me this warning. I could give testimony against Sharpton for use in his trial and also produce the Brawley file or I would never practice law again. To be sure, this was all illegal, but who, in the Black community, was going to complain that Sharpton, in 2005, would still be in prison? Black community activists were rooting for him to be fitted with an orange jumpsuit. For aiding and abetting him, I was suspended for life on May 21, 1990.After fifteen years, I am alive physically but dead civilly. As a fighter, I have had to take left jabs, right hooks, uppercuts, body shots and punches below the belt. So far, I have been able to avoid the knockout punch. New York intends to make sure that I serve Sharpton’s sentence like Cochran and Lewis were placed on death row.I am respectfully requesting that every concerned member of the Black community send a letter or postcard to Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney general, at 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271 or e-mail him through www.oag.state.ny.us and demand that he lift the fugitive warrant against Glenda Brawley. In 1998, Tawana’s mother refused to violate the parent-child privilege to aid and abet a bogus grand jury investigation. The vacation of the fugitive warrant will allow her to attend a rally recognizing our fifteen years of resistance on May 4, 2005, at 7:00 p.m. at the Black-owned Elks Plaza, 1065 Fulton Street (bet. Clarkson & Franklin) in Brooklyn. For further information call 718-834-9034.