Sisters-In-Law: Real Sisters, Real Lawyers, Really Good Talk - Episode 1 5/23/20
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Hello, my name is Janice Mathis, and I am co-host of the brand new podcast, Sisters in Law. We're so delighted that you've joined us, and we've got some great topics of interest to discuss with you. But before we do that, we'd like to tell you just a little bit about ourselves. I'm Janice Mathis, and my real sister is Davida Mathis, and we are both lawyers.

We are the Sisters-in-Law. That's what we call ourselves. We've been in radio for over a decade now, but now we're on a new medium, the podcast, Sisters-in-Law, the podcast. We're real sisters, real lawyers, and we hope to give you some really good talk.

We've been talking to each other for a very long time. Since Janice was in the high chair and I was in the crib, she's been talking to me. And as soon as I could make words, we started carrying on conversations. And we haven't stopped for the last so many years. Janice, I've heard people say things that I thought was stupid, like, we have a combined number of years doing this or that. Well, I'm going to be stupid and say, we have a combined...

over 70 years practicing law. That's scary, but it's true. And throughout these years, we've talked about what people need to know about law before they get in situations. My really good friend, Ms. Lottie Gibson, who was a mother and a political leader and a teacher to us all here in Greenville, South Carolina, said to me one time, you can't teach people what they need to know fast enough.

And so I'm going to say that about the law. When you need legal advice, you can't be taught fast enough what you need to know to help yourself. And so we want you to know things in advance so that you could possibly avoid situations or if you happen to get in a legal situation, you will have some tools to work with. But a little bit about us, Jan. Well, we were born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina.

I live in Maryland now and Davida still lives in South Carolina. She was a prosecutor and now she's in private practice. I work for a nonprofit organization where I get to work on civil rights and civil liberties. But our parents were both school teachers and if they believed in anything, they believed in education. And they transmitted that belief along with belief in faith in God and hard work to us.

And so it's our privilege and our pleasure to be able to share just a little bit of what we've learned over the years with you. Some that you probably have already talked about, but also we'll be able to give you a slightly different twist on the topic. Or if you've got legal experience yourself, it'll just be a refresher for us. What's on the schedule for today?

Well, we want to talk about today who we are, which we are still talking about. We want to talk about the election, Trump versus Biden, presumably. We want to talk about Ahmaud Arbery and the killing of that young man in the streets of Georgia.

And we want to talk about a topic that Janice and I both were thinking about for a number of months, but we didn't realize it until recently, about implicit and sometimes explicit bias in health care. And I'm talking about racial bias in health care and what it means in this atmosphere of the corona pandemic.

And it sounds sad and boring, but we hope it'll be interesting and engaging to you. We hope to answer some of your legal questions and address some of the topics you want us to address. If you connect with us on Facebook, Sisters in Law Facebook page.

on our twitter on instagram my daughter avery allen will be our communications director she's a communications specialist and so we're not trusting ourselves to do all of that but we are trusting that you will communicate with us through these social media platforms and let us know what you want to talk about or maybe you have legal questions you want us to discuss

on the air and we will be glad to do that because our goal is to impart some knowledge and we know that you'll impart some knowledge to us as well. Now our first topic is Trump versus Biden or presumably Biden. Well this week Jan

Yesterday, Trump says he wants the churches to open up. I never knew Trump to be a religious person, but he wants to open up the churches. And he says if the states won't do it, he'll force them to do it. He'll override the states. Well, nobody ever read the Constitution to him. I know he didn't read it himself, but he does not have the authority to override anything that the

the states do that's not illegal under the federal law. And he has no authority to make churches open up. So what do you say about this newfound Trump religious concern? Well, I think that what is telling about it, we've gotten used to Trump saying all manner of things. Inject Clorox. All manner of things. All manner of things that seem not to make any sense at all.

seem to come from the president. We also know that he rarely reads his briefings and that the main challenge for some of his staff members is to hold his attention long enough to even tell him the things that he needs to know. But what got my attention about this story was that on Tuesday of this week, the Justice Department warned California Governor Gavin Newsom

that the state's reopening plan discriminates against churches because it restricts in-person services to prevent further spread of the virus.

It's one thing for Trump to spout foolishness. It's something else for the Justice Department to join him in it. And that is troubling to me. Of course, the CDC has issued guidelines calling for social distancing, even in churches, calling for a go slow approach, using masks, keeping six feet apart from anybody, gatherings, small gatherings, 10 people or fewer,

And so the policy seems to be at odds with the Justice Department and the President of the United States. It is almost unprecedented for an organization as storied and as reliable as the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to be disputed by the Justice Department. It is nonsensical. The other thing is, go ahead.

