What happens when the Texas Attorney General’s Office tries to drop the charges against a defendant for want of evidence and the presiding judge denies the motion? 

The AG’s Office took over the case against Vergil Richardson and several family members when District Attorney Val Varley was recused from the case.  Varley showed up at the scene of the drug bust (see details in the story below) brandishing a fire arm.  This made him a potential fact witness and led to his recusal.

One gets the impression that Judge John Miller (pictured to the left) is behaving as if his good friend (and legal tag team partner) Val Varley is still prosecuting the case.  But what is the special prosecutor supposed to do now?  When you have established that you don’t have enough evidence to go to trial and the judge sets a trial date anyway how do you proceed?

Friends of Justice was asked to look into this case in November of 2008 and has stayed in touch with Vergil Richardson since that date.  Richardson, a dedicated High School coach, has been unable to work in his chosen profession since the day the indictment came down.

Judge denies Attorney General’s motion

By Bill Hankins
The Paris News

Published May 6, 2010

CLARKSVILLE — A ruling by 102nd District Court Judge John F. Miller Jr. in a Red River County drug case has brought a stir of concern all the way to the Texas capital.

Miller denied a motion by the state Attorney General’s office special prosecutor in the case. The special prosecutor has asked the charges against former coach Vergil Richardson be dismissed for lack of evidence. (more…)

I stumbled across this Associated Press article while eating my Cheerios this morning.  Like most drug war articles, Martha Mendoza pits policy wonks supporting prevention against zealots who want to keep the prisons overflowing with low-level drug offenders.  But read carefully and you notice that Mendoza is taking sides. 

Investigative pieces in Mother Jones or The Atlantic might wax polemical now and then, but mainstream journalism almost always falls back on a weary he-said-she-said format in which no clear winner emerges.  This passes for balanced and objective journalism.  In actuality, it is a craven exercise in butt protection.

 I generally find myself at odds with Libertarians.  Like most Americans I favor a squishy king of market based socialism in which the government protects vulnerable citizens from the Darwinian excesses of unfettered laissez-faire.  Take the oil disaster in the gulf.  The government has an obligation to assist with the clean-up effort and a few sane regulatory measures could have prevented the fiasco.

But when it comes to the drug war the libertarians have the best of the argument.  The market in illegal drugs is unregulated by definition.  When you make a commodity illegal you forfeit the right to regulation.  What remains is pure supply-and-demand economics.  Insatiable demand will be supplied. (more…)

Like Jordan Flaherty and a number of advocacy groups, Friends of Justice has been following this story for almost a year now.  Like all small towns, Jena has an active drug trade servicing the habits of the poor and the affluent, the black and the white.  Like all small towns, Jena law enforcement turns a blind eye to a wide range of illicit behavior on one side of the tracks while using the underground economy flourishing in poor neighborhoods to run up easy drug war statistics and, now and then, exact a little revenge.

As I argue in my soon-to-be-released book on the subject, Tulia’s famous drug sting was a rural reneweal scheme designed to eliminatge the riff-raff.  In Jena it’s a bit more complicated.  Stung by a September 2007 march that brought 30,000 people to Lasalle Parish, local officials waited for the Jena 6 saga to play itself out.  When the cameras were gone and the microphones had fallen silent, they made their move.

As in Tulia, practically no drugs or big money was seized in a series of brutal early morning raids.  Unlike Tulia, the DA may have a little video corroboration to work with.

Or maybe not.  Time will tell.  Either way, it won’t much matter.  All white juries will hand down convictions and stiff sentences with or without evidence.

One thing is certain, a drug sweep purportedly designed to bring down the bad guys was a thinly disguised exercise in old fashioned revenge.  There’s nothing subtle about this story.

Drug Bust or Racist Revenge?
By Jordan Flaherty

Sheriff Scott Franklin of Jena says he is trying to rid his community of drugs. Critics say he is pursuing a vendetta against the town’s Black community.

At four am on July 9 of last year, more than 150 officers from 10 different agencies gathered in a large barn just outside Jena, Louisiana. The day was the culmination of an investigation that Sheriff Scott Franklin said had been going on for nearly two years. Local media was invited, and a video of the Sheriff speaking to the rowdy gathering would later appear online.

The Sheriff called the mobilization “Operation Third Option,” and he said it was about fighting drugs. However, community members say that Sheriff Franklin’s actions are part of an orchestrated revenge for the local civil rights protests that won freedom for six Black high school students – known internationally as the Jena Six – who had been charged with attempted murder for a school fight. (more…)

This brief article is your introduction to the story of Jamie and Gladys Scott, two sisters serving double life sentences for an alleged robbery netting $11.  I have been hearing about the Scott sisters for several months now, but the basic facts of the case remained fuzzy.  South Carolina legal analyst Nancy Lockhart has been assisting the Scott sisters on a pro bono basis and is fully acquainted with the story.  You can find more information on this case at The Black Commentator.

