My testimony came on day two.
On day two, I testified in a navy suit without jewelry. The jury comprised seven women and five men from rural middle Georgia. I described the Magnolia Diner arrest completely and accurately.
Gerald Fontaine cross-examined me for two hours. He asked why I hadn’t identified myself. He asked whether I’d come to Pell County hoping to be arrested. He asked whether my aunt had a grudge against the sheriff.
I answered every question the same calm way.
“Judge Whitlock,” Fontaine finally said, leaning on the podium, “isn’t it true that you could have ended this entire incident in five seconds simply by telling my client you were a federal judge?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I could have.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
I studied the jury.
“Because the Constitution doesn’t only protect federal judges, Mr. Fontaine. It protects waitresses, deacons, seventy-one-year-old men with canes, and eighty-one-year-old widows who need their heart pills. If the only thing standing between your client and a person’s rights was the badge in her purse, then nobody in Pell County was safe. I wanted to know whether they were. They weren’t.”
