In Black America; The Honorable Alcee Lamar Hastings

." I'm John Hanson, join me this week on In Black America as we focus on federal judges. I needed a regular paycheck having been what I like to refer to as the public defender of the streets for so long. So when I became a judge, I really needed to have a regular salary. The honorable LCL Hastings this week on In Black America. This is In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society.

I have witnessed the disparity of sentencing as a lawyer, but it doesn't just happen with blacks. Young people, for example, get heavier sentences than old people, poor people generally, white or black, get heavier sentences than rich people, white or black. So there are so many factors, women get treated different than do men. So there are a lot of prejudices in the system and I think that my role is to try to be really fair and to avoid that disparity that I have seen in the past. The honorable LC Lamar Hastings, federal judge for the U.S. District Court, Southern District of the State of Florida. Judge Hastings was appointed to the bench in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter before his appointment to the federal bench.

Judge Hastings was a circuit court judge in Baward County, Florida. Federal Judge Hastings has been an outspoken advocate for human and civil rights, both as a state and federal judge and as a private attorney. I'm John Hanson, this week, United States Federal Judge, the honorable LC L Hastings in Black America. I was appointed by President Carter to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Previous to that, I had been appointed as a state court judge by Ruben Asquib. This job is a job for life, or with good behavior, and I'm presently under attack with reference to that so-called good behavior. The honorable LC Lamar Hastings is uninvestigation for misconduct. At the present time of this production, he is still awaiting his impeachment trial. Born on September 5, 1939 in Al-Tamante Springs, Florida, Judge Hastings is a graduate fiscal university in Nashville.

He attended Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. He received his Juris Doctor degree in 1963 from Florida A&M University. After being accepted to the Florida Bar Association, Judge Hastings became a member of the law firm of Allen and Hastings. That association lasted until 1966 when he decided to go along with his own practice. In 1977, Judge Hastings was appointed Circuit Court Judge by Governor Ruben Asquib. In 1979, he was appointed to his current Judgeship, the United States District Court, for the Southern District of Florida. I recently spoke with the honorable LC L.H Hastings prior to his address before the 11th Annual Conference of the National Association of Black Journalists regarding him becoming a federal judge. Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I was going to go to medical school, but in the final analysis, what happened is it was cheaper to go to law school. And then when I got to law school, being a judge was the last thing that I thought that I would ever do after I began practicing, but quite frankly, by the time that I became

a judge, I hear people say they don't become a judge for the money. And certainly the pay is not as good as one would like to have it, but I needed a regular paycheck having been what I like to refer to as the public defender of the streets for so long. So when I became a judge, I really needed to have a regular salary. Was there a good number of blacks in your graduating law class? No. At Florida and M, there were only six of us as a matter of fact. Interestingly enough, four of us are judges, but I attended Howard also, and there were 63 in the entering class of 1958 at Howard and 19 of those persons graduated. So no, at Florida and M, we were being paid in a sense to go to M to keep from going to the University of Florida. And why is it important for blacks as yourself and more blacks attending law school to become judges, not just practicing law to become judges? Without a doubt, Ms. Hanson, I think what it does is it sensitizes the system.

Our people are still subject to rank discrimination in the courts. And that ranges all the way from jury selection to the awards that are given in civil trials. For example, a white person's leg is worth more than a black person's leg, generally, in the views of a dominant structure like we live in. So judges can at least assist in sensitizing the system and can show their true ability to be equal in terms of the manifestation of justice. And it's for that reason that our strong leaders that more blacks become judges. Is your particular gesture an elected gesture about an appointed? Well, appointed, and I was appointed by President Carter to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, previous to that, I had been appointed as a state court judge by Ruben Asquib. But this job is a job for life, or with good behavior. And I'm presently under attack with reference to that so-called good behavior. What was it like that first day you sat on the bench? That's an interesting question.

