Please be seated. Good Morning, Your Honor. Good Morning. This is the case
of<i> Jackson v. Williams.</i> Thank you, Jerome.
Good day, everyone. ALL: Good day. Ms. Jackson, you claim
Mr. Williams is a
good for nothing man who would rather ignore
his responsibilities than take care
of his nine-month-old
daughter, Amani. You say the DNA test will
prove that Mr. Williams is
your daughter's father. Is that correct? Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Williams, you claim you
made a huge mistake by having a one night stand
with the plaintiff. You say Ms. Jackson is
a promiscuous nuisance who is trying to
ruin your life. And there is no way
you are her child's father. Is that correct? Yes, Your Honor. So, Ms. Jackson, what do you
mean by good for nothing man? Mr. Williams know this
baby is his. He's been running for nine
months now. So you say he's done nothing
for the baby? Nothing. You haven't done anything,
Mr. Williams? No, Your Honor. This is not my baby. She knows she is sleeping
around with other men. And she is trying to put a baby
on me that's not mine. So... (AUDIENCE COOING) Oh, she's beautiful. Thank you. So you just, admittedly,
haven't done anything. No, Your Honor. So, Ms. Jackson, take me back.
How did you all meet? Well, me and Mr. Williams have
been talking on social media on and off
for about two years now, up until May 28th of 2016. What happened on
May 28th, 2016? Well, that was the Memorial Day
weekend, Your Honor.
I had been drinking. And so was Mr. Williams. (AUDIENCE MURMURING) He contacted me on Facebook,
asked me what I was doing. I told him I was
just chilling. He asked me,
could he come through. That's a lie, Your Honor.
She contacted me. On Facebook, because... He contacted me on Facebook. And asked me what was
I doing. I told him,
I was just chilling. He said he was in the area.
I told him to come through. So, I got into the car with
him. We went on talking. And one thing lead to another.
We had sex. Just like that? Just like that. Did you use protection? No, Your Honor. Oh. JUDGE LAKE: So, you have sex. Is this a relationship that
continued after that? Did you all say, "Well this
was nice. Let's go out on
a date maybe?" No, Your Honor. At some point? No? No, Your Honor. What happened after that? I was due for my cycle
to come. And, it didn't come. I have
a tracker on my phone which lets me know when my
cycle is due. So, I reached out to
Mr. Williams on Facebook and
let him know that it was late. He brushed me off and said
he would call me back,
but never called back. So, you hadn't talked to him
since the car? Yes. He says he's going to call
you right back and never
called you back? Never called me back,
Your Honor. Did you do that Mr. Williams? No, Your Honor.
I did not
call her back. She been blowing my phone,
I mean blowing my phone
through the Facebook app. Because she never had
my phone number. So... (AUDIENCE EXCLAIMING) Then keeps saying that her
cycle didn't come on,
and things in that nature. But you had sex with her
without protection, right? Everybody else did too, right? Everybody else? Everybody else
like who? Who is
everybody else? JUDGE LAKE: Well... Who is everybody else? I want to know,
like Ms. Jackson.
Who is everybody else? She knows who everybody
else is. Your Honor, after the fact
of me telling him that
my cycle was late, I contacted him again when I
found out that I was
actually pregnant... He blocked me off Facebook. (AUDIENCE EXCLAIMING) JUDGE LAKE: Oh! So, as you were trying to reach
him to say, "Hey, we had
unprotected sex," "I found out I am pregnant. "You could be a potential
father, "he's blocking
you on facebook. Yes, Your Honor. And you don't have his
phone number. No, Your Honor. So, what do you do? I created a fake page. Created a fake page? WILLIAMS: Pages. JACKSON: A fake page, and
reached out to him again. WILLIAMS: Pages. Pages. To let him know
I was indeed pregnant. JUDGE LAKE:<i> And did you ever
get any response?</i> <i>No.</i> <i> So you were ignoring this.</i> WILLIAMS:<i> Yes, fake pages.
I won't allow disrespect.</i> You calling me about something
and you disrespecting me,
that's a no-no. And you creating all these
fake pages... Wait. Hold on, hold on,
hold on. You got rules now? After you done drove up
to a girl's house and let her get in the car,
and y'all have a
conversation for two seconds and then you sleep with her
without protection, and now you
got standards? (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) Come on, now. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. After she... (ALL LAUGHING) After she started hitting me up
on these fake pages, kind of disrespecting me,
talking about what
I need to do, she sound... The baby ain't much here yet, and she is talking about child
support. I'm like,
child support, and you just said you
were pregnant? So she's looking for
a handout. And so you felt like
she was... Chasing you down about the baby
because she needed support for
the baby. And you felt like she was
targeting you. Yes, she was targeting me.
