Justice, Law Schools, Racism

Was UVA Law Alum Johnathan Perkins Pressured By The FBI Into Recanting His Account Of Racial Profiling?

This is Perkins's claim, and here's the evidence in support of it.

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UVA Law School

One of the most-read Above the Law stories of all time is A Law Student Plays the Race Card — and Gets Busted, Big Time, a 2011 story that I wrote about a UVA Law student named Johnathan Perkins.

In April 2011, Perkins wrote a piece for the Virginia Law Week in which he claimed that he was harassed by UVA university police while walking home from a party, purportedly on account of his race (he’s African-American). In May of that year, however, Perkins recanted his story in a written statement: “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct. The events in the article did not occur.”

Perkins received university-wide and even nationwide criticism for the supposed fabrication. As Perkins himself said, “I was branded a liar, a race-baiter, the ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ and a prime example of the problem with affirmative action.”

But those of us who followed the case always had some unanswered questions. If Perkins had indeed lied, about a matter as serious as race-related police harassment, why was he cleared by UVA’s famously stringent Honor Committee? How was he allowed to graduate from UVA Law (over the angry objections of many classmates and alumni)? How did he manage to pass character-and-fitness review, on his way to getting admitted to the Pennsylvania bar? How did he get a job as an associate at the well-respected Philadelphia law firm of Montgomery McCracken? Why did he get hired by Harvard University’s Office of the General Counsel, when his main experience with higher-education law would appear to be highly negative?

Now, thanks to some great reporting by the Cavalier Daily, UVA’s student newspaper, we have some answers. From the Daily:

The University Police subsequently opened an investigation into his claim and Perkins said the two officers in charge of the investigation were present when he was interrogated by an FBI agent about his allegations against the UPD.

As a result of what he claims was pressure from the FBI, Perkins recanted his story and was charged and tried by the University’s Honor Committee in the summer of 2011 for lying.

Perkins was ultimately acquitted of the charges and, after an investigation by the Law School, received his degree. Perkins says the FBI’s involvement in the case was extensively discussed during his closed Honor trial — but never disclosed to the public….

Six years later, Perkins came forward to The Cavalier Daily this past August to reveal what he says was the FBI’s involvement in the case. He also maintains his original letter to the Virginia Law Weekly is true.

This information may have been critical to Perkins’ acquittal in his Honor trial, but, until now, remained unknown to the University community and public.

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Now, Perkins’s critics — and there are many of them — will surely receive his claims today with skepticism. They’d ask him, “Were you lying then, or are you lying now?” But as recounted in the Cavalier Daily article, Perkins’s claim of recanting falsely, under FBI pressure, enjoys significant supporting evidence:

  • A recording of the voicemail that FBI Senior Supervisory Resident Agent Robert Hilland left for Perkins, which Perkins provided to the Daily (to support his claim that the FBI did get involved — a fact not publicly known until now).
  • A transcript of the testimony that Professor Kim Forde-Mazrui gave to the Honor Committee, describing how Perkins spoke to him at the time about the police encounter.
  • Comments given by Professor Forde-Mazrui to the Cavalier Daily, recounting how Perkins told him, back in 2011, that the recantation was false, the original story was true, and Perkins had not lied to Forde-Mazrui in describing the incident.
  • Comments given by Derrick Johnson and Laurel Sakai, friends of Perkins, who were told contemporaneously by Perkins about the police harassment, and who believe his original account of the incident.

And here’s some noteworthy missing evidence:

Perkins said [UVA police officers Capt. Melissa] Fielding and [Lt. Michael] Blakey claimed they had video surveillance footage that disproved Perkins’ original claim of harassment. He said they refused to produce copies of the videos upon requests from Perkins and his Honor counsel.

As we know from recent confrontations between police officers and African-American victims from around the country, this type of real-time video footage can be highly revealing about who’s telling the truth. If UVA university police had (or has) such video footage of the encounter with Perkins, where is it, and why didn’t they produce it to the Honor Committee (or produce it to the public now)?

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Let’s assume, based on the evidence, that Perkins is now telling the truth. This raises another big question: why did Perkins falsely recant, even going so far as to sign a written statement of recantation that says on its face, “this statement was not coerced”? It seems the alleged FBI pressure played a major role:

According to Perkins, [Agent Robert] Hilland said the FBI had opened a civil rights investigation and he was sent to the University by the FBI’s Richmond Division.

“[Hilland] laid out a list of consequences that would occur if I stuck by my story … and then promised me that if I just simply told him that it didn’t happen, then I could be done with it and no one, no other people would have to be involved,” Perkins said.

Perkins said Hilland promised that Perkins’ family, friends, classmates and the Philadelphia law firm where he was positioned to work after graduation would be contacted.

After an interrogation that lasted over two hours, Perkins said he agreed to sign a statement on a blank piece of paper — which he says was dictated by Hilland — recanting the information he had originally set forth in his letter to the editor.

In light of the wealth of research about false confessions extracted through heavy-handed police interrogation — see, e.g., this piece by current UVA Law student Wyatt Kozinski — Perkins’s claim of coercion has plausibility. One can certainly understand why a 3L at an elite law school would want to forget this encounter ever happened and just get on with his life. Little did Perkins suspect that his recantation, far from making everything go away, would make his life so much worse.

At the same time, let’s not forget: at the time of these events, Perkins was a 3L at one of the nation’s top law schools. He was an educated and sophisticated individual, someone well aware of the operation of the justice system, the racism within the system, the rights of victims of police harassment, and the dangers of lying. So he deserves some blame as well — as he himself acknowledges:

“I take full responsibility for bending to the special agent’s pressure,” Perkins said in an email to The Cavalier Daily. “It has been my life’s greatest regret.”

Today’s news provides confirmation for some speculation I engaged in back in 2012 (in response to outrage from some Above the Law readers about Perkins being allowed to graduate):

As one of the nation’s leading law schools, UVA can be a challenging environment. Is it possible that Perkins buckled under the stress? There may be extenuating circumstances here of which we are unaware.

So it seems that Perkins did buckle under stress, and did make false statements — just not the false statements that we thought. I then wrote:

Furthermore, remember that the Honor Committee acquitted Perkins, after hearing the full story. The members of the Committee, after receiving more information than we possess, decided to give him a break. Before judging Perkins, shouldn’t we wait until we have all the information the Honor Committee had? I’m reminded of the old saying, “To know all is to forgive all.”

Maybe we don’t know all about those fateful weeks back in 2011, but today we know much more than we previously did. And if there’s any forgiving to be done, perhaps its the forgiveness that Johnathan Perkins can extend to his critics, who rushed to judgment without having all the facts.

Former Law student says FBI pressured him to recant his claim of racial profiling [Cavalier Daily]

Earlier:

DBL square headshotDavid Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.

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