Judge Gives Man Child Support Means--a Shoeshine Box

HEMPSTEAD, Tex. — When a 30-year-old man said he couldn’t make his child support payments because he didn’t have a job, State District Judge Oliver Kitzman bought a $12 shoeshine kit and told the defendant he was in business.

“He didn’t take it too well,” Kitzman acknowledged, but he denied any racial overtones in the ruling and insisted he only wanted to help Charles Martin make the $200-a-month support payment for his 6-year-old son.

Martin, who is black, believes the judge wouldn’t have made the same demand of a white man, said his lawyer, Bill Daniels. “He felt it was degrading and demeaning to him,” Daniels said. He did not say whether any action was planned.