Well, Trump's whole approach to the pandemic, his response or lack of response to the pandemic has been nonsensical. On one hand, the White House issues guidelines for reopening and immediately, in a matter of seconds, Trump starts tweeting just the opposite of what the White House's own guidelines have said about reopening. He started here in South Carolina where all things terrible like the Civil War started.

But he started here in South Carolina with our governor immediately after the White House guidelines were issued, saying, oh, we're going to open up right now. We're going to open up now. We can't stop the government and people will be willing to risk getting the coronavirus just to start the economy again. Well, Trump initially rebuked him. We knew it was a feigned rebuke.

but he did it for a couple of seconds. But then other Southern governors followed suit, just like they did in the Civil War.

And so the response has been typical for the White House, but atypical for any governmental entity. And for the Justice Department, I don't think we have a Justice Department right now. What they do is just echo and reverberate what Trump has said, and he knows nothing about the law.

So I'm going to finish spouting it that you really talk about. Well, I just wanted to add that not only does the scientific evidence suggest that large gatherings of people is not advisable at this time, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence. There are many reports of coronavirus hotspots being traced back to houses of worship.

At least 33 African American church leaders have died from COVID-19 because they were attempting to have church services. You know, we are people of faith and we worship and praise God, but God doesn't want us to be foolish. God gives us science as one of his blessings.

I believe in common sense and common sense and that it's not counter to religion to believe in scientific evidence. But there's lots of anecdotal evidence.

In the past week, Catoosa Baptist Tabernacle in Ringgold, Georgia, and Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Houston suspended services after members and church leaders tested positive for COVID-19 following their reopen. They were opened, they closed, they reopened, they got sick, and now they've had to close again.

It almost makes you wonder if maybe he wants Christians and people of faith because this applies not only to churches, but to synagogues and mosques as well. He says he wants to make sure that their congregations are safe as they gather and pray. He made no mention of the CDC recommendations. He said the people are demanding to go to church, go to their mosques.

Well, that's not exactly true because 60% or more of the people are saying that we need to keep social distancing, keep up wearing masks and taking precautions to keep from spreading the coronavirus further. It is a very tiny minority that's protesting at Trump's urging, protesting that they need to go back and that their rights are being violated by having to stay home and protect their health.

I really struggle against cynicism with this administration, but you have to wonder if this is a real policy prescription or is this just a dog whistle to his ultra conservative followers, core base of support among the Christian community to say, look, look, see, I'm still on your side. It's hard to fathom what his motives might be.

Well, I think it's both, Jan. I think it's part of his policy. He's giving a dog whistle to his people. And also, I think it's more sinister than that. I think Trump wants black people to go back to church. He doesn't care one whit, or maybe he does care that we get coronavirus because he said out loud that he wanted black men to stay away from the polls.

I think he wants black people in general to stay away from the polls. Now, this is not radio. This is podcast. And one thing I like about podcasts is that we can say our opinion. And my opinion is...

he wouldn't be hurt at all. As a matter of fact, he'd be helped if more Black people were preoccupied and or dead from coronavirus to go out and vote. Because the truth is, if we don't vote, he has a better chance of winning. If we do vote, he has a very, very great chance of being sent back to private life. And it's just as simple as that. I think it's both of what you said.

Well, and the other thing that supports that point of view as dark and cynical as that point of view is, I admit, is that look how he's been treating so-called democratic states. Michigan, New York, California. Those are the states that he's singled out to say in Michigan, if you use...

federal funds to send voters absentee ballot applications, your funds will be withheld. Now these are funds that have been appropriated not by the White House. The White House doesn't appropriate any funds. These are funds that have been appropriated by the United States Congress not once but three times. And so to say to certain states, not all states, he's not saying that to Wyoming or Kansas,

or Texas, but he's only saying it to states where there are Democratic governors. He's also been stingy about providing funding for states that have Democratic governors. You know, we've lasted in this country a long time without this overt kind of partisan favoritism. And it's hard not to ascribe dark motives when the president makes these kinds of pronouncements.

Well, and I said we were going to talk about in this segment of the race against the presumable opponent of Biden. Biden said in an interview with Charlemagne Tha God, Charlemagne Tha God is not a god. He is a rapper. And Joe Biden was on his show. Charlemagne Tha God says, well, I need more information to make a decision between you and Trump.

