Supporters of Shaquanda Cotton will rally Tuesday in front of the Lamar County, Texas Courthouse calling for the immediate release of the 15-year-old who has been locked up since 2006 for pushing a hall monitor at Paris High School.
The rally, organized by the Concerned Citizens for Racial Equality and radio talk show host Rickey Smiley, will begin as a caravan at 6 a.m. from Dallas, Texas, at The Beat 97.9 studio and kick into full gear at 11 a.m. in front of the courthouse.
“I want her to come home now. I want her to be with me,” Shaquanda’s mother Creola Cotton, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
It’s a five-hour drive for Cotton to the Texas Youth Commission facility where her daughter is being kept in Brownwood, Texas. She tries to go visit every other week, but transportation is problem. “I have to raise money to rent a car so I can go there,” she said.
Shaquanda was given an “indeterminate sentence” to the Texas Youth Commission facility after a jury in March 2006 found that she assaulted a public servant. She was sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to seven years, until she turns 21.
That sentence usually is given to people who are guilty of assaulting police officers, lawyers said. “In this case, they stretched the meaning,” said Sharon Reynerson, who represented Shaquanda in her original trial.
Just three months before her sentence, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl to probation after she was found guilty of arson after burning her family’s house down, according to an article published in The Chicago Tribune.
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Shaquanda now has a court-appointed attorney who is seeking to get her released on appeal. “We hope to hear from the courts any day now,” attorney Gary Waite
told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
While officials say Shaquanda is locked up because she shoved a hall monitor, her mother and NAACP officials say she is a victim of retaliation.
Several complaints alleging racial discrimination have been filed with the U.S. Department of Education against the Paris Independent School District. Creola Cotton is one of the people who have filed complaints. She also has been a vocal advocate, leading protests in front of the school.
“How in the world could this set of facts amount to a felony offense?” says Gary Bledsoe, Texas state NAACP president.
The 58-year-old teacher’s assistant was not injured, but Shaquanda had a bruise on her head, her mother said. By one account, Shaquanda pushed the hall monitor away, and by another account, she held her hand Bledsoe said.
“If a young white girl had done that, there is no way she would have been tried in this way,” Bledsoe told BlackAmericaWeb.com. He said Shaquanda had no prior run-ins with the law before this incident.
This sends a message to blacks in Paris, Texas, Bledsoe said. “When you stand up for your child, exercise your responsibility as a parent, and use your authority as a citizen to protect loved one, that may be held against you,” he said. “That can have a chilling affect on parents who desire to exercise their rights.”
Bledsoe has enlisted the support of other lawyers and the NAACP legal team to assist in the case. He’s also working with Texas lawmakers to change a law that could keep Shaquanda locked up until her 21st birthday.
“Under Texas law, before you can move on to the next step of seeking probation, you have to first admit your guilt, then you can move to step two,” Bledsoe said. Because Shaquanda has done nothing to which she needs to confess, she can remain locked up, under current law, he said.
Creola Cotton said her daughter can not remain in the juvenile facility. It has been rough on her.
“They had her on Zoloft. She attempted to scratch her face, and she has tried to commit suicide,” Cotton said. And to add to the complications, when Cotton visited her daughter on Sunday, she had to tell the girl that her father had died.
“He died on March 15. I wanted to tell her in person. I couldn’t get there until Sunday,” Cotton said.
In written arguments filed with the courts, Waite said that Shaquanda deserves an appeal because of the way she was handled by the system.
She had no review by the juvenile court probation officers before the trial, he said.
“The probation officer called on Friday, March 3 and left a message on a recorder. The trial started on March 6,” Waite said. “In court, they said that Creola Cotton had not been cooperative.”
“There should have been a social study done, where the juvenile probation officer talks with Shaquanda and her mother to determine if she can live up to terms of probation and whether it is suitable for her to be in home. But from January 1 to March 1, there was no juvenile supervisory probation officer to do this,” Waite said. “Shaquanda is caught in the middle of a perfect storm.”