The first day as a state court judge, I was all struck because I was thrust into a third part of beneficiary situation, and I had never tried one of those before. And as a matter of fact, the case went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court and I was upheld, but I had good lawyers. The first day as a federal judge was not as difficult or awe-inspiring because I had been a state court judge, but becoming a judge and having that kind of say power over individuals is enormously humbling. And certainly, we are graced in this country by having judges who, by and large, are not as vindictive as people tend to think judges are. I don't think they are. Did you just assist them more or less as far as looking at the judgments or sentences given in black versus whites, is drags you out of proportion? Being a black judge and knowing that, does that have a effect on you as a black judge judge?

It certainly does, and I have witnessed the disparity of sentencing as a lawyer, but it doesn't just happen with blacks. Young people, for example, get heavier sentences than old people. Poor people generally, white or black, get heavier sentences than rich people, white or black. So there are so many factors, women get treated different than do men. So there are a lot of prejudices in the system, and I think that my role is to try to be really fair and to avoid that disparity that I have seen in the past. The story began October 9, 1981. The Miami-Herole and the Washington Post had the school, Elle asked me to give my perception of how the matter was treated by the media. The first thing, Elle, that I recognized immediately, Mike, and since you worked for them in Lynn, yes, I will mention the Miami-Hero for a moment.

The very first thing that I noted was that the Miami-Herole either had a branch at the FBI or the FBI had a branch at the Miami-Herole. I was absolutely convinced that there's nothing wrong with that. Good investigative journalism allows you to get your answers anywhere you can. But then I began to become familiar with something that you all are also familiar with, in that it is source. Everywhere you go in America, a source close to the investigation told somebody something about it. That would have been all right, everybody ought to have a source. But the problem with what the source was talking about was the fact that it was going on in the grand jury. And ostensibly the grand jury was supposed to have secret information. Oh, you all know source, don't you? You've seen him or heard from time to time. Now Lynn, let me tell you, Elle, I hasten to add that the reporting jobs that were done with reference to my perspective of having gone through that process and going through

it has been outstanding. The reporters that I've met, those people that have covered the story themselves with time and space limitations that I full well understand, did excellent jobs. But city editors didn't, in every instance, because a lot was left on the cutting room floor. And I know how that happens, and I know that some of your editors, so let me hasten to add that the editorial responses in the broadcast media were excellent. In the print media, they were misinformed. And let me tell you why they were misinformed, because editors by and large different than reporters are not at the source of the story. And so when it gets back to them, it's getting back to them filtering, and then they make editorial judgments, they wrote one, for example, that said, let the trial begin. As if I did something wrong by exercising constitutional rights and prerogatives, then another one said, no man is above the law.

To me, footnote that right quick. I began this down process, telling these people that this matter should have begun in the courts with impeachment, outside the courts in impeachment. It's interesting, Vernon, we come now full circle, and having been investigated now for coming up on four years, hell, they could have investigated Genghis Khan until the Han and Hitler in four years. But somehow another that is going on for all this period of time, and we come now to the position that they now agree with me, and part at least I think they will be saying soon that I should be impeached. That's how I began the process, standing mic, if you record right on the court out steps, and saying that. And then a newspaper wrote, no man is above the law. Hell no woman is above the law, and I didn't bother to say that I was above the law. I merely pointed out what the law was is, and will be, and somehow another they misunderstood that. Only a few black reporters had anything at all to do with the reporting of United States versus LC Hastings and the progeny, which are numerous, two numerous, to mention without

great prolic city. The historical significance of the case bore very little resemblance to the reality of it all. And even that Ebony, I was called and asked if I would, after I was acquitted, if I would do an article called Couples with Patricia, the girl that represented me, and I didn't understand that, I didn't know what they were talking about, about couples, or Patricia is not only my dear friend, she is also my girlfriend. They reported that as my fiance. I'm formerly married 15 years ago, ain't got no fiance, no win to get married, how to get married, and how to get divorced. And somehow another depressed was going to give me a person. Now then, I found that interesting, but what really cracks me up is, here the historical significance of a black woman representing a black federal judge, or a federal judge, in court, winning the case. And I was asked by countless people, my brothers, Jesse Jackson, and seven lawyers, Ed Bell, and countless of them came from all over the country to check me out to see if I was going

