Blood in the Water by Thompson Heather Ann

Author:Thompson, Heather Ann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

Bernard “Shango” Stroble (second from right) returns to D Yard with attorneys Ernie Goodman, Haywood Burns, and investigator Linda Borus. (Photograph by Michael Layman. Courtesy of William Goodman.)

In time it would become important to Shango not only that Ernie Goodman believed in his innocence, but also that they were friends as well as colleagues in this long battle that they faced together. After one of the many tense meetings they had debating trial strategy, Shango felt compelled to apologize to Goodman as well as to express his fondness for him. “I do hope you understand that there was nothing personal or feelings of dissatisfaction with the work you’re doing,” he wrote. “On the contrary, you have been a source of great inspiration, hope and strength to me—please understand this. Without you, I’m sure this matter would be almost impossible to deal with.”30

Although there was certainly tension between Goodman and Shango regarding defense strategy—who should testify, which witnesses should be called, how much should be revealed and held in reserve—on the most important matters, they agreed. They had spent some time early on discussing various possibilities for how to defend Shango, but after the terrible loss in the Hill and Pernasalice trial, both men concurred that this defense would center on the legal particulars not on the case’s political implication.

Still, Goodman’s trial team devoted considerable energy to managing its public relations both inside the courtroom and out. The team wanted to avoid any perception of “defense spectators as loud and disorderly,” which the press portrayed as a “lack of concern about the judicial proceedings.”31 So, for Shango’s trial, the ABLD made a deliberate effort to work with various established community groups to “bring black middle class spectators into the courtroom.”32 Outside the courthouse, one young woman, Devon Hodges, was specifically tasked with sending out press releases and both monitoring as well as massaging the media. Hodges had been chair of the English Department at George Mason University and so knew about communications.33 She had expressed concern that she had neither the contacts nor the budget to forge a good relationship with the media, but was determined to make it happen on $12 a week and much mimeographing. She managed to send out a press release to fifty newspapers each week.34

Perhaps the team’s best public spokeswoman was Shango’s own mother—known affectionately by all as “Ma Stroble.” She was a Baptist minister in Detroit, where she had developed a community center in the heart of the city that provided many social services, particularly for children. Both in Detroit and around Buffalo, she became a tireless advocate for her son and a regular presence at all court hearings; perhaps “the single person who was respected and trusted by all the different factions.”35 She acknowledged that her son was no angel, as she phrased it, but she believed him when he said that he hadn’t killed anyone at Attica, and was determined that he get a fair trial no matter his past.

To that end, Shango’s

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