And Biden said, and I'm quoting, if you're having a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black. Well, there was a firestorm, a little brief firestorm about it yesterday. Some were saying Biden shouldn't say who's black and who ain't black. But I think the meaning of what Biden said was that if we haven't learned who Trump is since 2016,

If we haven't made a decision as to who serves the interests of Americans in general and African-Americans in particular, then it's hard to imagine that a black person

would have that thought process. I hate to interrupt you and I don't. It seems like you come into a conclusion of your thought, but we've been on now about 15 minutes and I know we wanted to do four 15 minute segments for this first podcast. So maybe we should take a brief break and come right back with more information about the law and about current affairs that we hope you will find interesting. We are the sisters-in-law, Janice and Davida Mathis.

Now, I want to talk about something, Janice, that you and I have talked about independently and together. But you've done more than talk about it. And I've done a little bit more than talk about it. It's the implicit bias in health care. I call this segment, it's not just high blood pressure and diabetes that make us more likely to die from Corona-19. Just a few stats to support what I'm saying.

Out of the almost 100,000 deaths in the United States to date, African Americans make up 25%. Which is about twice our representation in the population of the United States. It's double the rate of whites. We're outperforming them two to one.

It's shocking. And it's been noted by several news outlets. I know the governor of New York, Governor Cuomo, mentioned it and he talked about they were going to do something about it. I know he's extremely busy. But of all people, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights said,

under the law, sent a letter to the CDC and asked for a response about the statistics related to the death of African Americans in this coronavirus pandemic.

They wanted to know, are the numbers being kept so we can even address that problem to see what we're talking about? We have some numbers, but the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law wanted some in-depth response about the numbers. They sent a letter to the CDC and the CDC said, well, we can't keep those numbers because the states haven't sent them to us.

Well, that's kind of a shocking response because there are all kinds of scholarly studies and polls and, um,

accurate numbers from other entities in addition to the states that really do show that African Americans are dying at a greater rate. This whole issue of implicit bias in health care has been something that I've been studying and talking about for a few years. As you know, it's a roundabout way, but I sponsor a

the King Legacy Week here in Greenville, South Carolina. And one thing that we do is we advocate for African Americans to go to medical school and enter into medical professions and professions in science, technology, engineering, and math.

And as part of that lobbying, I have to go to various entities, namely the local hospitals and local medical school, and ask for assistance in getting African Americans ready for medical school and ready for practicing medicine for the purpose of serving our African American community.

There's a Stanford University study from 2019, there have been a few since 2002, that show that African Americans are more likely to follow the advice of their medical professionals if the medical professional is also African American.

But right now, we are way behind. We're underperforming in creating African-American doctors. So one of our goals is to help create more African-American doctors, nurses, and medical professionals to address that concern.

Now let me interrupt you just a minute. I admire your modesty, but you've done more than just a little work on this. You actually started to establish pipelines from HBCUs that do a great job of educating African-American students in science and technology and engineering into one particular medical school with the support of that medical school in Greenville.

So I think that's remarkable. But what I'm question I wanted to ask you, talk about the implicit bias and how it shows up. Who's biased and what does that bias look like? Well, let me talk about it like this. When the statistics, some of the statistics started coming out about the morbidity of African-Americans in this pandemic period.

You heard it on the news. What a shame. It's hitting the black community hard. The African-Americans are suffering and that's where they left it. And so, well, some went on to say, well, you know, they're more likely to have diabetes and they're more likely to have high blood pressure and they live in poverty in the inner city and so on and so forth. But it's more than that. We are more likely to have diabetes and high blood pressure and lack of insurance.

Those are the social determinants of health. We're more likely to have those things, but it's more than that. And that's where the implicit bias comes in. We are also less likely to be tested if we present with symptoms of any disease, especially COVID-19.

Only 30% of those with COVID-19 who reported symptoms were actually tested. We're not admitted at the same rate as whites when we have overt symptoms. When we present with high fevers and coughing and malaise, we're sent back home.

And it's not just a COVID-19 thing. No, it's just an example. It's just an example. And to be honest, I was not shocked that we were dying at twice the rate of our representation in the population. The social determinants of health and health disparity and health care disparity has been a much written and studied and talked about phenomenon for at least the past 20 years.

Doctors don't believe their patients as often when they are black. They underestimate their pain when they are black. You already talked about the test, but they also prescribe misdiagnose them more often than other groups of people. Throughout the healthcare system, there's this evidence that black patients are looked at with a kind of suspicion and disdain.

and a dismissal. And not just African Americans, also Hispanic people, people who speak Spanish, brown people, are treated very much like African Americans.

we're less likely to get pain medication. Even though we have same insurance, same symptoms, and a lot of times better education than our white counterparts, we're less likely to be treated. It became very evident in the morbidity of newborns.

that African American women with insurance, with employment, with degrees are treated worse than white women with no insurance, minimum wage employment, and without education. And as a consequence, maternal health, even among middle class, highly educated, married black women is not good and is getting worse over time.