to let this woman who had never tried a federal case in her life, handled my case. Jesse says, how, what if she loses, I say, what if she wins, Jesse? You know, because I rather suspect that she will. And you see, it was easy to do. What my mom said to me early on, she said, you do two things, you keep it black and you keep it simple. She says, and if you hire Patricia Williams, then what you will have is someone that you can talk to when you want to talk to them. If you hire Edward Bennett Williams, you will only get to talk with him when he wants to talk with you. But what I find interesting is, even though Patricia won the case, you see, y'all are just black. Everybody else. If Edward Bennett Williams had won the case, y'all would have said that smart white man got both. But you know what most of them said when the black woman won the case, she was lucky. I find that fascinating because the historical significance of all of that was all but dynamic

that easily could have produced a book or a movie or anything but for the fact that we were black and that's a part of the source of the problem, not that it was racially politically motivated. I never said that although the press said I said that and I'm now being investigated because the press said something that I did not say. Now I thought it, but I didn't say it. Do you understand? And so that does a difference made. The use of press reports in the ongoing investigation of one that is now in progress has been enormous. There were fundraising affairs held for me, Flee Bailey held one and the press reported them and rightly and accurately. And so those matters were attached to the complaint that is ongoing as well as some of the other statements that were attributed to me, most of which I simply did not say and no one can document that at any point in time. I also won one label suit against Penn House Magazine during the course of this matter. Penn House liable me actively and it wasn't with no nude pictures.

It was that they accused me of being involved in a drug cartel and I was fascinated by it's sufficient that I took Bob Gucci on the court and he lost and I won and we agreed that we wouldn't talk about the amount. It was enough for me to go to Europe free. Let me put it that way. The next stage, ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately for me, fortunately for those of you that cover the stories, we will be back on the national agenda at a point in time and pretty obviously I feel without knowing that I will be certified for impeachment. I'm not afraid of that process because maybe at that point in time it will be the first time that everything will be gone into with reference to the entire investigation. So I don't have any problems in that regard. Now I've said enough about how I perceived or at least some of the reporting. On a sliding scale, I thought that the press did an admirable job in reporting a very difficult situation.

It's still doing in my considerate opinion a good job. There are those in the media who simply don't like me and don't like other people and that's one thing. You need to shed that hypocrisy. Judges are caught up in a situation personally where they have to be hypocritical. They don't have views and can't express them. So I'm stepping outside of that character that you all ordinarily know and expressing my views. You see because I don't recall any well that I gave away my first amendment rights and I think that's a part of what you all are about. And somehow or another, I think we have to put things in their proper perspective and very occasionally your objectivity is tinted by your overall judgment of matters as they pertain to your personal opinions and you'll be fair about that and say that and many of you do not. Or I understand that dynamic. And therefore when there was a hatchet job being done by certain institutions, I just merely learned in my own way how to combat them as best I could. You remember the National Bar Association, that's the black legal arm of this country,

black organization with lawyers. Why is that organization important and effective? For the same reason that the National Black Journalist Association or the National Black Baptist Convention. Or any number of organizations that we know that have come into existence over the years. It allows for camaraderie. It allows for sharing or the experiences that folk face. And it makes you feel that wow, you know if a sister in Denver is having the same problem as a sister in Delaware and a brother in Florida is having the same problem as a brother in California that all of us are in this thing together. So it's that sense. Now more than that, the National Bar Association serves as sort of a conscious for the law and particularly as it pertains to minorities. The National Bar Association has been in the vanguard of many of the actions that have caused dramatic change in terms of the status of black Americans generally. And also the National Conference of Black Lawyers of which I am a proud member who seem to

