NewSouth

PeeWee's Tuesday has been unusually good, so far. His life has taken some very wrong turns, but in trying to clean up his act, it dawned on him recently that since driving is one of his favorite things to do, he may as well get paid for it. He's just finished up a six-week training program to qualify for a Commercial Driver's License, and tomorrow, at the age of twenty-six, he starts interviewing around the Montgomery area for a job in the trucking business.

To celebrate the hopeful turn of events, PeeWee - whose real name is Reginald Jones - is having his car washed and is planning to go out with some friends in the evening. Residents of the midtown low-income housing project known as Trenholm Court don't have to go to the car wash - it comes to them. One of their neighbors makes extra money by going door-to-door with his pitch: "Wash your car? How about I wash your car?" he'll say, smiling. "Person just feels better, in a clean car."

PeeWee won't realize until several hours from now, when he's trying to help locate witnesses to what's about to happen, that he doesn't even know the man's name. "Everybody I know calls him by his nicknames," Reginald will tell his lawyer: "Just 'Lump' or 'Car Wash.'"

It's a clear day and milder than usual for January, even in the deep South, though a jacket still feels good. The sunlight is so brilliant on the bare trees that the limbs look as if they're ready to bud. It's a little after 3 p.m. and children are walking home from elementary school.

Reginald, while getting out his billfold, is looking at the gleaming blue hardtop and commenting to Lump on the good job he's done. But as he's counting off seven one-dollar bills in payment, he hears a harsh voice behind him: Hey! Come here . . .

Reginald spins around and sees a late-model black Suburban jumping the curb. In the front seat are two grim-faced white men, one of them pointing at him through the rolled-down window.

"The first thing I thought was 'drive-by,'" Reginald will recount later. In any event, he takes off running. As he sprints down the sidewalk, the driver of the Suburban wheels the vehicle around in pursuit. To evade him, Reginald leaves the sidewalk and runs through the grass courtyards that separate the rows of one-story apartment buildings. But as he turns the corner of one building, he spots another white man, this one in some type of uniform, racing toward him on foot.

Stop! a voice shouts.

Reginald takes off running again.

"I know I shouldn't have," he'll say later. "But it happened so fast I wasn't thinking very clear." Actually, he was thinking clearly about one thing - a couple of weeks earlier, he'd had a heated argument with his older sister and afterward she'd signed a warrant on him, and he now understandably assumes that particular piece of trouble may be what this is about. Reginald looks over his shoulder for an escape route, but sees only the wide brick front of one of the buildings.

Suddenly, from the opposite direction, the roar of an engine catches his attention. The Suburban he saw earlier has now leaped across the curb onto the grass and is quickly bearing down on him.

Surrounded, he backs up against a small tree and raises both hands high in the air.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees neighbors watching from their doors, a crowd beginning to gather outside. But as he glances back toward the moving Suburban, what he sees is bad: it's only a few feet away from him, and it isn't slowing down. The truck hits him, driving him into the tree.

The next thing he remembers is looking up and seeing the dark underside of the vehicle's chassis where blue sky should be. The Suburban's axle has both him and the tree pinned to the ground. He feels a burning numbness in his lower legs, and he can't move them to crawl away.

"The driver jumped out, then," Reginald remembers, "and started hollering at me. He was saying 'nigger' this, and 'nigger' that, and telling me I'd better get up."

"I hollered back at him, 'How the hell I'm gone get up with your car sitting on top of me?" and then finally he gets in and backs it off of me, so I can move. And all this time the other policemen are just looking at him and shaking their heads, like, 'Man, I can't believe you done this.'"

What comes afterward is mostly a blur to Reginald, until an ambulance arrives. At the emergency room, X-rays determine that, miraculously, he has no broken bones; but from the waist down he's badly banged up and bruised, his legs too much in pain to bear his weight. On a nearby table are his corduroy pants, caked with dirt and blood, that the paramedics had to cut away to treat him.

When things settle down a bit, Reginald phones his older brother Spence, who works as a medical assistant at the same hospital. "They tried to kill me, man," he tells Spence. "They run over me and then they didn't arrest me. They didn't even charge me with nothing."

