In 2015, Rodriquez Smiley was arrested on a charge of making a terrorist threat and given a $2.5 million bond for sending a text to a friend that expressed his desire to kill a local pastor – last Thursday, those charges were dropped and Selma attorneys Hank Sanders and Faya Rose Toure held a press conference Monday to celebrate the decision.

“This [was] a massive injustice,” Toure said of the case. “These charges should have never been brought.”

According to Toure, Dallas County Circuit Court Judge Don McMillan previously dismissed the case, citing a lack of evidence and stating that it could at most be tried as a misdemeanor, but Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson persisted in pushing for the case to be heard.

According to Toure, the events of the case unfolded as follows: Smiley visited Tabernacle Baptist Church and laid down on a pew before leaving at the pastor’s request; a few days later, Smiley returned and again left at the pastor’s request; Smiley later expressed his desire to kill the pastor in a text to a friend, which was seen by another friend that informed authorities of the threat.

However, Jackson said the man “took over the pulpit” in the church multiple times and was charged with stalking alongside making a terrorist threat.

Toure added that Smiley suffers from mental health issues that have only been further aggravated amid the ongoing case.

For his part, Jackson agreed, noting that a doctor who testified during the proceedings deemed Smiley not competent to stand trial while a friend testified that Smiley thought a device had been inserted into his ear.

Toure took Jackson to task over the enormous bond Smiley was given, noting that Dylann Roof, the white gunman who killed nine people in a church in Charleston, was given a bond of $1 million, less than half of the one handed down to Smiley – Toure insists the treatment was due to the fact that Jackson’s wife, Selma City Councilwoman Miah Jackson, is a member of the church targeted in Smiley’s threat.

Michael Jackson asserts that he was interested in getting Smiley the help he needed by having him sent to the state’s mental health facility.

“The job of the district attorney is not just to convict people, but to seek justice,” Jackson said. “That’s what we were trying to do. The moral and ethical thing to do was to get this man some help and not send him to prison.”

But Sanders’ and Toure’s outrage did not stop there.

“In this country, based on the First Amendment, you have freedom of speech,” Sanders said. “That’s not a basis for a terroristic threat.”

Sanders noted that a person can say any number of “crazy” things without being guilty of making a credible, terroristic threat.

Additionally, Sanders found it odd that Jackson attempted to have Smiley deemed not competent enough to stand trial – generally, Sanders said, such assertions are made by the defense, not the prosecution.

It took the jury only 30 minutes to find Smiley competent to stand trial during a June hearing – the jury was slated to return to finish the trial July 23, but the charges were unexpectedly dropped.

Toure noted during the press conference that Jackson attempted to have a member of the jury removed because they are employed at the National Voting Rights Museum, which was founded by Sanders and Toure – according to Jackson, that juror was allowed to remain in place, which led his office to decide to drop the charges.

“There was no way we were going to get a fair trial,” Jackson said.

“This is not justice because it has ended,” Sanders said. “An injustice has come to an end, but justice has not been done.”

Toure asserted that there is a “pattern and practice” in the district of jailing people and assigning them high bonds in the hope that they will be willing to plead out after spending time behind bars.

“To me, this is classism,” Toure said. “These bonds are only imposed on poor, black men.”

“Black people sometimes get infected with white supremacy,” Sanders added.

“This is a new type of Jim Crow,” Toure said. “Jim Crow has a cousin and he is a negro. We cannot sit back in this community and tolerate it.”

Toure asserted that cooperation between citizens and law enforcement suffers because the community fears being persecuted for being poor.

Despite their fury over what they consider a miscarriage of justice, both Sanders and Toure celebrated the fact that the charges against Smiley, who is currently still in jail on a lesser charge, were dropped.

According to Jackson, the lesser charge is one of theft.

Sanders and Toure now plan to on ensuring that Smiley has access to the mental health assistance that he needs.

“We cannot equate mental illness with a crime,” Toure said.

Jackson lamented that Smiley would now be under his mother’s care, who doesn’t have the means to provide him with the level of care that he needs.

“It’s a sad situation,” Jackson said. “I’m tired of people trying to milk the system. They’re using this young man for their own agenda – if they can live with themselves, so be it. I just hope and pray that this young man gets the help he needs one day.”