The reason being, she stated... That she had sex with
another dude right
the next day. Behind me. So, then she,
once she told me that I said, "Why are you
chasing me down?" How did you find out that she
had sex with another man? She told me. She told me. What happened? Tell me
the story. She was like, "Eric, I am going
to be honest with you. "I slept with another dude
the next day,
right behind you." Without no protection. So, once she stated that,
I said, "How you going to
put this on to me, "talking about this
as my baby, and you're
talking about child support." And I told her,
"Go to child support." Child support isn't going
to hurt a man who is going to
take care of this child. I'm going to take care
of the responsibility
that's mine. JACKSON: Oh, that is
not how that went. So how did it go, Ms. Jackson? I called him, yes.
And I did tell him I was
with somebody else. -The day after?
-Yes, Your Honor. And you didn't use protection? No, Your Honor. So, did you tell this other
man you were pregnant as well? Yes, Your Honor. Did you tell this other man
it could potentially be his
baby as well? No, Your Honor. Did you put this other man on
child support? No, Your Honor. So why is it you're choosing
Mr. Williams? Because this man has never
gotten anyone pregnant
and doesn't have any kids. We have to go by the facts. And the fact is,
if it has not been proven
that the other man is unable to father children, then you can't say for certain
that it is Mr. Williams' baby. You've never been provided any
medical information about this
other man? I talked to the other man
about being pregnant. As a matter of fact, his family
interacts with my daughter. Really? Why? Because I told the other man
that he was the father when Mr. Williams didn't
want to step up. So you put Mr. Williams
on child support, but the other man's family
helps you with the child? Yes, Your Honor. What you up to? I just went with who ever was
going to stand up, Your Honor. No, you went with both. You didn't go with one
or the other. You got Mr. Williams
on the hook talking about
child support from him. Did you go down to the
child support office? Yes, I did. And gave them his name? Yes, I did, Your Honor. So, you playing two sides
of this particular field? Yes, Your Honor. And have you been responsible
for child support
all this time? Like, mine was the only name
on the sheet. So Ms. Jackson, when you went
to the child support office, why is it that you only put
Mr. Williams' name
on the paper work? If you knew in fact this
other man was a possibility and his family was involved
with the child, why not also give the child
support office the other
man's name? Because, Your Honor, I didn't
tell the other family
about Mr. Williams. So, wait you are getting
Mr. Williams in a legal
situation because of your inability to
own your own mistakes? Yes, Your Honor. That's not fair. See, these are the issues
as a young woman you
have to understand. That perpetuates the cycle
of paternity issues. Right? Right. Because I see too often
men come into this courtroom
saying, "Why she named me?" It's not that they aren't
equally involved
in the situation for having unprotected sex, but as the woman, you know
that if you had sex with
more than one man in the window of conception,
you have at least the moral obligation to be
truthful with the child support
office about that. (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) So, as you stand here as
plaintiff, saying he's a no
good for nothing man, you have been a no good woman. (APPLAUSE CONTINUES) And at the end of the day,
the child, Amani, is suffering. It's not fair. Your Honor, I take care of my
responsibility as a man.
I take care of my son. You know, I felt like she tried
to put me in this situation
so I'd lose my CDL license, that's how I take care
of my son. Your Honor. Your Honor. What... What sense
would it make? I can't even get out of it,
I am so disgusted. What sense would it make
for her to jeopardize
your CDL license? Because that would the very
money you gonna pay to take
care of her child. JACKSON: Thank you. What sense would that make? Your Honor,
can I say something? Please do. And I hope it makes
some sense, because neither
one of y'all got any sense right now,
this faulty logic y'all are
living off of is a hot mess. (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) JUDGE LAKE: Go ahead.
What do you have to say? A couple of months
into my pregnancy, I got a phone call from a
friend asking me, did I see
the post that Mr. Williams had posted on Facebook.
I told her no. So, we got off the phone and
went on Facebook, and I see he posted a baby
shower invitation with him
and another woman who was pregnant at the time. So, you had another woman
pregnant at the same time
Ms. Jackson was pregnant? JACKSON: Yes. Yes. You know what, this right here,
this is just messy.
