This is an opinion column.
Roy Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, has about as much in common with Sue Bell Cobb, another former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, as pop stars and Pop-Tarts.
Not a lot, outside a label.
Moore was the Republican Ten Commandments judge, the fundamentalist who ran for U.S. Senate with a tiny gun and a great big cowboy hat. He’s one who would make being gay illegal and turn America into a theocracy, according to his own take on the Christian Bible and the Constitution.
Cobb was the Democrat with a more touchy-feely vibe, the Methodist who once ran for governor with a theme song of “This Little Light of Mine.” She’s spent the last few years helping old and sick inmates get out of prison, if only so they could have the dignity of dying at home.
But Moore and Cobb do share something now: a pain in their behinds. They’ve both been dissed and dismissed by Leigh Gwathney, the chair of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles.
“What’s the old country phrase? Every worm has its turn?” Cobb said this week. “Is that it? That’s what this is with Roy Moore and I.”
I don’t know that I’m country enough to recall that phrase, but I get the gist. Strange things happen, and that makes for some strange company.
When Cobb appeared at a parole hearing for Robert George this spring, Gwathney repeatedly referred to her as “Miss Cobb,” to the point the chief justice thought it intentionally disrespectful. Not Judge Cobb. Certainly not Chief Justice Cobb. But Miss Cobb.
Gwathney then, over the course of the two-and-a-half-hour hearing, repeatedly questioned Cobb and others who supported George’s parole, including the victim’s mother, Joyce Dale.
“She just kept going,” Cobb said. “She just insinuated that we had paid Mrs. Dale, that I had paid Mrs. Dale. I just tried to keep my cool as best I could.”
Last week the worm – if I’m getting her meaning – turned to Moore.
Moore appeared before the parole board to speak on behalf of Willie Conner, who has served a dozen years in prison for a robbery that Moore claims should have been charged as nothing more than shoplifting.
Moore argued that Conner is a changed man, that it was a miscarriage of justice and a prosecutorial travesty from the start. Conner, who is now 59, went into a Lowe’s in Foley, grabbed a pneumatic roofing nail gun, stuffed it in his pants and fled. He was caught on tape, spotted by security, and nabbed in the parking lot.
But he wasn’t charged with shoplifting. He was charged with felony robbery, as if he had a weapon.
“They knew he did not have a weapon,” the two-time chief justice of Alabama’s high court said. “A roof nailer is not dangerous without a compressor.”
Then Gwathney, who has squashed more dreams of freedom than a tin-horn dictator, spoke to him as if he were a child and she were the saccharine school marm. Words on paper truly can go only go so far to describe the slight.
Gwathney: “Um, could you tell us what the law in the state of Alabama is for robbery in the first degree?”
Moore: “Robbery in the first degree, that would be guilty of robbery in a lesser degree plus use of a dangerous and deadly weapon…”
Gwathney: “Or?”
Moore: “Or what?”
Gwathney “You tell me?”
Moore: “Use force.”
Gwathney: “Use a weapon.”
At this point Moore tried to answer, but was drowned out by her interruptions.
Gwathney: “Or?”
Gwathley: “Or?”
Gwathney: “Or what else?”
Moore: “Or guilty of a lesser degree of robbery. Taking something from somebody else by force.”
On it went. It was hard to listen to, to be honest. Circular and uncomfortable and unnecessary. An argument, in a state under federal reprimand for overcrowded and dangerous prisons, over whether a guy who stuffed a nail gun in his pants should get out of prison after 12 years.
Granted, the guy had a couple of priors, and he had been sentenced to life by a judge, rightly or wrongly.
But the whole exchange, and the manner of opposition to Conner’s parole by the Alabama Attorney General’s office, summed up all that’s wrong with this body, and this process. This is not about justice. It is not about reason or fairness or public safety. It’s about keeping those convicted of crimes incarcerated in Alabama’s prison, no matter whether it is right or wrong.
Nayla Contreras of the Attorney General’s office also appeared before the board that day. She came to protest Conner’s release, and her official position was clear:
“We are here today to state … he’s not ready to be released from prison.”
Despite the fact that earlier, in response to Moore, she had said “...honestly, I kind of believe he (Conner) has shown he could be worthy of parole.”
Try to make that add up.
Moore, after the hearing, told my colleague Ivana Hrynkiw the meeting itself was “amazing,” that it summed up a battle that has raged in the state between justice and a “controlling” parole board chair.
“This was the epitome of that battle,” he said.
Ultimately, the two other members of the parole board sided with Conner and granted him parole. Gwathney voted to keep him locked up.
Moore said she always will vote that way, because, first and foremost she represents the interests of her former employer, the attorney general.
That’s not justice. It’s just punishment.
“I think people want justice,” Moore said. “They want bad people to stay in, they want people that are worthy of parole to get out. That’s the system. That’s what it’s supposed to be, but that’s not what it’s been. What it’s been is a representative of the attorney general’s office controlling the parole board.”
The worm does turn.
John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner.
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