Author: Alan Bean

Goodwyn: Civil Rights, Judicial Bias Surround Texas Drug Case

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Wade Goodwyn does his usual impeccable job of bringing an utterly outrageous story to national awareness.  If you follow this blog you are already familiar with the basic outline of this story, but Goodwyn inserts the human element that is typically missed by the mainstream media.  You can hear the original audio version at the All Things Considered Site.

At the end of the Richardsons’ story you will find brief summaries of three related Texas narcotics cases Wade Goodwyn has covered over the years, stories that provide some of the best New Jim Crow illustrations available anywhere in America.  Friends of Justice didn’t just bring the Richardson fiasco to public attention, we were also involved in the other three cases (see my comments below at the end of the NPR piece).

One last word.  Without the dogged determination and courage of the defendants (particularly Vergil and Mark Richardson) and attorney Mark Lesher, justice would never have been served in this case.

Alan Bean (more…)

Kairos, Narrative, and Transformation

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Mark Osler at work

By Mark Osler

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak at the Kairos Conference on the death penalty at Emory University.  It was organized by People of Faith Against the Death Penalty and Sister Helen Prejean, and featured a fascinating array of voices.  However, things didn’t go quite as expected, in a way that was wonderful, instructive, and encouraging to groups like Friends of Justice.

Frankly, I expected to go down there, give my lectures, and talk to like-minded folks about the death penalty. All that happened, but that wasn’t all.  Sometimes a conference like that goes off in a direction you don’t expect. (more…)

J. Alfred Smith, Sr.: “Reclaiming our Prophetic Voice”

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Rev. J. Alfred Smith, Sr.

I first met J. Alfred Smith, Sr in 1995 when he preached a series of prophetic-evangelistic sermons at First Baptist Church Kansas City, KS.  Charles Kiker (a founding member of Friends of Justice) was pastor of FBC at the time and I was there to provide the music.  Dr. Smith and I were chatting informally before the first service; he was telling me about the impact the war on drugs was having in his community.  To my utter astonishment, the man began to weep uncontrollably–something I had never seen a preacher do before.  He wasn’t the slightest bit embarrassed by his tears.  In fact, he behaved as if weeping was the normal and appropriate response to the circumstances in which he found himself.

J. Alfred Smith, Sr. was Senior Pastor of Oakland’s Allen Temple, one of the premier pulpits in America.  He is now Pastor Emeritus of that church; his son, J. Alfred Smith, Jr., has since taken over as Senior Pastor.

J. Alfred Smith, Sr. and several of his parishioners were tremendously supportive during our justice struggle in Tulia, Texas.  It was there I began to understand the tears I had witnessed several years earlier.  I last saw Dr. Smith at the New Baptist Covenant gathering in Atlanta a couple of years ago.

The sermon below addresses several issues regularly featured on this blog.  Dr. Smith talks about the betrayal of “the prosperity gospel”, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Day, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the need for a new kind of Christianity, or, from an African American perspective, the recovery of the old prophetic gospel that once animated the civil rights movement. (more…)

Challenging the New Jim Crow, part 1

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By Alan Bean

This post is the introduction to a keynote address I delivered at a Campaign to End the Death Penalty conference held recently on the campus of the University of Chicago.  Subsequent posts can be found here:

Sheriff Larry Stewart (Tulia, Texas)
DA J. Reed Walters (Jena, Louisiana)
 DA Doug Evans (Winona, Mississippi)
 Conclusion

Challenging the New Jim Crow  

I come bearing bad news.  Since the early 1980s, the fundamental structure of the American criminal justice system has changed.   It is less and less about preventing and punishing crime, and more and more about managing and controlling the surplus population.  Consider a few statistics:

  • The Texas prison population soared from 39,000 in 1988 to 151,000 in 1998—an increase of 387%.  Between 1980 and 2004, the prison population increased almost six-fold. 
  • Spending on corrections during this period increased by 1600 percent. 
  • Between 1980 and 2000, Texas spent seven times more on its prison system than on higher education.
  • In 1950 there was a 3% chance that an African American male born in Texas would do prison time; by 1996 there was a 29% chance. (more…)

School board says ‘no’ to Chavez holiday

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Cesar Chavez

By Alan Bean

Arlington school students will still have a holiday in May, but it won’t bear the name of Cesar Chavez.  Last night, a series of eloquent Latino activists (many of them in their teens) made the case for naming this anonymous holiday after the great labor organizer and civil rights activist.  Gloria Peña, president of the board of trustees, presented a motion in favor of the change.  I even made a little impromptu speech of my own.  It made no difference.

