Marion Barry’s Trial and Black Leadership

The Times, after self-righteously proclaiming that “all Americans must be held equally accountable,” and noting “this nation’s sad history of disparate legal treatment of blacks and whites,” nonetheless calls for “maximum sentence--a $100,000 fine and a year in jail,” notwithstanding that “first offenders rarely do jail time on misdemeanor convictions.”

When The Times states that many “black Americans openly doubt the government would have gone to such great lengths to pursue a powerful white man,” thus precluding the notion that any non-black Americans might share this notion, the inevitable conclusion is that “his (Mayor Barry’s) remaining admirers,” to whom “the maximum penalty would send a strong warning,” are also black.

Apparently some Americans are more equally accountable than others.

ALAN M. SCHWARTZ

Woodland Hills