Million dollar bail… a case comparison - Part 4

According to the News & Observer of April 10, 2010, a three year old boy who was adopted from China last November was so severely beaten by his mother on March 19, 2010, that he has been in a coma ever since. The child had a skull fracture with large bruises on the frontal region of his brain. Michele Andi Stein, the mother, was finally arrested and charged by Apex police with one count of felony child abuse, and severe bodily injury. A month earlier in February, workers at the day care the child attended noticed bruises on his back and leg, and the month prior to that the boy was admitted to the UNC-Chapel Hill Burn Center with second and third degree burns to both of his hands.

It is of interest to note that Ms. Stein was not charged with attempted first degree murder or assault and battery despite the traumatically induced coma. Furthermore, she was arrested with a bail of only $200,000.00. Now compare this with Ms. Mangum, who was alleged by the Durham police to have scratched her boyfriend and thrown punches and objects at him. He did not sustain any injuries and did not require any medical attention in a dispute which he termed as a “misunderstanding” and one which he did not press charges. Also, no deadly weapon was involved in the alleged “altercation.” Yet, it is Ms. Mangum who is charged with attempted first degree murder, assault and battery, and placed on a $1million bail… an amount five times more than the mother accused of beating her three year old child and leaving him with a skull fracture and a contused brain which are responsible for him being comatose for three weeks and counting.

The answer to the following rhetorical question of why the disparity in the charges and bail between the two aforementioned cases can be found with four words… the Duke Lacrosse case! The severely excessive accumulation of charges against Ms. Mangum is obviously nothing more than payback for accusations she made years earlier in the Duke Lacrosse case against the sons of the Carpetbagger families. Had the same scenario played out against a couple that did not include Ms. Mangum, then it is more likely than not that the man involved in the dispute, if anyone, would be the one to be arrested. But most of all, none of the charges (such as attempted first degree murder, assault and battery, communicating threats, destruction of personal property, identity theft) would have been made. And had the police been in the apartment when a woman without connections to the Duke Lacrosse case set her boyfriend’s clothing ablaze in the bath tub, then the police would’ve merely turned on the faucet in the tub and put out the fire. They would definitely not have called the fire department and charged her with any counts of arson.

The reason the police saddled Ms. Mangum with the ridiculous charge of attempted first degree murder, assault and battery, etc. was in order to justify the enormous $1 million bail. The high bail was to assure Ms. Mangum languish in jail while the prosecution lollygags, in order to draw out Ms. Mangum’s incarceration. Well, if we’re careful, it might be many years that Ms. Mangum spends behind bars before her case gets to court, as in the James Arthur Johnson case (he wrongfully spent 39 months in jail while the prosecution tried to force him to accept a plea deal), and the Floyd Brown case (he spent fourteen years in jail on a murder charge without his case ever going to trial. The Attorney General’s Office promised to investigate the Brown case… but to no one’s surprise, there’s been no investigation).

The end objective of the police and prosecutors was to impose a lengthy jail stay upon Ms. Mangum. This amoral scheme exposes the visceral hatred and malice Durham prosecutors have towards those viewed unfavorably by the Carpetbagger families of the Duke Lacrosse defendants. The vacuous minds of those responsible for Ms. Mangum’s lengthy jail stay are undoubtedly under the control of the Carpetbagger Jihadist Movement… like many in the public, victim’s of wide-spread and systemic Jedi mind-tricks of the biased mainstream media.

As things stand, after Monday, April 5, 2010, Ms. Mangum, for allegedly scratching her boyfriend has been indicted by a grand jury of the following: (1) first degree arson, (2) three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, (3) injury to personal property, and (4) resisting a public officer. And for these alleged charges, she is under a $250,000.00 bail, which if met, according to Judge Claude Allen, would require that she be released to house arrest. Keep in mind that the mother arrested for her 3-year old adopted son’s skull fracture, bruised brain, and three week coma has a bail of only $200,000.00, and if she makes bond, there is no stipulation by the court that she be held under house arrest.

The disparity in the treatment of the two mothers in this above case comparison is extraordinary and blatant, and a prime example of the state’s tenet of “selective justice based on Class and Color,” which has widespread application in this state. The same disparity of treatment applies to that which former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong was subjected to by the prosecutors, courts, and the media for his handling of the Duke Lacrosse case… his disbarment, his jail sentence, the withholding of his status of immunity as a state employee, his lack of representation by the Attorney General’s Office, to mention a few.

A system wherein court decisions are meted out with disparity is fraught with the very inequities and injustices against which it is supposed to protect. One step that can be taken to chisel off a piece of the slab of mockery and disdain under which the North Carolina system of disparate justice is currently pinned, is to eliminate the bail for Crystal Mangum and release her from custody under her own recognizance. She is definitely not a flight risk, she is definitely not a threat to society, her incarceration is an unnecessary and undue burden on taxpayers, and the charges by the grand jury do not warrant her incarceration.