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7 ConLawNOW 1 (2015-2016)

handle is hein.journals/akjopal7 and id is 1 raw text is: PURSUING PROCEDURAL JUSTICE: REFLECTIONS BY AN ATTORNEY IN THE TAMIR RICE CASE Walter Madison1 On June 11, 2015, attorney Walter Madison successfully petitioned an Ohio municipal court to make a finding of probable cause to charge police officers for the death of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice. He recounts the process that led to that decision, and the broader social and personal context behind it. I am no more happy about race relations today than I was in 1976. In the seventies, the Youngstown Steel Mill blast furnaces always had a pure blue flame. At that time, my conscious was reflective of those flames. I was a kid from across the tracks, attending an Italian-Catholic grade school. My cousin and I were some of the first African-American kids to ever attend. We were different. We were unaware. My Afro, my style, my taste in music were all foreign to each of my classmates. My classmates were strange fruit to me as well. The things they talked about. The way they wore their hair. The way they worshiped in a different language. I struggled with why I had to be there. I could not understand why I had to wear that ugly uniform to school while all my friends wore sneakers and walked a stone's throw to our neighborhood school. Ignorance (black and white) set out to make me feel I neither belonged in my neighborhood nor in my school house. I was not black enough anymore for my own neighborhood, but too black for school. At five years old, I learned the Black and White truth of life. Simply, there were two different worlds that I just could not escape. My situation was tough. I remember being called a nigger each day at school. It became easier to answer and respond to the racial slur than my own name. I was afraid. I was physically unable to defend myself from the meaning behind the word. In my neighborhood, I was 1. J.D., The University of Akron School of Law; Attorney, Akron, Ohio, htt1:/iwww.waltermadison.com.