For me, this issue is personal and therefore emotional.  First, the local fight for a Chavez holiday is being led by Luis Castillo, am Arlington LULAC president, Friends of Justice board member, and friend.  (more…)

David Duke Woos the Tea Party

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By Alan Bean

David Duke has changed his hairstyle–quite flattering, don’t you think?  He is also reaching out to Tea Party enthusiasts with a nifty new video.

Duke says the Zionist media hates and fears the Tea Party for the same reason they hate and fear a well-intentioned White Nationalist like David Duke.  The media know the Framers of the US Constitution, heroes like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, envisioned America as a European nation and were distressed by the prospect of non-European immigration. (more…)

The Claude Jones saga: Did Texas execute an(other) innocent man?

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Claude Jones

By Alan Bean

Note: Dave Mann has written a well-researched feature story on this case for the Texas Observer.

Not that most Americans would care, but it appears that Texas executed another innocent man in 2000.  This story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram relates the sad fate of Claude Jones, a St. Jacinto man convicted of killing a liquor store clerk in the course of an armed robbery in 1989. 

Prosecutors showed the jury a single hair that they claimed belonged to Jones.  They couldn’t be sure, mind you, and no DNA test was conducted, but they were pretty sure. 

But that wasn’t enough for a conviction, corroborating testimony was required.  Enter Timothy Jordan.  In exchange for a lenient sentence, he testified that he had served as an accomplice and that Jones was the trigger man.

Three years after Jones was executed, Jordan recanted his testimony. Need you ask why?  He was threatened with dire consequences if he refused to cooperate with prosecutors.  We’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we?

George W. Bush was fixin’ to leave the governor’s mansion for bigger and better things when he gave Jones’ execution the thumbs up.  No one on his staff mentioned that the hair that so impressed jurors had not been tested.

Now it has and we know for a fact that the hair did not belong to Jones. (more…)

New Poll shows overwhelming support for the death penalty

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By Alan Bean

A new Angus-Reid poll suggests that 83% of Americans support the death penalty while only 13% oppose it. 

This distressing news illustrates how much we have changed as a nation.  In 1966, 47% opposed capital punishment while only 42% supported it.

You may be surprised to learn that support for the ultimate penalty is strongest in the “liberal” Northeast (85%) and the Midwest (86%) and weakest in the South (79%).  Incarceration rates and the actual use of the death penalty would suggest that the South is the most punitive region.  Since the reinstitution of capital punishment in 1976, there have been 464 executions in the state of Texas and virtually none in New England.  Incarceration rates in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi are at least three times as high as in the Northeast.

So why did the Angus-Reid people find that southerners are less inclined to favor the death penalty than northeasterners?  (more…)

Bob Herbert brings us down to earth

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By Alan Bean

Let’s face it folks, William Wordsworth was right:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

How many of us understand what’s going on out there?  Does anyone comprehend the economic crisis raging around us?  Really? 

We listen to the pundits mutual-contradictions and say (if we are honest), “You might be right, but what do I know?  More to the point, what do you know, and how do you know it?”

This being the case, it is refreshing to find an opinion piece that limits itself to the obvious facts about which there can be little controversy.  Consider this:

“People traveling in the real world understand that the federal budget deficits are sky high because of the Bush-era tax cuts, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the spending that was needed to keep the Great Recession from spiraling into another Great Depression.” 

Bob Herbert could have added the huge welfare program known as mass incarceration to the list, but he’s essentially on target.  How many Americans understand these obvious facts?  Judging by the recent election, not many.  (more…)