Gammage Project debuts at Pitt

On Oct. 12, 1995, police pulled over a 31-year-old black man named Jonny Gammage on Route 51 in… On Oct. 12, 1995, police pulled over a 31-year-old black man named Jonny Gammage on Route 51 in Brentwood, a suburban community south of Pittsburgh.

It should have been a routine traffic stop, but less than 10 minutes later, Gammage was dead.

Now, 15 years later, Attilio Favorini, the founding chair of Pitt’s Department of Theatre Arts, the Pitt Repertory Theatre and the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, are staging Favorini’s play, “The Gammage Project,” to illuminate the events surrounding the man’s death.

The play debuted Thursday at the Henry Heymann Theatre and will run through Feb. 19, with additional performances held from March 2 to 4 at the August Wilson Center. Tickets run from $12 to $25. After each performance — except opening night — there will be a talk back, during which audience members can speak with some of the real people depicted in the play.

Pitt administration of justice professor Wayne Babish was Brentwood’s chief of police at the time of Gammage’s death and said he still carries the guilt of the affair.

“This was a guy that died while I was police chief,” Babish said. “That’s something I’ve had to live with every day since.”

Babish will attend the talk back sessions on Feb. 12 and Feb. 15.

Brentwood police Lt. Milton Mulholland pulled Gammage over and was joined by four white officers from three jurisdictions. The circumstances surrounding why Gammage was pulled over remain a source of controversy, but at the time, nobody had reason to think it would be anything more than a routine traffic stop.

Each officer told variations of the event at the coroner’s inquest, the only legal proceeding for which they were required to testify. There are different versions of why Gammage was pulled over. His registration was expired, but that would have been hard to see. He might have been driving erratically, but no one will ever know for sure because there were no cameras.

What’s certain is this: After pulling Gammage over as part of a routine traffic stop, officers asked him to step out of the car, and a struggle ensued. After minutes of struggling, five officers brought Gammage down to pavement from which he would never rise.

The coroner said Gammage died of positional asphyxia, or suffocation caused by pressure the officers placed on his back and neck while he was in the face-down position.

Favorini said he’d wanted to write the play, which he dubbed a docu-drama, from the moment the case occurred.

Between 80 and 85 percent of the play is made up of what Favorini called “found dialogue,” carved out of quotes from newspaper articles, interviews he conducted and 8,000 pages of court transcripts. The research and writing took Favorini more than two years to complete.

He said the challenge was to “boil it down into something that could be dramatic and somehow capture all of the complexities of the story.”

The playwright made no pretense at objectivity, calling it “a kind of myth that we construct.” Instead, he said he “tried to let the facts take [him] where they wanted to.”

Babish said he has “complete faith in what [Favorini’s] doing and how he’s going about it. I have no doubt that it’s authentic and as accurate as he is able to make it.”

Gammage had no criminal record and had been president of the gospel choir at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Trace amounts of alcohol were found in his blood and toxicology reports did not indicate drug use.

Both Favorini and Brett Caffier, who plays three characters in the production, said Gammage had been guilty of just one thing: driving while black.

Mulholland and two other officers, Michael Albert and John Vojtas, faced charges of involuntary manslaughter.

Sgt. Keith Henderson, another involved officer, was not indicted and appeared to be the prosecution’s best witness based on his testimony at the coroner’s inquest. Favorini said things changed when Henderson refused to repeat his statements — which could have been damning to the officers in open court.

The abrupt turnaround is an example of what Babish called the “thin blue line,” a mentality pervasive among police that they must back fellow officers regardless of the facts.

Babish said he refused to play along. He testified and spoke openly about the incident and was forced to resign as a result. He said that he was forced to step down because the borough council thought he wasn’t doing enough to protect his officers and brought undue attention to Brentwood by speaking with the media. Babish confirmed that his role as police chief was to protect people, not other officers.

“I’m not going to jail for them. I’m not going to lie for anybody. I don’t care where it falls,” he said. “That’s what happens when you take on a leadership role. You’re either going to be a leader, or you’re going to go along with the easy way, and that’s to try to put a spin on things or provide false information.”

Vojtas was acquitted by an all-white jury in 1996, was promoted the following year and remains on the force to this day.

Mulholland and Albert were subject to two mistrials. The second jury was made up of 11 whites and a single black juror. The black juror was the lone holdout preventing acquittal, but he was no Henry Fonda and these no “12 Angry Men.” The case ended in deadlock, and a judge ruled the officers could not be tried a third time.

Babish said he holds no grudges because the termination opened the door to his teaching career. He credited his supervisor, professor Lee Weinberg, for giving him the opportunity.

“When he offered me this job, he felt that that’s why I should teach our students. I should teach them right from wrong and the way to become a leader and a good manager,” he said.

Gammage’s death brought unprecedented change. Babish said that police forces nationwide are now trained to place handcuffed suspects in a sitting or standing position to avoid asphyxia.

Additionally, the Department of Justice launched an investigation that led to the city signing a five-year consent decree mandating federal oversight of the training and discipline of its police in 1997. A referendum to create the Citizens Police Review Board in Pittsburgh was passed the same year. The agency investigates complaints of police misconduct. Babish praised the work, saying he hopes to see new legislation to give the Board more legal authority.

Favorini noted that while progress has been made, it is “beginning to erode before our eyes,” pointing to a 2010 case in which three white police officers severely beat a black teenager, Jordan Miles. Babish and Caffier echoed the sentiment, noting the expanded police authority following Sept. 11 and the events of the 2009 G-20 Summit respectively.

“Once the person’s gone, it’s up to us to make sense of it. We can either let it affect our lives, we can let it change something in society, or we can pick up the rug and shove it under, and I think for a while people didn’t want to shove it under the rug anymore,” Favorini said.

Favorini said he hopes his play will make people remember.

“You can’t change history, you can’t bring Jonny Gammage back to life,” he said. “So all you can do is change people’s minds.”