ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993                   TAG: 9305170248
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LEGAL SYSTEM CAN'T CURE SOCIETY'S ILLS

AS PART of its continuing effort to present views on important issues of the day, the Roanoke Times & World-News on May 8 carried a lengthy diatribe by Winchester lawyer Jesse J. Richardson Jr. It concerned the coverage by the media of the second trial of the Los Angeles police who were charged with using excessive force in the King case. Richardson's principal complaint is that the media featured photos of black clergymen rejoicing over the verdict handed down in that trial.

To find Richardson's outcry at all justifiable, we would have to assume that he has been so deeply involved in the details of his practice of law that he has lost track of what was going on in the real world. Is it possible that he neither reads a daily newspaper nor watches any television news? (Television repeatedly reproduced the disturbing video tape of the King arrest.) Surely, if he had, he would have at least some understanding of the joy and relief of America's black citizens, and many of their friends in the white community, who felt somewhat reassured that, despite its imperfections, the American legal system is, more often than not, a reliable guarantor of citizen rights.

What's regrettable about Richardson's criticism of the Los Angeles clergy is that it is largely the result of their good counsel and leadership that a repetition of the earlier violence and destruction was avoided.

In his unhappiness with the second King case trial, Richardson seeks to indict the American legal system as fundamentally flawed. What he and many of us need to realize is that no legal system, however perfect, can protect us from the results of our racial prejudices and our continuing failure to deal adequately with the social and economic problems of the increasingly larger numbers of underprivileged in our society. With regard to both problems, time is not on our side. HENRY B. COX ROANOKE 


 by CNB