And to me, if people are smart enough to get through medical school, they ought to be smart enough to devise some part of the curriculum that attacks this bias. That overcoming bias ought to be as much a part of the curriculum as anatomy, since we know it exists.

Well, that's one of the remedies. I read a lot about it. I've been reading a lot about it for the last few years. The bias is not new. One, well, two doctors who were interviewed recently from a California hospital, they're both African-Americans. They said all of these things we talked about are factors. And then there's the 400 years of racism.

I think we have to pretty much start with the 400 years of racism and everything else falls from there. But the solutions, one solution I see, Jan, is that something I've been working on is getting more African-American boys and girls interested in science, technology, engineering, arts and math.

Getting more African American boys and girls to take the courses they need to get the majors they need to get into college, to graduate successfully, get into medical school and finish medical school successfully. It can be done, but we have to endeavor to do it first. And medical school is so expensive, too. Right.

If we have more African-American doctors, more African-Americans will be treated like humans and not as a subset of humans. Well, you know, I've been working on a project for my job. And the idea that I've come up with is that there ought to be.

African-American patient focus groups or support groups, and they can talk about their symptoms and managing diabetes and managing diet and exercise, all those things. There's nothing wrong with talking about that. But the other thing they should talk about is how does your practitioner treat you?

They ought to be surveyed regularly. Do you feel that you are respected? Do you feel that you're sympathized with? Are your calls returned? Are your test results reported promptly?

so that we get some empirical data about the way people of color are treated when they seek healthcare services. I think that could be an important element. The best thing about this pandemic is it pulled the wool away from our eyes so that everybody who hadn't been thinking about

healthcare disparity now cannot dispute it. Nobody can look at us now and say, oh, that's just a figment of your imagination. It's not really racism. That's just your, you're just sensitive. The other thing is they talk about opening up the economy. We're going to open up America. That is such a fallacy. Only one out of every five African, and it goes to your point about science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.

Only one out of five African Americans has a job that permits them to work at home even occasionally. So while I've been at home for more than two months, the mailman comes every day. The garbage guys come every Thursday morning. When I want a pizza, the pizza man still comes. It is a misnomer. It is disrespectful to the people who are working every day to say that the economy is closed.

The only people it's closed for is people like me and you who are highly educated and mostly white who can work from home. Well, that's absolutely true. We touched on some things about medical school, but I want to touch on this particular thing. You said they should teach how not to be biased in medical school. Of course.

It should be on the medical board exam. Students should have to study it and be worried about whether or not they're going to pass the exam regarding racial bias. And one idea. Yeah, go ahead.

They should require continuing medical education in the area of racial bias because it's making African-Americans sicker and it's making us more likely to die of disease. And if racism at the doctor's office is making us sick, what do you think racism at the job is doing? And the EEOC, even though Barack Obama did a lot to beef up the EEOC,

Race-based claims of discrimination are on the decline because these federal judges that have been appointed don't want to hear them and have created law that is hostile to asserting your race-based claims of discrimination. You said something that was very important, and that is that we ought to have equity officers in every hospital and big medical practice.

equity officers. Somebody just like you have a chief diversity officer in many corporations. And I know sometimes it's window dress. You have them in hospitals too, but we're not talking about the workforce. We're not talking about patient care. We're talking about patient care. This is going awfully fast. I guess we better take a break. At least take a deep breath and a sip of water and we'll be right back with more of Sisters in Law.

Janice, we've all heard so much news about Ahmaud Arbery. And I initially didn't want to talk about it on this maiden podcast for sisters-in-law. But we've got to talk about it. Because it takes a new turn in a whole litany of African-American young people who have been gunned down in the street worse than any dog would be. It's different in a way.

Give us a little background on Ahmaud Arbery and the legal implications. Well, I'm going to start with one of the more recent developments. Cobb County District Attorney Joyette Holmes said,

is now the new lead prosecutor in the case of Ahmaud Arbery's murder. And she is the prosecutor for Cobb County. She's the DA in Cobb County. If you know anything about Georgia, you know that's a northern suburb of Atlanta. Until recently, it was majority white and quite conservative. But the demographics, like it is all over the country, is changing. District Attorney Joyette Holmes is an African-American woman.

And so that gives a new cast to it. She will be the fourth prosecutor. They've been playing hot potato with this case down in Georgia. Armand Armory was shot and killed back in February, on February 23rd.