do more litigating than do the National Bar Association. And I find comfort in all of those organizations and the work that they do. Is there an organization for black judges you say four out of six out of your class or not judges? Yeah. Right. We belong to the judicial council of the National Bar Association. And it's a very viable organization that addresses the problems of judges generally and black judges specifically. Florida is pretty much a hotbed with the infiltration of more drugs into this country, the immigration problem. What sort of cases are coming before your court on the federal law? largely the kinds of cases that you have mentioned. The greatest portion of our docket is criminal and the greatest portion of our criminal docket is drug related. I find it interesting, John. There was a young man from Philadelphia came up to me and say, how do you all stand all those drugs in Miami?

I say, young man, they're in transit to Philadelphia. So they're in transit elsewhere through Miami. But it has created what I refer to as mega shocks in Miami as a community. I can tell you this and this may very well sound very controversial coming from a judge. We need to carefully study in this country and I want to make this very clear. Study whether or not we all legalize drugs or in this country. And I'm talking about all forms and I call for that study because I'm not certain that the criminal justice system is ever going to cure not only the drug problem, but crime in America. And what we have now is a crime problem and a drug problem. We may want to look to legalization as a potential answer to cure at least the crime problem as it pertains to drugs in part. And I recognize it as a downside to that. I really do think that rather than spending more money for prisons, which so far is only produced more prisoners and obviously whatever we're doing in prisons is wrong, evidence to high recidivism rate that we have in this country.

And so for that reason, I think we need to do something different. Now when we had alcohol that was illegal, we turned to legalization. I think we're going to have to give careful study to that problem. I say study because I don't want anybody to say I'm going around advocating for the legalization of drugs. I have my personal opinion, but I think it ought to be studied carefully in this country. A lot of our young people are being incarcerated. Obviously the system isn't working because these same offenders are now doing criminal time. Sure. In your opinion, what should be done is juvenile homes, halfway houses, the answer, prison is definitely not the answer. It's absolutely too much to try to encapsulate. I can tell you this, or I believe that the black intelligentsia, those of us that are well-trained individuals, really ought to fashion programmatic structures to deal with young children in America and by young I'm talking about two, three and four year olds, many of whom may not have

fathers, or maybe even with fathers, but poor people, and I think we have a responsibility to assist in remediating those children and nurturing them. That will be their beneficial to us. It's been a pleasure. So then our special interest, if we are identified and we do need to have packs of our own since we're in an era of special interest, and we need to put money in more than we did for the scholarship fund, more than just raffles, we need to recognize that necessity for sacrifice, and we need to treat our black colleges as what Amara Barakoo identified them another day, and I may have pronounced his name on Lira Jones. You know, what he identified them as the other day. They are shrines these colleges, and whether you went to Fisk as I did, or how it is I did, or to Florida and them as I did, or whether you serve on the board, or platoon as I do,

or teach at Florida Memorial as I do, or whether you work actively for the United Negro College fund or not, the fact is that you ought to be about the business of trying to ensure the survival of Taladega Tuskegee, countless other institutions, Hampton, and on down the line in order that our cultural repository will be preserved. So then sometimes our special interest gets in the way of our professional interest, and it causes me to be in an ambivalent posture, even as it pertains to a William Rincquist. The American Bar Association of which I remember said that he was the most qualified person in the entire world. The only thing I know to do is to stay inside the organization, and don't need not to know what they are coming from, therefore I will stay, I will continue to pay my dues, so I can get this information. I don't want to learn how to be as qualified as he. I simply want to know how it is that they arrive at these decisions, and I can't help them make for change if I don't work within the framework of the organizational structure that's already in existence.

