INVESTIGATIVE SUMMARY by John Gilman -

The above graphic is from a wall on the Department of Justice. Its inscription is inspiring. However, as the below report demonstrates, only the politically correct need apply to the Civil Rights Division (CRD). And darned few of those. The CRD receives nearly 10,000 complaints annually from citizens. It claims to investigate some 3,000, but does not define the word, "investigate." Of these, only 36 cases are prosecuted. You might think most are for Federal civil rights violations by state or government employees. After all, the only people who can deprive you of civil rights are civil employees, right? Wrong. 653 of 685 prosecutions (95%) mentioned in the report are of private citizens, not state or federal employees. Most of these are for racial slurs, abortion clinic protests, and a few church burnings.

The message is clear. DO NOT expect the government to prosecute the government. As with Rodney King and Amadou Diallo, it can nearly always be counted on to fail to prosecute (or at best, muff the prosecution of) wrongdoers from inside the system.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was established in 1957 following enactment of the first civil rights statutes since Reconstruction. The Division is the primary institution within the federal government responsible for enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, handicap, religion, and national origin. Since its establishment, the Division has grown dramatically both in size and responsibility.

The Division enforces the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended through 1992; the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; the National Voter Registration Act; the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act; the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act; and additional civil rights provisions contained in other laws and regulations. These laws prohibit discrimination in education, employment, credit, housing, public accommodations and facilities, voting, and certain federally funded and conducted programs. In addition, the Division prosecutes actions under several criminal civil rights statutes which were designed to preserve personal liberties and safety. The Division also enforces the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980, which authorizes the Attorney General to seek relief for persons confined in public institutions where conditions exist that deprive residents of their constitutional rights; the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act; the Police Misconduct Provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994; and Section 102 of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), as amended, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin and citizenship status as well as document abuse and retaliation under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Division is responsible for coordinating the civil rights enforcement efforts of federal agencies whose programs are covered by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, and assists federal agencies in identifying and removing discriminatory provisions in their policies and programs.

The Criminal Section is a trial section whose attorneys frequently prosecute cases of national significance involving the deprivation of personal liberties which either cannot be, or are not, sufficiently addressed by state or local authorities. These are invariably matters of intense public interest involvin acts of racial violence, misconduct by local and federal 9

law enforcement officials, violations of the peonage and involuntary servitude statutes that protect migrant workers and others held in bondage, criminal provisions of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibit conduct intended to injure, intimidate or interfere with persons seeking to obtain or to provide reproductive health services, as well as a law which proscribes interference with persons in the exercise of their religious beliefs and the destruction of religious property.

The federal criminal civil rights statutes provide for prosecutions of conspiracies to interfere with federally protected rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, the use or threat of force to injure or intimidate persons in their enjoyment of specific rights (such as voting, employment, education, public facilities and accommodations) and criminal housing interference.

The Section receives eight to ten thousand criminal civil rights complaints annually in the fon-n of citizen correspondence, phone calls, or personal visits to the Department of Justice, to the local U.S. Attorney's office or, most commonly, to the FBI. Complaints setting forth possible violations of the law for which the Department has jurisdiction are forwarded to the FBI for investigation. Upon conclusion of the investigation, the FBI forwards a report to the responsible attorney within the Division as well as to the appropriate U.S. Attorney's office. A prosecutive determination is then made by Section attorneys based on the facts contained in the FBI report.

Of the approximate 3,000 investigations conducted each year, about 60 are authorized for grand jury presentation. About 60% of those presentations ultimately result in charges being filed. Because almost any matter which presents a violation of federal law is also a matter involving a local or state law violation, deference is given to local prosecutions unless federal interests are deemed to be unvindicated. But if the results of the state or local proceedings are insufficient, or in the absence of any such action, a federal prosecution can be brought.

Allegations of official misconduct constitute the majority of all complaints reviewed by the Section. The "officials" who have been defendants include state and local police officers, federal law enforcement officers, prison superintendents and correctional officers, and state and county judges. These officials have been charged with using their positions to deprive individuals of constitutional rights, such as the right to be free from unwarranted assaults, illegal arrests and searches, and the right to be free from deprivation of property without due process of law.