When he went jogging and on his way on his jog, he stopped to look into a house that was under construction. There was a camera there and it recorded him. It recorded the fact that nothing was stolen. Nothing was damaged. He was in the house about four minutes. He didn't have to break in. It was open because it was under construction.

The owner had put the camera there because there had been people in and out of the house. We don't know if Armand, if Mr. Arbery had been there before or not, but we know after four minutes in that house, he resumed his job, but he wasn't alone. He was followed by three men in two vehicles. Those men were Travis McMichael and his father and another gentleman, Mr. Brian, William Brian, followed him

down the street, followed him. He ran from them for four minutes, ran from them trying to escape. They cut off his path. He jogged around them, cut through a yard, went down another street. They continued to follow. Meanwhile, the McMichael father had called the police. So he knew the police were on the way. There was no exigency. There was no emergency.

Georgia does have this citizen's arrest law, and that's what they use as their excuse. But actually, the police made up their excuse for them. The Glen County Police, the district attorney, the first one said, don't charge him with anything. That was just a citizen's arrest. Now, I don't know how many times you've been involved as a prosecutor, Davida, in a case.

Where the DA gives you a defense theory for your client who is charged with crime or who's implicated in a criminal offense. Let me answer that now. Never. It's not done. Never. But that's what was done in this case. Then, miraculously, as only God can arrange it, a video turned up.

a video taken by Mr. Bryan, who has now been charged with murder himself. Now the fallacy about using the citizen's arrest, first of all, it goes all the way back to the Civil War. And I'm sort of an amateur history buff, and I could get into why they adopted that law back in 1863, months after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and there were

20% of the population of Georgia was African American. I could get into that, but I won't do that today. Suffice to say... You think it was just 20? You think it was just 20? Well, in Atlanta, it's probably more than that in Georgia, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. Yeah, probably more than that. But at any rate, you got newly freed Blacks and you got Sherman breathing down their necks. It would be less than a year before Sherman would start his march to take Atlanta

So the governor called for civilian patrols to help keep order because the Confederate Army was on the run. That's where this law comes from. The law says that you have to have probable cause to think that somebody committed a felony. Now let's go back to what Mr. Aubrey was seen doing.

Even the assailants say that he was looking in this house. That might be a trespass, but it certainly is not a felony. It might be a $1,000 fine and up to 12 months in jail, but the penalty for trespass is not death. This boy ran until he was cornered. He went around the truck trying to evade them, and there was this Travis McMichael with a shotgun pointed at him.

And, you know, in the news, they reported that he fought with McMichael. And the suggestion was, well, in the struggle over the gun, maybe, you know, the guy got scared. He shot him. He was shot before the struggle and trying to take that gun away from McMichael after the first shot, after the first shot. And so what does that say to you? It says to me that the McMichaels were the aggressors throughout the

throughout and they've been charged with murder. All three of them have been charged with murder and I'm praying for that sister prosecutor hoping that she is able to find justice in this case. District Attorney Joyette Holmes. To the governor's credit, he took the case away from the local authorities down in Glenn County which as only God could arrange it is the same place that Sherman ordered 40 acres and a mule for the free Africans.

in America. He took the case and gave it to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, a state agency. And that agency, within hours, took out arrest warrants for murder for two of the gentlemen. And then a couple days later, for Brian, the guy who took the video. So it is similar to Trayvon Martin, if you think about it. It's similar to Trayvon. And there's another case that's similar.

That case was an Atlanta case where a woman attempted a scissor risk and killed a man because he left the scene of an accident. It wasn't even her car that was in the accident, but she was, I guess, some kind of good Samaritan, crazy Samaritan. Followed this man, reached into his car and shot him and killed him because he left the scene of a fender bender.

And he left the scene because he was having a diabetic crisis. But she's been charged with murder also in Georgia. Of course, her defense counsel is saying that, well, she's just trying to do a good deed for somebody. Hannah Payne is a defendant and Kenneth Herring is the African-American man who was shot and killed and sitting in his car. He wasn't offering any resistance to anybody.

She reached in and punched him with her left hand and had the gun in her right hand. And before he could get out of the car, she shot him and killed him. Well, you know, this whole Ahmaud Arbery situation is somewhat different than all the long list of killings that we've seen in recent years. Because it appears to me when I first heard about the McMichaels and Ahmaud Arbery trying to jog that day,

that it was different because it seemed like they were going out looking for a black person to chase. It seemed like they didn't own the property. They weren't privy to the video. The video only came out months after the killing.