Now that's one thing to sit off and demonize and agonize, it's another thing to go somewhere and try to work about things. So now I ask you, as you assimilate, as you acculturate on a day-to-day basis, if you have discretion brothers and sisters, and if it is that you have that discretion, and you can shade a story in a fashion that will allow for a better amplification of the black side of life, then I suggest that you have a responsibility to undertake to do it that way. If you cannot, then what happened to you is when you went to J-School and see a lot of these people in go to J-School, they just went to writing and reading and radioing, and they didn't get to go to school, like some of you all that have graduated from the heart that school of journalism. No reflection? Proud that you did, but if you missed those things about you that were black, if you let your cultural imperatives be immersed into a dominant structure, then easily you were taught to write white, think white, act white, and somewhere or another then you were suffering

that awful, self alienation, that self disorder, that I don't like myself, and it manifests itself in more ways than one, even perhaps as a mental disorder of current. Then I ask any man or woman in this room back to the illusion of inclusion. We have 15 judges on my court, and I'm always fascinated when we have meetings. We have meetings. I can always tell when major policy is going to be made, and I go to the meeting, and I recognize that in order to get on the record and to be a part of it, a lot of times I just offer the motion so they can say I had something to do with it because the damn decision was made before we got to the meeting. And you all don't think that, you think I'm on the editor or your board, and therefore the editor is editoring with me. I have say, you ain't got no say, say your butt out of there and nothing flat if you don't

say what they want you to say. This organization ought to buy land, this organization ought to buy stock with moral imperatives involved, this organization ought to grow as I'm sure it will. This organization ought to lead the way in allowing that our people become full participants in this pluralistic structure, and that we have the appropriate undertakings to show that we are seriously concerned about environmental preservation, that we are concerned about deficits, the world balance of trade, and that we are called upon for our ideas because of our special policies that we are able to lead. And then we give a gala, and rightly we should.

And Patta LeBelle hollows all over the damn place to whom I know what she's hollering, Diana Ross changing clothes as fast as the commercials, and you tell me, tell me, where are the people here from Tennessee? I said it to him in Gatlinburg, you here, Caranza, you know that I said it to you that, that all of the people in Tennessee and the people in the city of Memphis and Correta, or a dead of gratitude to modern and those garbage people, and I would think that somebody would have thought well enough of modern Luther King to invite a garbage person and their family to come to that gala. Nobody did. And somehow another I think that modern turned over a little bit, somehow or another. Malcolm, no greater seal have we known could have been the biggest pimp that anybody ever produced, read on the streets, was like nobody else on earth. But he went to Mecca and came back and determined I can't continue to hate white people and to

preach venom. I must learn a way for all of us to love each other, apexing with the Kennedys and King. He too was stricken down and he could have stopped and going on about his business in a different fashion, but he never thought that he had arrived. Thurgood Marshall could easily have quit a long time ago. He sits there in this sense and continues to speak for all of us with quiet dignity because he knows he has not arrived. The same is true of Kanemata, the same is true of Spotswood Robinson, the same is true of countless others Ralph Bunch got back with his Nobel Peace Prize and went to Mississippi and got put off the train in Mississippi and Ralph was as bright as any white man in this room. And that was because he didn't have any question, no compunction about who he was. You should not either.

If any one of you, man or woman, working for any of the media, think that you have arrived then please know that I arrived at a position, 934 people hold, called United States Federal Judges, ostensibly inheld with powers on the Article 3 of the United States Constitution and in spite of what may happen to me. I know when I look at my healing mama, I know when I look at my growing child, I know when I look at your faces and I deal in love you, that I am not arrived and you have not eaten. The honorable LC Lamar Hastings, United States Federal Judge in Miami, Florida. If you have a comment or would like to purchase a cassette copy of this program, write us. The address is in Black America, Longhorn Radio Network, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 787-12. For in Black America's Technical Producer, Cliff Hargrove, I'm John Hanson, join us next week.

You've been listening to In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society. In Black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station. This is the Longhorn Radio Network.