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Commentary: Access to Justice Is More Than a Punch Line in Rural Areas [1]
['Christopher Chavis', 'The Daily Yonder']
Date: 2024-02-27
How much do you know about the rural access-to-justice gap? You may not know the term, but you know what it means if you’ve heard or seen even small amounts of pop-culture media.
Think, for example, of “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” a song that was a hit for Vicki Lawrence in 1972 and Reba McEntire in 1991.
The murder ballad is complicated, but the rural justice gap is clear. An innocent man gets hung for murder because the sheriff jumps to a conclusion and a judge rushes the verdict so he can get home for supper.
That’s the night that the lights went out in Georgia
That’s the night that they hung an innocent man
Well, don’t trust your soul to no backwoods Southern lawyer
‘Cause the judge in the town’s got bloodstains on his hands
In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the accused has legal representation but is still wrongfully convicted.
Both of these fictional pop-culture touchstones take place in small towns and rural spaces and illustrate why it is important to address the access-to-justice gap.
Remember the emotion you felt the first time you heard “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” or read the novel or saw the movie version of Mockingbird? You knew the results were unfair and something should have been done. This impetus for fairness is at the heart of efforts to improve access to legal justice in rural areas.
We need to make sure rural people have access to legal counsel and a fair opportunity to be heard in court. Your awareness can be turned into action.
The idea of injustice in rural spaces is embedded in other parts of our pop culture. Think about how often you see the trope of an outsider being unfairly targeted in a small town. An absurd example is the 1992 movie “My Cousin Vinny.” The premise of the movie was that a set of outsiders in a small town had been accused of a crime they did not commit.
Also in 1992 was Richard Marx’s song “Hazard,” which describes a kid who moves to a small Nebraska town at the age of 7. He’s treated as an outcast and accused of the murder of his only friend years later.
Depictions of small-town injustice aren’t confined to works of fiction. I grew up watching “Unsolved Mysteries,” an anthology series that regularly featured stories about crimes (and sometimes other events) that happened in communities around the country. The show often featured small-town and rural crimes that weren’t thoroughly investigated. And sometimes there was outright corruption in law enforcement.
The justice gap isn’t confined to rural areas, of course. But the shortage of lawyers in rural America exacerbates the problem.
The lawyer shortage was treated as a throwaway gag in the 1988 Chevy Chase film “Funny Farm.” In that film, a couple files for divorce and realizes there were only two lawyers in their Vermont town. The film makes light of the fact that these two lawyers were always opposite each other in court.
Between 15-20% of Americans live in rural communities, yet only 2% of lawyers practice there. A small number of lawyers in a space means that the existing lawyers are overworked and juggling a monumental number of cases. In a criminal court, that can mean defendants are more likely to be wrongfully convicted due to ineffective counsel. In a civil court, it makes it more likely that potential plaintiffs can’t sue someone who has wronged them. Your awareness of the problem is an asset. You can advocate for solutions, including additional funding for Legal Services programs. Our pop culture has normalized the access-to-justice gap. Let’s work together to overcome it.
Christopher Chavis grew up in rural Robeson County, North Carolina, and is a frequent writer and speaker on rural access-to-justice issues. He is a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
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