They had no interest in protecting the property that Ahmaud Arbery entered. Ahmaud Arbery didn't steal anything. The owner of the property says he didn't think he stole anything. Even though his image might have been on the video, nothing was stolen. He's not pressing charges. And the key is the McMichaels didn't know anything about the video or entering the property until after they got arrested.

Well, there is some indication that the owner of the property lives out of town. And he had made several reports to the police about these videos. Now, what the McMichael said was that there had been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. That is not true. They also said that one of their guns, it seemed like they got plenty of guns, one of their guns had been stolen from a truck, but that's not burglary.

And you don't have the right to shoot somebody when they break in your car. Like you might have when they break into your home. Yeah, and you can't use that you're the king of your palace doctrine if it's not your house. It's not his property and it was not occupied property. It was a construction site.

And I want to reiterate, and I think I'm right about it, James, that McMichaels didn't know a thing about Ahmaud Arbery entering that property. I think they went out black man hunting. And the proof that I have of it is that they recruited a videographer, a cinematographer to go out with them. And

My question is, although I think I have an answer for it, my question is, what were they doing with that video? What were they doing from February the 23rd until May when they got arrested with that video? Well, the police had it from day one. The only people who didn't have it was the public. The police had it from the jump street. I think that what...

that McMichaels were doing, what William Bryan was doing, was going out and hunting black people for fun. Well, I think it might be a little bit more complicated than that because

They claimed they saw him leaving the property and that's when they went inside and got there. Now, did they see him doing anything suspicious or did they just see a black man running through their neighborhood, which is your point? Did they have any reason to suspect him? Well, let me inject some prosecutor in this. Everybody lies after they get caught.

Well, especially if you've got the police helping you lie, telling you that was a citizen's arrest. I think that is outrageous. I think that is prosecutorial misconduct. Especially if you've got the police giving you a defense. Now, I don't know about Georgia because I don't practice law in Georgia, but there is no such thing as citizen's arrest in South Carolina. The only place that exists, to my knowledge, as a legal doctrine is on Andy Griffith's shelf.

Remember when Barney was running around talking about citizens of race? No one, Barney. It was Gilbert. Or Goma, one of them. Citizens of race. That's the only place I know it exists as a legal doctrine. It doesn't exist as a legal doctrine in South Carolina. Well, it does exist in many states.

Most states have some form of citizen's arrest, but they are old laws and most of the commentary is that it is outdated. It was designed for a time when it might take the sheriff three days to get to your house to investigate a complaint. It was not designed for 911. Even in Georgia, they would have to have probable cause.

Yeah, probable cause, not only probable cause, but probable cause that a felony had been committed. Yeah, but let's talk about what probable cause is. Number one, that a crime was committed. And number two, that the person who they're contemplating arresting more than likely was involved in the commission of the crime. And that they had personal knowledge of it. Right.

You have to have all of that for a citizen. And that's why a citizen, that's just a red herring. This was not a citizen's arrest. This was like you said, they're out hunting. Now, did they have some advanced knowledge? What they told the police was he looked like somebody that was a burglary suspect. Did they have anything to base that on or was all fabricated? That's in their arrest statement. Yeah, but who goes out with a gun to protect somebody's construction site?

Well, you got some gun crazy. Well, in Georgia, I don't know about South Carolina, but there are white fellas in pickup trucks who never leave home without their guns. Well, we have that here too. They're armed all the time. You know, we have open carry. Is it lawful to use your gun to protect somebody else's construction site? Well, they claim that, well, no, it is not. It is not. And that's why they're being charged with murder.

That's why as soon as the home cooking got out of it, they got arrested. Because remember now, remember now, this gentleman, the McMichael, the older McMichael was a cop, a former police officer and investigator for the DA. So this is a lot like Trayvon. You got part of the courthouse gang out. Well, but yeah, but that boy down in Florida, his folk worked at the courthouse. He was part of the courthouse gang.

Yeah, his mother or somebody was a man. Right. So they knew who he was. Exactly. And that matters. It shouldn't, but it does. So anyway, I don't want to belabor it, but it's something to watch because this is, first of all, we need to repeal these laws where they exist. And we need to pray for this sister that nothing untoward happens to her.

Yeah, that's a real danger. But let me just share a little story. I don't know if I've ever told you this. Avery was a senior in high school and she had her own car. She drove herself to school every day and brought herself home. Five minutes. You want to stop just a minute and then we can pick up where we left off and tell us the story about Avery. Okay. You're listening to Sisters-in-Law, the podcast.

Avery was a senior in high school. Avery is my daughter. And she drove herself to school and drove herself home. And on that particular day, I got home before she did. And I heard her SUV pull up in the driveway, but there were several minutes I didn't hear the door close and she certainly didn't walk in the door. So it caused me concern.

