CNN Special: The People v. The Klan
If you saw the first two installments of this series on Sunday, April 11, what you saw was mostly true but there were some generous creative liberties taken in the editing. The reason for such, I can't say with specific knowledge, but it certainly appears to have been to push a predetermined narrative more influenced by current events than actual history.
The special led the audience to believe the Mobile Police Department made an attempt to blame lynching victim Michael Donald for his own death and sought to slander him as a drug user in order to discount the murder. That wasn't the bare truth.
The investigation was in bedlam because of a lack of organization. The MPD had no homicide division then. There was an interim police chief and city leaders were in denial about the depths of racial issues in their town.
Informants came out of the woodwork. Some were drawn by the reward money for "tips" leading to arrests. Others emerged just because that's what happens with high-profile crimes, for odd and illogical reasons. However investigators are duty-bound to look into every "tip" they get simply to eliminate the possibility of something surprising coming forward in court later, something that could cast doubt into a jury's minds and let a guilty party skate on a crime. It doesn't matter how spurious you might initially believe the tip, you are obligated to eliminate or confirm it.
And there were wild stories about Michael Donald coming out of all corners. The detectives didn't believe many of them, and went to great lengths to disprove some, including hypnosis and sodium pentothal. This was omitted from the CNN show.
However, each time investigators had to apprise the victim's family of the new "leads" and go through the obligatory litany of questions, the more it hardened the relatives' hearts toward the police. There wasn't an effort to conduct a "post-mortem character assassination" on Michael Donald. It was simply by-the-book detective work.
Also omitted was that investigators knew Donald's time of death from the autopsy but kept the information private to use as a tool in eliminating supposed leads. That is why detectives argued with Mobile County D.A. Chris Galanos about charging an initial trio of suspects with the crime. They knew the timetable didn't match up and the men would be exonerated.
The D.A. though was under intense pressure to charge anyone for the death. They wanted it to reach some type of resolution and someone be found guilty.
The problem was proving what investigators always suspected: that the nest of Klan members on the street where Donald's body was hung were involved. That was why the D.A. formed a special task force later for the case. There was also the standard rivalry friction between federal and local law enforcement that initially hampered things. Only when they later worked in concert was the case solved.
The investigation was a mess and the powers-that-be in Mobile wanted it swept away as quickly as possible. The reason, however, is that Mobile was trying to curry and image of the city as a haven of racial harmony as compared to the rest of the state, a delusion that was built on local complacency more than reality.
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