One of the most high-profile cases prosecuted in recent years was the case relating to the videotaped beating of Rodney King by officers of the Los Angles Police Department. The team of federal prosecutors in this case included highly experienced litigators from both the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division as well as the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. The two-month federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers followed the officers' earlier acquittals on state charges. Two of the four officers were ultimately convicted on federal charges and sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Additionally, the first capital case ever tried by the Criminal Section was won during 1996. In this case, one New Orleans police officer and two other individuals were convicted of conspiring to murder a woman who witnessed the police officer's beating of a young man. The day after she reported the beating incident to the police department's internal affairs division, the woman was shot to death while standing on a street comer.

In other recent cases, eight correctional officers at the Delaware County Prison were convicted at trial or pled guilty in connection with four separate incidents of retaliatory beatings upon imnates who were handcuffed and not resisting. Three Palisades Park Police Department officers, including one officer who was previously convicted on similar charges, and two e citizens were convicted in connection with a scheme to

burglarize and steal property from various residences and business establishments in the town of Palisades Park, New Jersey. Two of the officers recently pled guilty to using their status as police officers to carry out the burglary scheme. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, sixteen correctional officers in the Rio Piedras Correctional Complex, were charged with using excessive force in connection with an incident during which imnates were forced to pass through lines of officers who, upon orders from the supervising officer, beat the im-nates with batons on their heads, backs, hands and arms. Two of the sixteen defendants entered guilty pleas for their involvement in the beatings. Trial for the remaining fourteen defendants will begin in the near future.

In another case which received national attention, a Tennessee state judge was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of multiple counts of sexually assaulting women who were parties in domestic disputes pending in his court or who were courthouse employees. More recently, other cases in which women were sexually abused by law enforcement officials have been victoriously prosecuted. For example, in Texas, a Galveston police officer was sentenced to 5 years in prison following his guilty plea to repeatedly coercing women into engaging in sexual acts by threatening them with jail or physical harrn.

Incidents involving violent and intimidating acts of racial, ethnic and religious hatred are also a high priority for prosecution. During the past five years, almost 300 defendants in more than half of the 50 states have been convicted on federal criminal civil rights charges for interfering with various federally protected rights (such as housing, employment, voting, and public services) of black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and Jewish victims. In addition, many cases included charges of criminal conspiracy, particularly where the defendants were members of organized hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, The Order and various racist Skinhead gangs. Since 1993, virtually all defendants charged in these cases have been convicted.

Among those prosecuted in recent years were three defendants, one of whom is a racist skinhead and a member of the white supremacist group, South Bay Nazi Youth. The defendants were sentenced to life plus 50 years in prison for their conviction of a civil rights conspiracy after they drove through the streets of Lubbock, Texas, hunting African-American men, luring them to the conspirators' car and shooting the men at close

range with a short-barrelled shotgun. As a result of the shootings, one victim died, one was seriously wounded in the face and another had a finger blown off. Additionally, five affiliates of a skinhead organization in Portland, Oregon, were sentenced to terms of incarceration ranging from 12 to 30 months in prison following their guilty pleas to conspiring to bum a large wooden cross in the front yard of the home of an African American man living in a predominantly white neighborhood. Another housing interference case in Charlotte, North Carolina, resulted in the conviction of three defendants while one other defendant pled guilty to burning two crosses on the lawn of the home of an interracial couple.

Other cases have been filed involving other federally protected rights. For example, one defendant was convicted on charges of interfering with the federally protected rights of an African American man and his white companion by physically preventing them from entering a bar in Tennessee. In addition, two skinhead members of the Nazi Low Riders are awaiting trial in Los Angeles, California, in connection with the assault of an 18 year-old African American man as he was getting into his car in the parking lot of a Blockbuster video rental store as well as the attack of a 16 year-old African American male as he was walking along a street in Lancaster, California. One other defendant already pled guilty to interfering with a federally protected right in connection with the assault occurring at the Blockbuster store.

The Criminal Section is also tasked with enforcing the criminal provisions of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). Since the enactment of the FACE statute in May 1994, the Section has received numerous complaints of possible violations of the Act. To date, 25 reproductive health care violence and obstruction cases have been filed and since the charging of the first criminal FACE case in August 1994, the conviction rate has been I 00%.

In 1994, defendant Paul Hill was convicted for the brutal execution of a physician and his escort, and the attempted execution of the escort's wife in front of a reproductive health services clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Ordered to pay the victims' funeral and medical expenses, Hill was sentenced to life without parole plus five years. More recently, two defendants who positioned themselves inside vehicles and blocked the front and rear entrances to the Wisconsin Women's Health Care Center were convicted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and six defendants who blockaded the doors of this

same clinic in September, 1994, using similar methods, recently stood trial. This trial followed a successful appeal by the government after the trial judge ruled that the FACE statute was beyond Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. We are currently awaiting the judge's written opinion in this case.

The Criminal Section continues in its effort to deter the victimization of migrant workers and other minorities in violation of the involuntary servitude and peonage statutes. For example, five defendants including, a farm labor contractor, his wife and three of his employees, pled guilty to civil rights, labor and immigration laws including conspiracy, for subjecting persons to involuntary servitude, extortion, and smuggling and harboring aliens. The defendants recruited Guatemalan and Mexican citizens from nearby the Mexican border and smuggled them under dangerous conditions to labor camps in the area of Manning, South Carolina. While working at the camps, the victims were threatened, told that if they attempted to leave they would be killed and were subjected to occasional beatings. In Los Angeles, California, four defendants pled guilty to forcibly bringing a 22 year-old Chinese national to the United States from China and subsequently forcing her to labor as a sex slave; and in Miami, Florida, an Indian husband and wife pled guilty to holding an Indian woman, who came to the United States from Bombay, India, to work as a housekeeper, in involuntary servitude.

In addition, eight Thai nationals were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from two to seven years for their guilty pleas to conspiracy, involuntary servitude and harboring illegal aliens. The defendants enticed citizens from Thailand to travel to the United States by promising the victims high wages, good hours and freedom. Upon arrival in the United States, the Thai laborers were transported to a work compound where they were confined and forced to work up to 20 hours at a time. The victims were housed in an apartment complex in El Monte, California, encased by razor wire and spiked fences and guarded by full-time guards. The defendants used threats against the victims and their families to force the workers to remain in the El Monte compound.

Recent news reports of an extensive, multi-state slavery ring of Mexican nationals, who are both deaf and unable to speak, resulted in charges against twenty defendants for recruiting and smuggling approximately sixty Mexican nationals to the United States with the promises of

good jobs and for the purposes of exploiting and abusing them for profit. The Mexican nationals were forced to work under conditions of servitude peddling key chain trinkets on the streets and subways of New York City. All of the defendants have pled guilty.

Macedonia Baptist Church in Bloomville, South Carolina and the Mt. Zion AME Church in Greeleyville, South Carolina.

The first case charging 18 U.S.C. §247 under the recently amended statute was filed in connection with the burning of the Church of God of Prophecy in Dyersburg, Tennessee. The defendant in that case was sentenced to five years in prison following his guilty plea to the 1996 Church Arson Protection Act for this church fire. In Texas, two defendants were sentenced to five years in prison following guilty pleas to charges including the Church Arson Protection Act in connection with an arson at the Macedonia Baptist Church, an African American church, in Bristol, Texas.

Most recently, one defendant pled guilty and three defendants were convicted at trial on charges relating to the arson of the Saint Joseph Baptist Church, an African American church, in Baldwin County, Alabama. One of the four defendants was convicted during a separate trial while his co-defendant pled guilty in connection with the attempted arson of the Tate Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, another Affican American church, in Baldwin County. Two days before the fire at Saint Joseph Baptist Church, the defendants allegedly attended a Ku Klux Klan rally in Baldwin County.

In June of 1996, at the direction of the President and the Attorney General, the National Church Arson Task Force (NCATF) was established to address the recent rash of fires across the nation, at many predominately black churches, in part by coordinating the investigation and prosecution of arsonists. Thus far, approximately 565 incidents of fire at houses of worship occurring since January of 1995 have been reported to the Task Force. Of the 565 fires, 201 have been at African-American churches; of the fires at African-American churches, approximately 75 percent have been in the South. Since 1995, arrests, both local and federal, of 255 suspects have been made in connection with 185 fires at churches and other houses of worship.

For example, in South Carolina, four former Ku Klux Klan members were sentenced to terms of incarceration ranging from 15 to 21 years in prison for their guilty pleas to violating federal civil rights conspiracy and arson statutes in connection with the June 21, 1995, arson of the