A couple of minutes later, she called me hysterical. And I asked her where she was. And she said she was in her truck. And I said, well, why don't you come inside? She said, there's a white man out here that won't let me out of my SUV. She was in our truck. I remember that. And the white man was standing there at her door, wouldn't let her open her door. And of course, Mom Bear went out as quickly as possible. And the white man was saying,

I asked him what was he doing on my property. He said, well, he was pursuing her because she almost ran over his child about a week ago. And in the conversation, he said he was our neighbor and his child was sitting in the middle of the street. And she came down the street and she could have hit him because she was driving down the street and his child was sitting in the middle of the street. That's not funny. And he followed her.

Well, that's what he said. He followed her because he wanted to know why did she almost hit his child. And I said, well, if she almost hit his child, DSS, Department of Social Services, should have come and taken your child away from you because you should not have been watching your child sitting in the middle of the street. You should have removed him from sitting in the middle of the street.

And he went on talking and saying she could have hit my child. I said, well, why did it take you a week to respond? Because she drives by your house every day and so do I. Well, he kept on persisting and wouldn't leave my property until I had to say some words I don't ordinarily say. And, um...

and just get real loud and, you know. And that goes to your point that maybe they were just hunting blacks. Well, I tell you this. I'm not saying that. Get to him to make him leave my property. I went back in the house and called 911. Well, they said, well, he just called us about you and the sheriff will be at your house in a minute.

They didn't go to his house. They came to my house. And so I just told the sheriff what I told you, that this man was on my property. And they said, well, he has the right to pursue and investigate. I said, oh, I was unaware that he was a deputy sheriff. Well, he's not. But as a citizen, he can pursue and investigate. I said, under what law? Well, there was no law. And then the two deputies came in my foyer.

And one of them was real nasty and started telling me, well, he can follow her and he can follow her onto your property. And I realized that if I had continued to talk back to that deputy, that he probably would have killed me right in my foyer on my French setting. And so I sat down and didn't say another mumbling word because I realized that I was in one of those situations where

He would wrestle me and choke hold me to prove that he's right about this white man following my child onto my property. I called the sheriff's office and they said, well, yes, we're aware, but they have addressed the problem by coming to my house. They didn't go to the other person's house. And Jan, you know yourself how much restraint this took. Yeah. I could say I wrote a letter to the sheriff, the elected sheriff, and he wrote me back a letter and said, that's not what happened.

Wow. And the only other thing that I did is I campaigned very hard against that sheriff and someone else was elected sheriff in the next election. Now see, this is the other thing that this podcast is about. Yes, there is the law. There are courts. There are judges. But there's also politics. And sometimes politics is how we change the law. Politics is how, yeah, the law might be stacked against us.

But the right to vote is how we ordinary citizens express ourselves when the law is unjust. Well, yeah, the law is stacked against us, and I know it better than most. Policemen don't all lie, but some policemen lie all the time. Now, you said South Carolina doesn't have a citizen's arrest, but we don't have... Yes, that's what I said. There is a statute. What does it say, James?

Let's see what it says. I'm sitting at the computer. First thing it says is that South Carolina lawmakers are working to abolish the citizens' arrest law in South Carolina. Okay. Well, that's good. That's good. And can you tell whether it's for felonies or any little old thing that they think a black person might be doing? Okay. They talk about the common law. They say you can make a citizens' arrest in South Carolina at any time of day or night if...

This must be an old law. You witness a felony being committed. You have certain information that a felony has been committed. Or if you witness a larceny being committed, even if the larceny is a misdemeanor like shoplifting, you know, they can detain you for a certain amount of time until the police get there in a shoplifting case. But they cite the South Carolina Code 171310, but I don't see a date. And I don't, it does look like they're trying to repeal it.

So maybe it's not good law anymore. That's the other thing about the internet. You can't believe everything you read on the internet. But it does say that citizens arrest a fraud with danger. Do not speak to authorities. Do not answer any questions until you consult an experienced criminal defense lawyer about your situation. Well, that's always good advice. Don't say anything. Yeah, that is always good advice. But these are old laws that really have their roots in slavery and Reconstruction.