(Later, the Police Department will say that the officer saw money changing hands and assumed the two black men were transacting a drug deal.)

Spence tells him he needs to find a lawyer.

"I don't know no lawyers," Reginald says.

Spence says he'll ask around.

A couple of miles away, on tree-shaded South Perry Street, the late afternoon sun glazes a conservative white wooden sign that reads McPhillips, Shinbaum & Gill, L.L.P. A former residence, built in 1870, the three-story brick building is one of many professional offices along the street. Nearby is a black Pentecostal church, and less than ten blocks away are the gleaming white buildings of the State Capitol complex, the church where Martin Luther King, Jr., preached, and the First White House of the Confederacy, a wooden frame building - now a museum - where Jefferson Davis briefly lived at the beginning of the Civil War. In a front corner office, the firm's founding partner, Julian L. McPhillips, Jr., shuffles a stack of pink phone messages and sets about returning calls. Before the day is out, he will have spoken with an Episcopal priest, a college history professor, a wrestling coach, a Christian faith healer, a presidential candidate, the executive director of the city's Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, members of a Princeton University alumni reunion committee, an abortion counselor, an art dealer, a high school honors student, and a South American missionary - even a number of actual law clients.

Even in a city where the eccentricities of politicians are legendary, McPhillips often seems a walking contradiction: a former member of state government who has won high-profile cases against three Alabama governors, several cabinet members, a state attorney general, a U.S. Congressman, and the city of Montgomery's police department and its mayor.

He's also a small-town white Southerner from a family of civil rights activists who have rubbed shoulders with Martin Luther King's family and Mother Teresa; an activist in the Vietnam War peace movement who attended military school; a supposed member of the establishment who takes on government agencies and large corporations for age, race, and gender discrimination; a political maverick and Ivy League college grad who's a fervent anti-abortion crusader; a scholar of international affairs who helped found a local charismatic church that practices faith healing; a tenacious former prosecutor who questions capital punishment in many cases; a wrestling champion who's also a patron of the arts; and coincidentally, in his spare time, as this was written, Alabama campaign manager for then-presidential candidate Bill Bradley.

Over the years, McPhillips's predilection for taking the side of the underdog against powerful government and business interests has prompted news commentators to refer to him as "the private attorney general," "the public watchdog," and "the people's lawyer." Columnist Joe McFadden of the Montgomery Advertiser wrote: "His heart is with the cases that bug the establishment, that right some wrong, and that rarely pay enough to attract most lawyers."

Another columnist, profiling him ("A Good Battle Delights Julian McPhillips") in Columbia University Law School's alumni magazine in 1984, said:

McPhillips is an imposing man. At first glance, in fact, he seems almost too imposing; in some ways, he just doesn't look like a lawyer. He stands about an inch over six feet, is powerfully built, and he advances straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders and gleam in his eye that calls to mind Robert Duvall's chipper helicopter commander from the movie Apocalypse Now. In fact, McPhillips looks like he might well be a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, a happy warrior ready to cry havoc and cheerfully let slip the dogs of war.

Looks are not entirely deceiving, but in McPhillips's case, their testimony must be weighed against his manner. He is, a new acquaintance quickly notices, almost insistently courteous, betraying traces of Southern gallantry in his demeanor and accent. And, while he observes of himself that he "likes standing up to bullies," he insists that he is now - and has always been - a mild, peaceable fellow.

Hearing him talk, a listener might well conclude that McPhillips is a stickler for both detail and proper behavior. Each impression - that he loves a good struggle, and that he insists upon decorum - is correct. Consider for example, his college athletic career and his behavior during the Columbia student unrest in the spring of 1970. At Princeton, where he earned his bachelor's degree in history, McPhillips distinguished himself at wrestling, a sport which pits brute force against brute force, cunning against cunning, with such carefully restrictive rules that its injury rate is lower than basketball's.

