Shootout column did not allege race as authorities' motive

Based on a recent opinion column I wrote, some people in county law enforcement are now telling me that I have falsely accused both the Athens County Sheriff's and Prosecutor's offices of being populated by "œracists."

I have made no such accusation. But the anger I'm hearing, and the feeling of having been deeply and publicly insulted, are obviously sincere, and so I would like to do some air-clearing. I figure if I'm going to be enraging people, it should be based on what I actually write and believe, not on what they imagine I'm saying.

The column dealt with three murder trials related to a New Marshfield shootout, and about persistent concerns that I have been hearing from people around the area regarding their process and outcomes.

At one point, I noted that the defendants were all black, three of them Somalis from Columbus, while the designated victims in the case were all white and local.

I did this because it's an unavoidably pertinent fact "“ not least as part of the larger context in which the apparently drug-related shootout took place.

A recent study, for example, found that among users of crack cocaine in southeast Ohio, there's a common perception "“ whether accurate or not, I don't know "“ that the drug is being brought into the area from outside, mainly by black dealers, who don't use it but sell it to whites who do. The possibility that this played a role in the events surrounding the shootout seems inescapable.

That said, however, my mention of race was brief, and made in passing, in a column that was mainly about the troubling legal logic of the so-called "felony murder" statute, and about whether the victims in the shootout might share some criminal culpability for creating the circumstances that led to the gunfight in which a man was killed.

Apparently some readers, however, have decided that race was my real topic. This is especially odd, because immediately after making mention of race, and knowing what this mention might be taken to imply, I immediately inserted a disclaimer, stating of the defendants that I had "no direct evidence that their race or nationality played any role in how the case came out."

I figured this for a pretty clear disavowal of any suggestion that law enforcement consciously targeted these people based on skin color or nation of origin. But no good deed remains long unpunished, and I have now been told by some of our top law-enforcement people "“ we'll keep names out of this "“ that they see my use of the word "direct" as a sneaky hint that there's plenty of indirect evidence to show this was some kind of racist frame-up.

I suppose I could take this as calling me a conniving liar. But outside of post-modern literary criticism, it's probably wise not to read more hidden meanings into someone else's words than he actually intends to put there himself. And on that note...

Had I wanted to say that the defendants got hammered and other people got an easy ride from law enforcement based on their respective races, I would simply have said it. (In fact, I consider this scenario highly unlikely.)

As a columnist, I might be justly charged with being foolish, misinformed, wildly biased, or plain dead wrong "“ but I'm not generally accused of cleverly disguising what I really want to say. My writing tends to be about as subtle and nuanced as a siege catapult.

The phrase "direct evidence" isn't some coded signal; it just means "evidence, directly available to me." Some people, for example, have voiced to me their personal beliefs and allegations that racial prejudice played a role in these cases, without offering any factual underpinning for those views. That's not direct evidence, and I would never use it as a basis for coming to a conclusion.

Let's put it this way: If I ever get charged with a felony, and the county prosecutor's office admits frankly that it has no "direct evidence" to suggest I'm guilty "“ no witness testimony, no physical clues "“ I sincerely hope they'll move to dismiss the charge. And it would likewise be nice if they would dismiss this notion that I've accused them of being racists, because I haven't.