And the Civil War. And it makes sense, Jan, in a real subversive kind of way, that if you're involved in the Civil War and slaves have just been emancipated, they're no longer slaves. They're more of them than they are of you. Exactly. And they can arm themselves and join the Union Army and fight you and kill you

as part of the union army. Well, what did the enslaved do? What the enslaved did is when Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea, they got right in behind him because they knew that was the only... They didn't have any emancipation until Sherman got there because they weren't going to emancipate them voluntarily. Some of them walked off. You know, the men were gone to fight. Some of them just left. I always wonder why Mamet was still at Tarah.

for the battle of Atlanta she should have been gone but that's all that was in the movies we don't know if she was or not no we don't know but you know what it makes a whole lot of sense in a sinister evil way right

They would empower regular citizens who weren't a part of the army to arrest escaped Negroes who were supposed to be free who might join the Union Army on themselves and kill them. And another thing was that they don't tell it much in the narrative, you know, the redemption narrative of the Civil War, but there were lots of deserters. There were lots of poor white folk who didn't have any slaves. They didn't have any plantations.

they didn't have a dog in that fight and they were what do you call it when you go AWOL they were running away from the army they were running away they didn't want to fight and you had northern spies who had infiltrated the south so I guess they needed some kind of help with their law enforcement but the time is up for that

The time is out for it. Yeah, the time should be up and it should be out. Avery and I were talking yesterday about the people who fly Confederate flags. You know, I talked about that a lot when I was a prosecutor. Out of about 26 attorneys, we had two blacks in the prosecutor's office. And you were the only female. And, um,

I was the only female and they wanted to talk to me about, well, why is the Confederate flag such a problem? I said, well, it indicates to me that those people who fly it today are the people who thought that we should not get out of slavery, who thought that we were not human and we had no rights that they had to respect. And that's my problem. My other problem is the Confederacy attacked the United States of America.

They were traitors. Yeah, I say that a lot. Fort Sumter wasn't. That's the only time a military base in the United States has been fired on. Except 9-1-1 when they flew them planes into the Pentagon. And so how you going? But then, you know, Lincoln got killed. And, you know, the whole Reconstruction thing got reinterpreted. But if you don't understand history, you can't understand the present.

No, it's impossible. If you don't understand a little bit about your own history, and that's, you know, it's political, it's legal, it's historical, it's medical, it's in every aspect of our lives. And that's why we're so excited about doing this podcast and hope people join us as we, as we, we've got about five minutes left. Is there anything left to talk about? How often are we going to do this, Davida?

Well, there's always something left to talk about. We've been talking about these things for years. These are things that we as sisters and we as lawyers talk about all the time to our families and friends. But we do it because these are the things that are on our minds. In that podcast I listened to earlier, two African-American doctors in California talking about health care disparities.

they talked about the 400 years of racism in America being a predictor of a whole lot of things. Um,

It's a predictor of underlying health conditions, the conditions they say that cause us to be the victims of the coronavirus. You know, diabetes and high blood pressure are not just on us because the disease hates us or because we've been black people. It's because our health care has been poor, whether we have insurance, good jobs, good communication skills or not.

We have more disease because we are African Americans and it does America's race. In the years, in the final years of the Obama years, African American and Latino health care coverage reached all time highs. And do you know that in the two years between 2016 and 20, well, really 2017 to 2019, the

The numbers have started to drop again, not because the law changed, but because this administration's regulations changed who could get covered and for what. And systematically dismantle has not stopped dismantling. They in court right now trying to undo the Affordable Care Act. They in court right now. Yeah, I...

Affordable care? No, she didn't.

She said those words to me. She didn't even know who she was talking to. She loves me very much. She said, I don't want that Obamacare. Poor as Job's turkey and needed whatever kind of help she could get. But she didn't want that Obamacare, but she would take the Affordable Care Act. And so all of that plays into the fact that we are sicker sometimes as people. And also the fact that we're not treated as well when we get inside the medical system.

So there are a whole lot of things to talk about, Jen. I want to talk about more law, more politics. I want to answer legal questions. I want our listeners to go to our Facebook page, Sisters in Law. Pick us up on Twitter, Instagram, and all those platforms.

And send us questions. Send us comments. We're going to be here weekly. And we'll post our episodes every Saturday. You listen to them at your convenience. And send us questions. Send us comments. And we're going to keep this thing rolling. Because we do this because we know this. And I would like to, if it's okay with you. I have a lack of information.

Email address. If you want to email us questions, you can email us at Janice L. Mathis at AOL.com. That's J-A-N-I-C-E-L-M-A-T-H-I-S Janice L. Mathis at AOL.com. And we have a blog, sistersinlaw.blogspot.com. That's sistersinlaw, all one word,

at blogspot, B-L-O-G-S-P-O-T dot com. We'd like to hear from you. Well, thank you for a great episode, a great start. We do this because we feel like we can be a service to people. We want you and all of your guests. Please get an understanding. You've been listening to Sisters in Law. The podcast. Have a great week.