McPhillips flourished as a wrestler. In college, he was an All-American heavyweight and was undefeated in four years of league competition; he continued to wrestle while at Columbia Law School and afterward, placing fourth in the National Amateur Athletic Union Championship tournament during his last year of law school and almost made the Olympic team in his first year as an associate at the Wall Street law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

At Columbia, McPhillips found himself supporting many of the goals espoused by student radicals, but fiercely opposed to their disregard for what he saw as the very basis of civilized behavior. Looking back, he characterizes himself as having had "leftist sympathies and a rightist manner." He took to working for a greater student voice in university government and, as chairman of the Law School Senate, became chairman of the Law School Coalition Against the War after the invasion of Cambodia. "We took a much more mature, constructive, and peaceful tack than the undergraduates did," he recalls . . .

In 1998, McPhillips was the first attorney in Alabama - and possibly the nation - to officially represent in court what he called "the ultimate underdog," an unborn child whose under-age mother had decided to have an abortion. In earlier years, he successfully represented a different type of underdog - scoring acquittals in all five murder cases he tried, four of which involved capital murder charges, which could have put the accused in Alabama's electric chair.

McPhillips has also been a major thorn in the side of former Montgomery mayor Emory Folmar, whom he's battled over many issues, including an alleged pattern of police misconduct. During one city election season a friend of both men jokingly asked Folmar if he had received a campaign contribution yet from Julian. Folmar reportedly responded, "I'd rather accept money from the Viet Cong."

The long-term mayor was both mercurial and a loose cannon, a condition which sometimes made even his supporters wince when he was in command of a microphone. As the local chief of President Bush's re-election campaign in 1992, Folmar once told a Montgomery crowd to consider the alternative:

"If Bill Clinton were to somehow get elected," Folmar told the crowd, "he would pick Jesse Jackson as his running mate, Julian McPhillips as his attorney general, and they would buy everybody in the United States a new Cadillac." But still fresh in Julian's memory is the occasion, during his 1978 campaign for Alabama attorney general, when one of his opponents attacked him as " . . . another wealthy Northeastern establishment liberal, just like the Kennedys."

Today, Julian shakes his head in disbelief and laughs about it. But at the time, for a boy who grew up in the north Alabama town of Cullman, this particular political salvo was one of several attacks that carried a sting, but which he chose to rebut with a shrug and a chuckle.

"True, I did go to Princeton and Columbia Law School, and true, I'm not presently hurting for money" - though nothing on the scale of the Kennedys, he quickly adds. "But the one thing nobody can call me," Julian says passionately, "is a doctrinaire liberal."

The bombastic rhetoric of his opponents during stump speeches is one of the few aspects of the troubling 1978 campaign McPhillips laughs about. In an election plagued by "irregularities" at the polls, McPhillips's approximate 6,000-vote lead over state senate president Joe Fine on election night mysteriously evaporated into a 5,000-vote deficit three days later, costing McPhillips his run-off spot. It also landed him more than $40,000 in personal debt, and a recount - which he eventually decided against - would have cost another $200,000.

In a different - and bizarre - turn of events, winning candidate Charles Graddick catapulted over both Fine and McPhillips in the waning weeks of the campaign by proclaiming his rabid support of capital punishment. At one point, Graddick was quoted, "I'll cram them into the electric chair and fry them until their eyeballs pop out, until their skin burns, and smoke comes out of their ears."

Whether Alabama's capital city is a regional hotbed (no pun intended) of get-tough-on-crime sympathizers is still a matter of debate, but a tremendous amount of press coverage during recent years seems to weigh in on the side of the critics. In an influential series of investigative reports by the Birmingham Post-Herald in May 1991, staff writer Nick Patterson noted that, "In some respects, the city of Montgomery is as genteel as Southern hospitality and magnolias. But beneath its charm lies something less genteel: allegations of police brutality."

"Many public officials, including the county district attorney and assistant state attorney general, say they have no evidence to substantiate claims that Montgomery's police department has a brutality problem. But many other officials cite a growing list of allegations as evidence of such a problem . . ."

