PANAMA CITY, Fla. - The big cases don't go away quietly.
On Friday afternoon, a jury exonerated seven former drill instructors and a nurse, accused of manslaughter in the death of a 14-year-old youth offender.
Minutes afterward, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida announced his office would review all the evidence.
The legal counsel for the Florida division of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Chuck Hobbs, said he would petition the federal government to indict the acquitted defendants on civil rights charges. He evoked the name of Rodney King, recalling how Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in King's beating but later served time in federal prison.
"It's just that the life of a Martin Lee Anderson isn't worth the same as a Carlie Brucia; of a Jessica Lunsford," Hobbs told a small crowd at nearby Love Center Baptist Church.
The news of a federal investigation was not good for Henry Dickens, one of two black drill instructors charged in Anderson's death.
"I don't know what to think about that," Dickens said. "It looks like this is going to go on and on."
Dickens, a retired Navy master chief who grew up in the segregated South, said he was disappointed the NAACP continues to call for his conviction.
"Today's NAACP, the only thing they care about is race," he said. "That's not what Dr. Martin Luther King talked about. He talked about a world without race. We need to get away from race in this country. When a kid is born, he doesn't know the difference between black and white. Their parents teach them that. As long as the parents continue to teach that, we'll be divided."
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/oct/13/boot-camp-defendants-acquitted-all-counts/
