TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Boot Camp Verdict Elicits Prayers, Party

ADVERTISEMENT

By THOMAS W.  KRAUSE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 13, 2007

Updated: 10/13/2007 05:39 pm

PANAMA CITY, Fla. - About 60 or 70 people, a few children and an infant or two gathered together in prayer and song at the Love Center Missionary Baptist Church, the only place they thought could help them make sense of a court verdict handed down hours earlier.

Pastor Rufus Wood, Jr., a large blind man wearing ornate dark glasses and a fine-cut suit, told the congregation that he understood their frustrations but the Lord, not violence, was the path to consolation. Those in the pews agreed that the answer was in unifying the community, not dividing it further.

Across town, eight exonerated defendants — former employees of a now-defunct youth boot camp — celebrated with hugs, tears and a barbecue cookout. After a year-and-a-half of investigation and prosecution, the defendants, their family and friends unleashed their emotions.

"We had a blast," defense lawyer Waylon Graham said. "It was a fantastic event."

Shortly after noon on Friday, a six-member jury acquitted seven drill instructors and the nurse who worked at the state-run boot camp. They had been charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child.

The verdicts led to protests outside the Capitol in Tallahassee, but no arrests or violence. On Saturday, all was calm in Tallahassee and in Panama City, where the trial was held.

In January 2006, 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson collapsed while trying to complete a 1.5 mile run. A surveillance video showed the drill instructors using pain pressure points, strikes to the forearm and ammonia capsules to try to revive Anderson.

He died at a Pensacola hospital early the next morning.

Defense attorneys focused on the testimony of several doctors who said Anderson had sickle cell trait, a typically benign genetic condition that can sometimes kill under episodes of exertion. The drill instructors and nurse had no idea Anderson had was suffering from the condition, defense attorneys said, and treated Anderson as they would have treated any other youth offender at the camp.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Anderson possibly did suffer from sickle cell exertion but they argued that without the instructors' heavy-handed tactics, Anderson would have lived.

In the end, the jurors sided with the defense.

Friday night, hours after the verdict, 64-year-old Bob Clark stood in the Love Center church foyer and shook hands with a few friends as they walked inside. Clark, a retired reform-school counselor, said many in the congregation are working people. He managed to get to the courthouse a few times over the past couple of weeks to see the trial. Most didn't have that luxury.

The church, he said, gives them a chance to come together as a community and face what they feel is an injustice.

"It has a calming effect," he said.

Inside, officials the pastor had invited sat, including those with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and a city commissioner.

Panama City Commissioner Jonathan Wilson Jr. said he understood the congregation's feelings about the acquittal.

"I was numb for a few minutes," he said.

He asked everyone to pray for the community, black and white.

"We're in this together," he said. "And we can take it higher, and I hope it will be taken higher, to a higher court."

The U.S. attorney from the Northern District of Florida has announced a civil rights investigation regarding Anderson's death and has said he will review the evidence in the state's case. The NAACP is lobbying for federal indictments.

Graham, the defense attorney, said he doubts the federal investigation will go anywhere. The scientific evidence was clear, he said, and will hold up to scrutiny.

Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Miami, said federal prosecutors might take a different approach, such as seeking obstruction of justice charges, instead of trying again to convict the guards of manslaughter. State prosecutors could have laid a foundation for the obstruction charge by grilling the eight about inconsistencies and omissions in their written accounts of the last conscious moments of Anderson's life when they testified last week.

But lawyer Bob Sombathy, who represented ex-guard Patrick Garrett, said he doubted a federal prosecution of the eight would be successful. Sombathy said the state trial showed the medical findings are on the side of the defendants.

"With a 90-minute verdict after a three-week trial [in the state case], it would be the same result," he said.

Then-Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Hillsborough County prosecutors to handle the state case. Although Graham had nothing but praise for their professionalism, he said many in the town do not like the idea of the federal government now coming in and pushing the case further.

"A lot of people are disgusted with talk of that," Graham said.

They are tired of the divisions this case has caused, he said.

Pastor Wesley Toncre, of the mostly white Trinity Lutheran Church, said Panama City is a town long fragmented not just by race but by economics.

Some in the community have transcended those barriers and have formed relationships beyond ethnicity and social structure, he said. A national event with racial undertones only creates setbacks.

"Every time something like this happens it has a tendency to destroy the relationships that do exist," he said.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Thomas W. Krause can be reached at (813)259-7698 or tkrause@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT