STF na MÃdia - MyClipp
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The New York Times/ - U.S., Sex, 13 de Abril de 2012<br />
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)<br />
One Fate in Tulsa for 3 Strangers<br />
Familiar With Struggle<br />
By MANNY FERNANDEZ TULSA, Okla. — Shortly<br />
after midnight on Good Friday here, Bobby Clark was<br />
standing at the corner, waiting for his brother. Dan<strong>na</strong>er<br />
Fields was walking home after playing dominoes at a<br />
friend’s house. William Allen was walking, too, headed<br />
home after visiting his brother. In the close-knit world<br />
of north Tulsa, the three of them were strangers, two<br />
men and a woman who happened to be out on the<br />
streets late at night, in the middle of a mundane<br />
moment. But they had more in common than they<br />
could have imagined. The predomi<strong>na</strong>ntly black<br />
neighborhoods where they lived — home to crime,<br />
poverty and hundreds of boarded-up homes and<br />
businesses — have known struggle, and so had they.<br />
Mr. Clark, 54, who as a tee<strong>na</strong>ger was given a<br />
diagnosis of schizophrenia, used to be homeless and<br />
had moved in with his brother after being evicted from<br />
the public-housing apartment where he lived. Ms.<br />
Fields, 49, overcame drug addiction; she, too, moved<br />
in with her brother after an eviction. In a<br />
three-square-mile area of north Tulsa in the span of<br />
one hour on April 6, the authorities say, two men drove<br />
up to Mr. Clark, Ms. Fields and Mr. Allen, asked them<br />
for directions and then fatally shot them, part of a<br />
series of attacks that left two others wounded and<br />
terrified the second-largest city in Oklahoma. The five<br />
victims were black. One of the suspects, Alvin L.<br />
Watts, 32, is white, and the other, Jacob C. England,<br />
19, is an American Indian who has also described<br />
himself as white. On Friday, prosecutors formally<br />
charged Mr. England and Mr. Watts with hate crimes.<br />
The two men were each charged with three counts of<br />
first-degree murder, two counts of shooting with intent<br />
to kill and five counts of malicious harassment, the<br />
equivalent of hate crimes under state law. The<br />
shootings unfolded the day after Mr. England used a<br />
racial slur on Facebook to describe the man he<br />
believed had killed his father, Carl, in April 2010.<br />
Prosecutors declined to file homicide charges against<br />
the man who was a person of interest in the case,<br />
Pernell Jefferson. They determined that Mr. Jefferson,<br />
who is black, was justified using deadly force in<br />
self-defense under Oklahoma law. In a statement on<br />
Friday, Doug Drummond, the first assistant district<br />
attorney for Tulsa County, said he would not comment<br />
about the specific evidence for any of the charges<br />
against Mr. England and Mr. Watts, both of whom the<br />
police said had confessed after their arrest on Sunday.<br />
“Filing charges is the first step to obtain justice for the<br />
victims and their families,” Mr. Drummond said. “This is<br />
a tragic and senseless crime. Our office is committed<br />
to holding those responsible accountable for their<br />
actions.” The potential punishment on each<br />
first-degree murder charge is life with parole, life<br />
without parole or the death pe<strong>na</strong>lty. Mr. Drummond<br />
said the decision whether to seek the death pe<strong>na</strong>lty<br />
against the two men would be determined later. The<br />
charges were announced the day of the first funeral,<br />
for Mr. Clark. At a chapel not far from the scenes of the<br />
shootings, Mr. Clark’s brothers and relatives and<br />
several black leaders and Tulsa officials, including the<br />
Rev. Jesse Jackson and Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr.,<br />
gathered before his coffin to sing and pray. In his<br />
remarks to mourners and in an interview after the<br />
service, Mr. Jackson likened Mr. Clark’s death to those<br />
of Trayvon Martin, the u<strong>na</strong>rmed 17-year-old who was<br />
shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in<br />
Florida, and Emmett Till, the 14-year-old whose<br />
murder in Mississippi in 1955 was a catalyst of the civil<br />
rights movement. “Emmett Till was not famous,” Mr.<br />
Jackson said outside the Crown Hill Chapel. “Trayvon<br />
Martin was not famous. And yet it is the power of the<br />
blood of the innocent that often is redeeming to us all.”<br />
Mr. Clark — who was the son of a school bus driver<br />
and who grew up in the Seminole Hills public-housing<br />
complex — walked around the city with his<br />
auburn-colored acoustic guitar slung across his back,<br />
and he would often play for friends at the downtown<br />
Tulsa homeless shelter where he once stayed, the<br />
Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless. He was<br />
unemployed, and had survived on his disability check.<br />
Every Tuesday morning, he would pick up a portion of<br />
his check from the homeless center’s executive<br />
director, Sandra Lewis, whom he had known for years.<br />
“He was not the stereotypical version of a<br />
schizophrenic man,” Ms. Lewis said. “Bobby didn’t<br />
have a mean bone in his body. He was a very kind and<br />
gentle man. Never cross. Never cranky. Never had a<br />
bad day that I ever saw.” On Friday at the chapel, Ms.<br />
Lewis and Mr. Clark’s relatives and friends reminisced<br />
about him, telling stories about the Kool-Aid that he<br />
made so sweet no one else could drink it, and about<br />
his love of Jimi Hendrix riffs. There was little anger<br />
displayed for Mr. England and Mr. Watts by relatives<br />
and friends, even after word spread that the two men<br />
were being charged with hate crimes. “Justice needs<br />
to be served,” said Donnie Clark, 56, one of Mr. Clark’s<br />
three brothers. “We didn’t know them. Maybe if they<br />
would have known us it wouldn’t have happened.” Ms.<br />
Fields’s funeral is Saturday. Services for Mr. Allen, 31,<br />
48