When the police knock down your door: more on the Richardson Raid

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Vergil and Mark Richardson

By Alan Bean

Friends of Justice was first to bring you the troubling story of Mark and Vergil Richardson, but we certainly aren’t the last.  First we had Wade Goodwyn’s excellent story for NPR’s All Things Considered, and now Jordan Smith of the Austin Chronicle is using the Richardson story as an entre into the strange world of no-knock searches for The Crime Report.  Radley Balko, one of the experts interviewed for Smith’s story, reports that “the number of SWAT call-outs averaged 3,000 annual between the 1980s and 2005. Now the annual figure is roughly 50,000.”

When Police Break Down Your Door

Jordan Smith

December 15, 2010

An increase in the use of  ‘no-knock’ warrants around the country has alarmed civil liberties advocates.

On Nov. 17, 2007, Vergil Richardson was sitting at a table in the house he owns in the small northeast Texas town of Clarksville, playing dominoes with several relatives, including his half-brother Kevin Calloway, when the front door exploded inward and the living room was flooded with police.

“They just broke into the house,” Vergil recalled recently. “They had guns on us and threw me down on the floor.” (more…)

“The Confessions”: Frontline highlights the case of the Norfolk Four

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I was out-of-town on a speaking engagement when “The Confessions” originally aired on Frontline.  I strongly urge you to watch the entire program online.  It won’t be a pleasant experience.  Listening to this twisted saga kept taking me back to the recent trial of Curtis Flowers–the stories are very different in some respects, but wrongful convictions follow a familiar pattern.

Two of the attorneys representing the defendents in this case, by the way, are Des Hogan and George Kendall, key members of the legal “Dream Team”  involved in the fight for justice in Tulia, Texas.

The story of the Norfolk Four revolves around aggressive interrogation, false confession, and prosecutorial tunnel vision.  Once the detectives responsible for the investigation latched onto a theory of the crime, they clung to it tenaciously–facts be damned. (more…)

You can help the Scott Sisters

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Nancy Lockhart has been working behind the scenes to bring the plight of Jamie and Gladys Scott to national attention.  Interest in the story spiked recently but, with no recent developments, interest is beginning to flag.  Nancy would like you to get personally involved.  The message below tells you how.

Alan Bean

Message from Nancy Lockhart

Jamie and Gladys Scott both went before the Mississippi Board of Pardons and Parole today. Results from this hearing are unknown at this time. Please continue to call and e-mail governor Haley Barbour’s Office in support of their release. Each call and e-mail is very important! (more…)

Bob Moser: Can Texas Democrats Stop Chasing Ghosts?

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Back in July, when the governor’s race still looked like a race

This article originally appeared in the Texas Observer.

By Bob Moser

“The only thing worse than standing for something unpopular is standing for nothing at all.”

Back in July, when the governor’s race still looked like a race, Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News bird-dogged Democrat Bill White for a week as he hunted for votes among the Anglo conservatives of East Texas. In one especially vivid account, datelined Palestine, Slater showed White answering litmus-test gun-rights questions at the local Starbucks. The candidate answered satisfactorily, citing a B+ score from the National Rifle Association and artfully dodging a question about the right to pack heat in church. A couple of East Texans admitted to Slater that they were considering voting for this strange, surprising Democrat. But there was just one problem, Jerry Harrison of the Farm Bureau said: “The only holdback I can see is that he’s a Democrat and he’s going to be with Obama.” (more…)

The Advent Spirit in a Detroit Courtroom

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This reflection originally appeared in the Huffington Post

The Advent Spirit in a Detroit Courtroom

By Mark Osler

Twelve years ago, it was a particularly bad day in Detroit. A storm came through as the temperature hovered just below freezing, and the precipitation switched between freezing rain and snow, making any outdoor movement treacherous.

At the time, I was a federal prosecutor. Ours was a tight office, and when something interesting happened in the courts, we all found out about it almost instantaneously. We were fascinated by the judges we appeared before, so any rumors about them were especially flammable.

On the day of that storm, a particularly intriguing story blasted through our offices. As I heard it, one of the magistrate judges had presided over a detention hearing, in which he considered whether a defendant should be held in jail or released prior to trial. The magistrate heard evidence and argument, and finally ruled against us: He held that the defendant should be released on bond. The man likely was not a big-time criminal, but a drug addict involved in low-level crime to support his habit.