It's messy. Now, you got one
woman pregnant. That means this rendezvous you
had with Ms. Jackson
is nothing new for you. You riding up on houses
and having one night
stands in cars, and just making babies
like they're muffins. Oh, yeah,
he get around the city. I only have one son,
Your Honor. Only have one son. Oh, yeah. That doesn't mean you are not
engaging in the behavior that
could lead to you having more. You say you only have one son
but you may have
a daughter today. Hello. It's a possibility,
but I doubt it. A strong possibility. JUDGE LAKE:
So, tell me about your doubt. The situation, how it went down
when I had met her, right,
it was commonplace, like, when she jumped in the car
it was like a route, it's like,
she said go here, go here, and back in right here,
so I'm gonna... I was saying to myself... No, that is not how that
went down. First of all, I didn't even
get in your car... Oh, you saying she does
this regularly. Because when she got
into the car she told you
where to pull... WILLIAMS: Yeah. ...in the cut. It's not how it went down.
How it went down is I came
downstairs and I actually, was standing outside
Mr. Williams' car having
conversation with him. He was like, "Well, you can
get in the car,"
and I got in the car. And he got all aggressive
trying to pull my pants down, and that's just how
it went down. That's incorrect. No, that's correct. That's how
that went down, honey. JUDGE LAKE:
But the point is this. You agreed. It was consensual.
You wanted to have sex
with him. I mean, did you? Yes, Your Honor. Okay, so... This is both of you all
creating a situation, that leads you here.
The next night, you're with
somebody else. Was that in a car too? No, Your Honor. So, let's focus on this
baby right now. She's nine months old.
Hasn't really had
a father in her life. <i>Mr. Williams, what are your
thoughts about this baby?</i> <i> I hope the baby ain't mine.
The reason being,
because of the mother.</i> You know, she got all kinds
of child support. I am not scared of the child
support. If she wants me to
take care of the whole fam, no, if the baby is mine,
I will take care of the baby. Take care of my whole family? She said this thing to me like,
one time like, she was like... Somebody got my baby
something, so they have to get
all my babies something. I never told him
nothing like that. If I get my baby something,
like if I get my son something, I get him something
because I take care of him. Damn. That's just not me,
just to take care of the whole
family that's not mine. I wasn't put on this Earth
to take care
of this man, this man, I gotta take care of my
responsibility first as a man,
then take care of my kids too. Yeah, but part of your
responsibility is to not make
any more kids with one night stands or with
women you are not committed to
or not married to, or you don't plan to have
a relationship with. I don't understand how driving
in front of a woman's house,
inviting them in the car and then having unprotected
sex allows you
to then say, later on, "You know, I am not really into
this child support stuff." Yes, you are!
You like child support. You obviously do. (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) You obviously like taking care
of babies because you keep
trying to make them. I'm not trying to keep
making no babies. Right. So, your behavior needs to
reflect that sentiment. Correct, judge. You all old enough, you really
old, both of y'all old enough. You all know how
to use some protection. I will be very careful
next time. Trust me. So, Ms. Jackson, before
I get to the results... The other man
who is a very real
possibility in this situation. Has he been informed now? Yes, Your Honor. JUDGE LAKE:
And I have to ask you
this respectfully. Because of the behavior
you have testified to, are
there any other possibilities? No, Your Honor. All right. Jerome, I am ready for
the results. Here you go. Thank you. These results were
prepared by DNA Diagnostics,
and they read as follows... In the case of<i>
Jackson v. Williams...</i> but the other man's family
helps you with the child? Yes, Your Honor. JUDGE LAKE: When it comes to
nine-month-old Amani Jackson, it has been determined
by this court, Mr. Williams, you... ...are the father. I told you. I told you. I told you. (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) You said you don't mind no
child support, so we are not
going to have any problems. It won't have no problems.
I apologize for everything, dealing with the situation
the way I had. I'll make sure I take care
of my responsibility as a man
and take care of Amani. JUDGE LAKE: Good. (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) And you have to understand,
when you create a situation where you can
potentially make a child, when the woman then
is pursuing you and you are
avoiding her purposefully, you are not running from that
woman, in that instance you are
running from your own child. And Ms. Jackson, that
behavior, Ms. Jackson... Running around having sex
with anybody telling you
you're cute? And you letting them
pull your... Uh-uh.
No, you are better than that. I am. And you're a mother. And you don't want Amani
running around in men's cars letting them pull
her pants down, do you? JACKSON:
No, I don't, Your Honor. Right? So that means... Right? WILLIAMS: Yes. Because you the daddy. Yes. You don't want that
for your daughter, do you? No, judge. So, you have to teach her
different, but you also have
to live different. We have counseling
and resources for you both.
Take advantage of it and figure out
how to co-parent, and how to be the best mother
and father Amani could have. She needs it. I wish you
the best of luck.
Court is adjourned.
