…In the majority of the Winston-Salem City Council, at least according to the Journal’s logic. The city’s paper of record goes off on the majority of council members — including Mayor Allen Joines– who took City Attorney Angela Carmon’s legal advice and decided against filing an amicus brief in Kalvin Michael Smith’s federal appeal in the Silk Plant Forest assault case:
“A man does what he must,” Kennedy wrote in “Profiles in Courage,” “in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.”
In its explanation, the city council said it did not want to “overstep its boundary” by supporting Smith’s petition for a new trial. As citizens, at least we now know where that line is — just shy of justice.
In its editorial, the Journal cites the report of a former FBI agent “hired by the grass-roots Silk Plant Forest Truth Committee” that “pointed out serious problems in the police work, calling it ‘seriously flawed and woefully incomplete.'”
As I’ve said over and over, when a group commissions a study, they’re usually commissioning the the answer they want to hear.