One article in the series was dominated by a poignant four-column picture taken by staff photographer Karim Shamsi-Basha at a Montgomery funeral home. The photo showed an elderly black woman sobbing beside the casket of her grandson, a thirty-seven-year old mental patient, whom she claimed was wrongfully killed by city police officers.

After Patterson's list of the most recent, and most blatant, citizen complaints, he quoted various attorneys on the subject. David Schoen says, "My experience indicates to me that Montgomery has the most brutal department and seems to be the least interested in doing anything about it."

And Julian told Patterson, "There's a serious problem, especially among young officers, both black and white, who come in with the mentality of 'Hey, this is just like the military. We're going to kick some butt and teach them a lesson.' It's a sort of macho, Rambo mentality that is usually rewarded by higher-ups in the department and in the city administration."

McPhillips and Schoen were by no means alone in their allegations. Former Montgomery City Councilman Mark Gilmore said, at the time, "We have some problems. There's no use in denying that. We get this every day from our constituents. We get people saying the police beat them up, and saying they don't trust them (the police)." State Representative Alvin Holmes, a Montgomery resident, agreed, "The mayor of the city of Montgomery has a military-type personality, like the Montgomery Police Department is at war with the public, or at war with the blacks."

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission did a study of police and community relations in Montgomery. Their 1986 report said the study was prompted by "the alarming number of complaints received by committee members alleging abusive and discriminatory conduct by members of the Montgomery Police Department." The mayor took exception to some of the details of the study, but wouldn't comment on others.

Charlie Graddick - who was, by this time, serving as the county's district attorney - likewise downplayed the significance of the Commission's study. "I haven't had any reason to believe that there's any evidence at all of police brutality," Graddick told the press. "If somebody presented me evidence, you can rest assured it would be scrutinized very closely and appropriate action would be taken. But that hasn't been the case."

At one point, the study cited the appointment of Police Chief John Wilson as a significant step forward for community relations. Others disputed that contention, pointing out that Wilson had been quickly catapulted from Folmar's personal bodyguard, to corporal, then police chief, and claimed he was not only insensitive to minority concerns, but condoned, along with Folmar, the practice of rough-house tactics by the police.

The chief refused to comment when approached in 1991 by the Post-Herald reporter. But he did furnish Patterson with copies of departmental memos he had written. One was from the previous March, in the wake of the Rodney King case:

"The acts shown on national television . . . hurt me deeply," Wilson wrote, "as they should everyone connected with police work . . . We have had our share of trouble with officers straying outside the standards set for this department. Some officers have been convicted, some are awaiting trial and some are still being investigated . . ."

"If any officer of this department has any doubt of the consequences of an act such as the one shown on national television, let me set the matter straight right now. Punishment for such actions will be swift and sure, including criminal prosecution." A second memo, from 1987, said he had heard that complaints by victims of alleged brutality within the department were largely from black citizens.

As Patterson concluded his report, "While progress arguably has been made, some observers say Montgomery has a long way to go to lose its negative reputation."

After the Post-Herald's investigative series, the issue died down somewhat. But never for very long.

Of the many claims of brutality and excessive force McPhillips has filed on behalf of his clients over the years, one 1995 case involved five high-school honor students from Prattville (all black) driving to a Scholar's Bowl competition who were stopped by police, searched, and made to lie on the ground at gunpoint - one of them on top of an ant bed. Police later said they were acting on a tip from an informer that the students were transporting drugs, but the person who had given the supposed tip was never found or identified.

On the evening of January 13, 1999, it's clear that the issue still hasn't gone away. The lead-off team on the nightly TV news shows Julian and Reginald Jones sitting behind a row of microphones at a press conference, holding up for display the torn and soiled trousers Reginald was wearing when the automobile hit him.

"It's a case of adding insult to injury," Julian tells the reporters. "Or injury to insult, if you will. He had his hands up, he was standing still, the Suburban was yards away. The police officer had several choices at that point. He could have gotten out and shouted, 'You're under arrest.' He could have pulled his gun if he wanted to, and apprehended him. Mr. Jones certainly wasn't going anywhere. But instead, the officer chose to run over him."

