THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 21, 1996 TAG: 9602210056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
WELL, THE national press is taking my hometown - Lumberton, N.C. - to the cleaners again.
This time it is over Michael Jordan's father's pants.
As you probably know, the basketball star's dad was murdered in Lumberton, and the trial of his accused slayer has been getting almost as much media attention as the New Hampshire Republican primary.
It seems the rest of the country is questioning the quality of lawyering in my hometown.
People remember I'm from Lumberton and phone me to guffaw over the pants incident as though I had some connection with it. And the national press has put the wood to Lumberton.
In case you haven't kept up with the trial, the pants episode was part of last week's testimony.
The accused is a young man named Daniel Andre Green who has doubtless been bailing with a leaky bucket since birth.
The defendant has presented an O.J.-type defense, claiming that even if he happened to be in the neighborhood of the crime, he had nothing to do with it, that the very idea of the killing offends him, and that, come to think of it, he was nowhere near the crime.
A key prosecution witness during the trial has been Larry Demery, an alleged co-conspirator. Demery took the stand and was asked what happened to the two expensive business suits that were stolen from the victim's car.
Daniel Green took them, Demery said.
Was he sure about that?
Oh, definitely, Demery claimed.
Well, why was he so sure?
Because, Demery said, with the smugness of a guy holding four aces, he had seen the accused in court one day during the previous week and he was wearing the dead man's pants!
Rich isn't it?
Naturally, print reporters from around the country couldn't wait to pronounce the defense attorney - who one imagines was never thrilled with the prospect of defending a man accused of murdering Michael's father - the legal equivalent of a dead battery.
In Sunday's Washington Post a staff writer rushed to judgment on the pants episode as follows:
``Now if you are a defense lawyer, and your client is accused of murder, and he's facing the death penalty, and he wears the dead man's pants to court - well, it just doesn't look good. This friends is Felony Dumbness.''
While defending lawyers is even harder than defending Lumberton from the slings and arrows of the arrogant press, I'd like to take a crack at it in this instance.
Since the defendant in this case is pleading not guilty to the offense, it is a good bet that he neglected to mention that he had come into the possession of a fine pair of pants owned by Mr. Jordan.
The lawyer probably told his client to be aware that appearances count with a jury and to wear something that looks nice to court.
And, of course, that's exactly what he seems to have done. It is highly unlikely that the maligned lawyer said to his client: ``I want you be looking sharp next week in court. You go home and git that fine pair of pants from the suit you borrowed after you shot Mr. Jordan and wear 'em to court.''
Unh-Uh.
This latest attack on Lumberton lawyering is but one of many slurs directed at my hometown by the conspiratorial national press. The attack on one of America's finest cities has been going on since the Thelma Barfield execution. Thelma, a Lumbertonian, was executed for putting poison in the iced tea and vittles of her mother, her fiancee and three others, causing their deaths.
Much was made in the press of her last meal in the death house. She requested an RC Cola and Cheese Doodles. Quite a few writers made the incident an indictment of the Lumbertonian culinary disposition, particularly when compared with the edibles of either Tuscany or Paris. No matter.
Then as now, Lumberton sits on the banks of the Lumber River, a lot taller, I may say, than its detractors. by CNB