That was not the end of the story, though. (more…)

When schizophrenia became a black man’s disease

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In the late 1960s, schizophrenia became a black man’s disease. 

In late 1963, Malcolm X was asked to comment on the assassination of president John Kennedy.  He called it a case of “America’s chickens coming home to roost.”  Outraged by this comment, the Nation of Islam prohibited their rising star from speaking publicly for 90 days.  When that period expired, Malcolm announced that he was severing ties with the nation.

 In August of 1965, rioting broke out in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.  Before order was restored, 34 people were dead, 1,032 were injured, and 3,438 had been arrested.

At a civil rights rally in Greenwood, Mississippi on June 17, 1966, Stokely Carmichael the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), introduced the term “black power” into the American lexicon.  

Four months later, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton organized the Black Panthers in Oakland. 

The mainstream civil rights movement, though seemingly triumphant, hadn’t addressed the economic misery and building anger within the black urban ghetto.  Martin Luther King achieved unparalleled success by adapting his protest language around the perceptions of middle class white moderates.  The Black Power movement got up in the face of white America, demanding radical and immediate change.

How did white folks respond to this challenge?   Not well.  Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on the strength of a “law and order” message.  Everybody knew what the Republican candidate was talking about.  (more…)

Where real Christians are Republicans and real Republicans are Christians

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Joe Straus

We’re talking Texas, of course.

As the old saying goes, “When three different people tell you you’re drunk, it’s time to sit down.” 

Or, When Fox News suggests you’re a bigot, it’s time for some honest reflection.

It helps, of course, that Joe Straus, the embattled Speaker of the Texas House, is a Jewish Republican as opposed to being a black Democrat.  But the principle applies.

“Over the past month,” the article notes, “in a spate of e-mails and political pitches, conservative opponents of incumbent Speaker Joe Straus have said they want him replaced not because of his Jewish religion, but because of his betrayal of Republican principles.”

But in a November 30th email, John Cook of the Texas Republican Executive Committee reminded his readers that, “We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it.”

If you read enough of these statements, you will notice that the words “Republican,” “conservative,” and “Christian” are used more or less interchangeably.  In Texas it is generally assumed that orthodox Christianity teaches conservative economic and social principles.  It thus follows, as the night the day, that real conservatives are Christians who vote Republican. (more…)

Michelle Alexander: hard times won’t end the drug war

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With America wrapped in the coils of a budget crunch, can we afford a drug war?  Shouldn’t the appalling cost of mass incarceration be giving us a terminal case of sticker shock? 

Many pundits are looking for modest cutbacks in prison populations and narcotics task forces in the years ahead.  No need to worry, they suggest, the new Jim Crow will soon collapse under its own weight.  It might be a slow process; but change is inevitable.

Michelle Alexander isn’t convinced.  Her article, “Obama’s drug war,” will appear in the December 27th edition of  The Nation along with several shorter pieces written by notable drug war critics like Bruce Western and Marc Mauer. 

Most of the articles in this series advance common sense public policy arguments construing the war on drugs as a misguided attempt at crime control.  Most of the writers know it ain’t that simple, but when you’re writing for the Nation you reach for arguments that click with white liberals.

Michelle Alexander comes bearing bad news.  The war on drugs and mass incarceration cannot be scaled back, she says, “in the absence of a large-scale movement—one that seeks to dismantle not only the system of mass incarceration and the drug war apparatus but also the habits of mind that allow us to view poor people of color trapped in ghettos as ‘others,’ unworthy of our collective care and concern.” (more…)

Does Mississippi want a civil rights museum?

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The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (front left) walked in the funeral procession for Medgar Evers in June 1963. Evers was shot and killed in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss.
The funeral procession of Medgar Evers

Does the state of Mississippi really want a civil rights museum?

 This intriguing article by Sheila Byrd of the Washington Post suggests not.
 
State Senator David Jordan, a black Democrat from Greenwood in Leflore County, certainly isn’t convinced. “It comes to a point that I don’t think Mississippi wants her history clearly told,” he told Byrd.
 
State Senator Hillman Frazier, a Democrat from Jackson, also has his doubts.  Governor Hailey Barbour initially embraced the idea of building a civil rights museum, but has done little to make it happen.  “It’s very frustrating when you’re visiting Memphis and Birmingham,” Frazier told the WP, “and they’re telling Mississippi’s history when we’re ground zero for civil rights.” (more…)