Trial starts in alleged Obama-inspired church fire by Dave Collins


SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – A federal prosecutor told a jury Monday that a man and two friends were racists who were so upset when Barack


Obama was elected president that they burned down a predominantly African-American church just hours after the voting ended. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Smyth gave his opening argument on the first day of the trial of


Michael Jacques, 26, in U.S. District Court. Judge Michael Ponsor has set aside six weeks for the trial. “We are here today because of racism,” Smyth told the 16 jurors, including four alternates. “We are here today because of the depth of their intolerance.”


Jacques and two co-defendants, Benjamin Haskell and Thomas Gleason, were charged with using gasoline to set the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield on fire in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2008. The building was under construction at the time. A few firefighters were injured but have recovered. Authorities say all three men, who are white, confessed to setting the fire. Haskell, 24, of Springfield, pleaded guilty to civil rights charges and was sentenced in November to nine years in prison. Gleason, 23, who lives on the same street as the church, pleaded guilty last year, awaits sentencing and will be testi- fying against Jacques.


Smyth told jurors that all three men confessed during videotaped interviews and there is also incrimi- nating audio recordings. Jacques’ lawyer, Lori Levinson, told the jury that there is no physical evidence against her client and that authorities coerced him into con- fessing during a grueling seven- hour interrogation during which he suffered withdrawal from addictions to Percocet and cigarettes. “You will learn that getting his


This Nov. 5, 2008 file photograph shows firefighters working at the scene of a fire at the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, which was under construction in Springfield, Mass. The trial began Monday in federal court in Springfield, where Michael Jacques is charged with burning down the predominantly Black church early on Nov. 5, 2008, just hours after Obama was elected the nation's first Black president. AP/The Republican, Mark M. Murray


next dose of his drug of addiction is what became the most important thing in the world ... and he would say anything,” Levinson said. Levinson and Smyth showed the


jury parts of the videotaped confes- sion, during which Jacques’ foot is shaking and he’s twiddling his thumbs as a state police investigator interviews him. AP


Facing jail time, deadbeat parents seeking lawyers by Jeffrey Collins


COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina father who was repeatedly jailed after insisting he couldn't make child-support payments of about $50 a week is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to end five states' practice of locking up delinquent parents without providing them with a lawyer.


In a case that will be argued before the high court on Wednesday, Michael Turner contends that poor people who are facing time behind bars for missing payments have a constitutional right to an attorney at


8 Chicago Defender • ChicagoDefender.com • March 23-29, 2011


taxpayer expense. Florida, Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio are the other states where deadbeat parents are not automatically given a lawyer in such cases.


By at least one estimate, hundreds of people a year in those states do time for not paying child support - a practice some advocates say penal- izes both parent and child. “It’s a heinous situation. Jail just becomes a revolving door. We’re locking up the poor,” said Michael McCormick, executive director for the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. “Child-support lock- ups are debtors’ prisons.”


Opponents say that providing lawyers would prove costly and would clog up an already cumber- some legal process and that dead- beats already control their own des- tinies: If they pay, they go free. In its ruling against Tucker, the South Carolina Supreme Court said a delinquent dad holds “the keys to his cell because he may end the imprisonment and purge himself of the sentence at any time” by paying at least some of what is owed. The court also noted that failing to pay child support is an act of civil contempt, not a criminal charge for -


See DEADBEAT PARENTS, page 25


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