GRAHAM
The publisher of the Alamance News was removed from court Tuesday after he objected to a judge’s decision to block reporters from attending a hearing in a case that has been a focus for local Black Lives Matter activists.
Tom Boney Jr. was delivering a document written by C. Amanda Martin, an attorney representing him, along with The News & Observer and Triad City Beat, requesting a hearing on whether it’s appropriate to close the court to the media.
Reporters from The News & Observer and Triad City Beat had earlier been told that no journalists were allowed in Alamance County’s Historic Courthouse, where Judge Fred Wilkins was presiding over the case against Sandrea W. Brazee, a 52-year-old woman accused of driving her car at two girls of color.
The reporters each asked for a hearing before the judge, but were told by deputies that Wilkins had already made his decision. Like Boney, they had also been kept from attending a high-profile court hearing the week before involving the leader of an October march to the polls, which ended with police pepper-spraying attendees.
Boney had hand-delivered a letter to Senior Resident Superior Court Judge D. Thomas Lambeth and Chief District Court Judge Bradley Reid Allen Jr. on Tuesday morning asking that they remind other judges that courtrooms must remain open to the public despite COVID-19 safety precautions.
“We believe there is a paramount responsibility to find ways to comply with the N.C. Constitution’s requirement that “All courts shall be open” (Article 1, section 18), even with the attendant challenges associated with the pandemic,” Boney wrote.
He enclosed pages from a handbook for judges published by UNC’s School of Government that explained that closing a courtroom entirely is an extraordinary step requiring procedural safeguards in advance.
In court on Tuesday, Wilkins said he would hold Boney in contempt of court after Boney tried to explain his objection.
“The courtroom is not closed,” the judge said, gesturing to the people in the room, who numbered more than two dozen, according to Boney.
“It’s closed to you.”
Wilkins said that if Boney was not a defendant, a victim or an attorney, he could not be in the courtroom, the publisher recalled.
Boney said he tried to explain that journalists were so-called “essential workers,” but he was cut off.
“I don’t care how you understand it,” Wilkins said, according to Jamie Paulen, an attorney who was in the courtroom.
“I’ve made my ruling,” the judge said, according to Paulen. “The next ruling I will make is a contempt citation.”
Boney continued to press his case. Then the judge said, “You’re going to jail,” and Boney was hauled out of the room.
According to the publisher, he was handcuffed, then told that if he would leave the courthouse, Wilkins would not pursue the contempt charge.
Boney said he might rather be charged than leave a building he was entitled to be in, but he eventually agreed to go.
“They were really quite rough in handcuffing me and claiming that I’m resisting,” Boney said. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had broken my wrist.”
Kristy Bailey, a reporter for the Alamance News, said she saw deputies take off running about the time Boney was removed from the courtroom. She was standing just inside the courthouse door.
“Based on their reaction, I would have thought somebody had a gun,” Bailey said.
The hearing
Back inside the courtroom, Wilkins opened the hearing that reporters had hoped to observe.
Brazee, the defendant, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
She had originally faced two felony charges of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, but the prosecutor ultimately decided he couldn’t prove that charge because Brazee stopped her truck short of hitting the girls.
An early allegation that Brazee had called the girls a racial slur also did not hold up under more scrutiny, District Attorney Sean Boone said. In subsequent interviews, the girls said they weren’t sure what Brazee had said to them, Boone said.
Faith Cook, whose 12-year-old daughter Aishah Huru was one of the victims, was disappointed that more serious charges weren’t pursued. About 40 people joined her outside for a rally outside the courthouse in advance of the hearing.
“The investigation ended up being about what did the girls do to cause this,” said Cook, who has become a prominent figure in the local Black Lives Matter movement since the August incident.
“I didn’t feel like they were out there to fight for justice,” she said. “I felt like they were out there to fight for the freaking defendant.”
Cook said she read a statement from her daughter into the court record.
“So ever since the case happened some things started to be different,” Aishah wrote in the statement. She described having trouble sleeping and focusing in school.
She said that she thought Brazee was being given “a slap on the wrist” and that she didn’t think she would be treated the same way if she were in Brazee’s position.
“It’s kinda sad that I have to be a twelve-year-old wondering if I’ll stay alive and be scared to walk on these streets just because of the color of my skin tone,” Aishah wrote.
Boone said he was satisfied with the outcome. Brazee was sentenced to two consecutive 60-day jail sentences, which were suspended. She will be on supervised probation for 12 months and must obtain a mental health/anger management evaluation and follow the recommended treatment. She is not to have any contact with the victims or their families and must pay court costs and a $1,000 fine.
“There was no thinking that this is a case that we should minimize,” he said. “We were very strong in our belief that if there is a hate crime that we can prove, we want to prove it.”
This story was originally published December 08, 2020 2:24 PM.