The demographics of Bay County Florida skewed very Republican, very white, and very conservative. Near the entrance to the Bay County Courthouse, however, was a historical marker that offered up a short history lesson to passersby, a reminder that even in the unlikeliest spots, landmark civil rights cases can take root.
In 1961, Clarence Earl Gideon was charged with breaking and entering into a pool hall in Panama City. Because Gideon couldn’t afford a lawyer, he requested that an attorney be appointed to represent him, but was told that Florida only provided attorneys to indigent defendants whose crimes could result in the death penalty if they were found guilty. After Gideon was convicted, he petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for release because of his not having had a defense attorney present at his hearing. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction in their landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright. Their unanimous conclusion was that all defendants had a right to counsel. In the more than fifty years since that ruling, the rights of the indigent to receive legal representation had become an accepted part of American jurisprudence. In fact, those arrested were informed of this during the reading of their Miranda rights.
Just as few could have imagined a landmark civil rights case emerging out of Bay County, neither did it seem likely that a state court judge like Kenneth Mobley would be practicing at its courthouse. The iconoclastic African American judge was not afraid to question the usual conventions of the day. Mobley could not be categorized as either liberal or conservative, but more as a free thinker who didn’t adhere to any singular ideology. He based his rulings on the tenets of the law, along with the litmus test of his soul.
From the privacy of his chambers, Mobley sorted through the morn-ing’s paperwork that had been prepared by his staff. Mobley’s chambers were on the small side when compared to those of his peers around the country. The yellow-brick Bay County Courthouse had been built in 1915, and although its neoclassical architecture was pleasing to the eye, the structure had never been designed to serve the 185,000 residents that now lived within the county’s borders.
Still, the best read of a judge often wasn’t seen in the courtroom as much as it was in their chambers. Mobley’s chambers were warm and personal. It contained the requisite legal library, of course, but the volumes didn’t look like a photo-opportunity backdrop as they did in so many other chambers. Framed pictures dominated the space, the biggest of which showed Martin Luther King Jr. walking arm in arm with others during the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. The judge rarely advertised the fact that one of the individuals walking in the vicinity of King was his father. The picture was significant to the judge because a year after it had been taken, his father had disappeared. Although his body never turned up, federal law enforcement was convinced that the senior Mobley had been murdered. At the time of his disappearance, Kenneth Mobley had only been five years old.
Even with the void of his father not being in his life, the apple ultimately did not fall far from the tree. Just like his father before him, Judge Mobley was passionate about civil rights.
As he drank his morning coffee, the judge began reviewing a motion that had been filed for not only an expedited hearing, but an expedited deposition. The requests in themselves were unusual; expedited relief was not something normally granted. The more Judge Mobley read, though, the more the motion intrigued him. Among its allegations were wrongful death, false imprisonment, and violations of RICO statutes.
At its heart, Kenneth Mobley recognized that the motion was asserting the ongoing violations of the civil rights of H2B workers. These individuals, the motion stated, were in potential if not actual danger.
Mobley loved his country, but he hated its notoriously short attention span. It wasn’t until 1965 that most of the country’s Jim Crow laws—which enforced racial segregation—were ruled unconstitutional. Before his death, his father along with many others had worked tirelessly to advocate that those laws be struck down. For too many years, those efforts had been for naught; judges who knew better, but shirked their duty to their office and to the Constitution; judges who refused to do the right thing and found excuses to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the civil rights arguments made in their courtrooms. It wasn’t until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed that courts across the country were forced to do what was right. If the courts hadn’t erred on the side of caution for so long, Judge Mobley wondered if his father’s life might have been spared.
He read through the motion again. The judge was well aware that the lawyer for the plaintiffs was asking for a Trojan horse. His hope— his Hail Mary pass, some might say—was that if granted an expedited discovery, he would have the chance to gather evidence that might otherwise be denied him. It was a fishing expedition, of course. But was it a fishing expedition that was merited?
Mobley thought of his father and the protests he’d led against Jim Crow laws. The vestiges of slavery had died hard—or maybe, if the allegations in this motion were accurate, they hadn’t died at all.
The lawyer wanted immediate deposition access so as to allow him to ask his questions, and ask them without delay. Although Judge Mobley was familiar with the firm of Bergman/Deketomis, the lawyer who had filed the motion was unknown to him.
That was about to change, the judge decided. He would give Mr. Michael Carey a chance to make his arguments for expedited discovery, as well as an expedited hearing, in person.
Mobley opened his court calendar. There had been a cancellation; three weeks from now there was an opening. Judge Mobley wrote a note to his court clerk to immediately contact the parties and schedule the expedited hearing on his docket.