The State of Mississippi versus Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott

Nancy Lockhart, MJ

In 1994, the State of Mississippi sentenced two sisters, Jamie and Gladys Scott, to consecutive double life terms each for two counts of armed robbery they did not commit.  The Scott sisters did not have prior criminal records, and from the beginning, they have vigorously maintained their innocence.  Their convictions rest entirely on a combination of contradictory, coerced, and potentially perjured testimony by the victims and two other people charged with the crime who were offered lighter sentences for their cooperation.  

(more…)

Friends of Justice board member Mark Osler is featured in this USA Today article on the crack-powder sentencing disparity in the federal system. 

Federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine, a drug created for and marketed to a poor, predominantly African-American clientele, are one hundred times higher than sentencing guidelines for powder cocaine, the drug of preference among affluent, predominantly white users.  Osler, a former federal prosecutor and Baylor law professor, thinks this disparity should be eliminated completely.  I agree.

The article highlights the failure of the Obama administration to consider a single clemency appeal.  Thus far, the administration has refused to answer questions on the subject.  Although Obama is fully aware of the racist implications of the crack-powder sentencing discrepancy, he has also failed to address that issue since becoming president.

In a 2007 address at Howard University (in which he also demonstrated a nuanced grasp of then-current Jena 6 issue) Obama signalled his opposition to the 100-1 crack-powder sentencing discrepancy.  But that speech was intended for an African-American audience and was not widely publicized.  Now that his every word becomes grist for the culture war mill, Obama is reluctant to hand the opposition a potential weapon.

And make no mistake, responding to a single clemency petition or outspoken support for eliminating the crack-powder divide would open this president to a barrage of criticism. 

I attended a gathering this morning on the creation of a church in Arlington, Texas designed for ex-offenders.   Stan Basler, a pastor and attorney who leads the United Methodist Redemption Church in Oklahoma City asked a profound question: “Have we reached the point in our culture where vindictiveness becomes a virtue?”

You betcha!

That’s why a progressive politician like Bill Clinton ramped up the machinery of mass incarceration–he didn’t want to look soft on crime.

President Obama is following the same unfortunate (some would say, cowardly) path.

This is tragic.  Consider the sad story of Donna Stites.  Unless Donna is granted clemency she will die in prison.  Donna has so much to contribute in the free world and there is no earthly reason to keep her locked up.  But, in the current punitive environment, will Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels or President Obama even consider a clemency appeal? 

I hope so.  I hope Congress finds the moral courage to eliminate the crack-powder discrepancy.  I hope President Obama breaks with the politics of mass incarceration. 

But Obama won’t do the right thing without popular support. 

Thank you, professor Osler, for adding your voice to an important conversation.

Last week, Arizona passed the most aggressive immigration legislation in recent history.  The law is so sweeping that staunch conservatives like Karl Rove and Tom Tancredo have come out against it. 

Arizona’s new law, signed by the governor on Friday, requires immigrants to carry documentation verifying their immigration status. Police officers will now be required to question a person’s immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that person may be illegally in the country.

There are two obvious problems here.  It is almost certainly unconstitutional to require an American to provide documentation unless there is strong evidence of a crime or driving infraction.  Officers can’t just stop people on the street and ask for ID.

And what sort of reasonable suspicion would prompt a police officer to ask for proof of citizenship?  (more…)

(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town.  Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)

On June 7, 2010, Curtis Flowers will go to trial for a sixth time on the same murder charges.  That has never happened before in the state of Mississippi.

It has never happened anywhere in America.

Why has it been so difficult for the state to get a final conviction?  The first three trials were overturned on sustained charges of prosecutorial misconduct.

The last two trials ended in hung juries.

In trial four, all seven white jurors voted to convict while all five black jurors held out for acquittal.  How do we account for this racial divide?

It comes down to life experience.  White jurors identify with the victims of a crime that left four defenseless people dead inside a Winona furniture store.  Bertha Tardy and Carmen Rigby were prominent members of the local white community; their deaths shocked and outraged their friends and families.  Young Bobo Stewart had his entire life ahead of him.

Race figures prominently in the Flowers saga, but this is also a story about relationship.  At the courthouse, a brother of the slain Robert Golden, an African-American, sits with the families of the white victims.  Like them, he sees this case through the lens of grief.

Black jurors in Montgomery County aren’t indifferent to the deep sorrow surrounding them.  They too want the person (or persons) responsible for the Tardy tragedy to pay.  But black jurors have a hard time seeing the Curtis Flowers they know as the triggerman. (more…)