If Julian comes across as calm and confident with TV reporters, there's a reason. He's gotten more airtime, over the years, than any other private attorney in town. His record so far is seven interviews on six straight nights (in April 1985) - one night he was interviewed twice, on different cases - on a Montgomery TV station, the state's largest NBC affiliate.

(Once a local judge, who was hoping to have a private hearing on a particular matter, looked down the building's hallway and saw TV reporters setting up their gear. "All right," he wearily chided, tongue-in-cheek, the two attorneys who were to appear before him. "Who called the TV stations? Julian's not even involved in this case.")

"McPhillips is seeking $100,000 in damages," the reporter is saying in a voice-over as the camera returns to Reginald, "and perhaps more in punitive damages. He's called upon Mayor Folmar, the district attorney, and the attorney general to investigate."

Now Reginald is describing the incident on camera. "It was like . . . bam," he says, slamming his fist into the palm of his hand. "He didn't just bump me, he ran over me. All I could think of was, 'He's trying to kill me.'"

The TV anchor says, "And we'll be back, after these messages . . ."

Julian takes his status as a public figure in Montgomery seriously. His home telephone number is, however unexpectedly, listed in the phone book. But, he points out, so is his supposed arch-rival Emory Folmar's. Julian gives Emory a lot of points for that concession.

Julian also seems to have an encyclopedic recall of names, faces, and family histories, which comes in very handy for a politician.

Today, as he and associate Sim Pettway - a clean-cut, stylish young black man in his late twenties - grab a quick plate lunch at the Farmer's Market Restaurant with client Reginald Jones and his brother Spence, other diners wave occasionally from nearby tables, or stop by to say hello before paying their checks. Julian introduces them around, one and all, briefly bragging on some recent accomplishment in their career and/or thanking them for their help with some past project.

Afterward, Julian, Sim, and the Jones brothers drive the short distance to the Trenholm Court housing project for a walk-through of the area where Reginald was run over, several weeks earlier.

It's a sunny, pleasantly mild day, and a few of the trees are budding out. Reginald, walking somewhat unsteadily on a new cane, leads the way to the large grass courtyard where the incident happened.

In early afternoon the place at first looks deserted, but eventually a couple of neighbors peer out their windows, see the men, and drift out hoping for news of Reginald's case. Despite the city's foot-dragging on the release of documents Julian has asked for, a few facts have come to light: one of the first policemen on the scene has been identified as a Corporal Steelman, and the officer driving the Suburban when it hit Reginald is a Corporal DeJohn. The latter has been the subject of earlier complaints of excessive force, which include firing his pistol into the automobile of a man who was driving while intoxicated. Reginald stands looking at the ground, shaking his head.

"What are you thinking, Reggie?" Sim asks him.

"There ain't even no trace of it left," Reginald answers. "There's no sign of what happened. See, this is where the tree was . . ." He jabs the cane in the dirt, where the stump of a small tree has been cut almost even with the dry surface of the soil. A passerby would never notice it.

"The tree you were backed up against when you were run over," Julian supplies. Reginald nods. He goes through the scenario from the beginning again, pointing across the way to where his freshly washed car had been sitting when the officers first drove up, and describing the route that he ran before being backed against the tree. Julian and Sim listen, take notes, ask questions. After several minutes, there seems nothing left to be discussed. Reginald looks at the tiny stump again, shaking his head.

"So," Sim says brightly, to Spence, "your brother tells me you work as a medical assistant. Do you like it?

"Yeah, I do," Spence says. "But I'm still going to school, some. You know, trying to work my way up in my job."

"It's a good field to be in," says Sim. "No matter what the economy does, there'll never be a shortage of people getting sick or hurt."

To which a bystander adds dryly, "Not as long as officer DeJohn is on the job, anyway."

The four men in the courtyard share a spontaneous, rich, freeing laughter. There is no way for them to know that it will be the last time they laugh together for a very long while.

Copyright ©2000 by Carroll Dale Short. All rights reserved.
No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from NewSouth Books.