An update to this post can be found here.

Grant Hank Skinner is scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 24th.  Yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals  ruled that DNA evidence which could point to either guilt or innocence need not be tested. 

The issue is procedural: Skinner’s original attorney didn’t ask for a DNA test, so the defendant is out of luck.

A recent article in the Texas Tribune offers a good synopsis of the case: “On New Year’s Eve 1993, police in the Panhandle town of Pampa found Skinner’s live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, strangled and beaten and her two mentally disabled adult sons stabbed to death. Investigators immediately turned to Skinner, who had a history of petty crime and drug and alcohol abuse. A jury convicted him in less than two hours, based largely on evidence that showed the victims’ blood on Skinner’s clothes and on the testimony of an ex-girlfriend who later recanted her story.”

Rob Owen, Skinner’s current attorney, argues that the gruesome murders could have been committed by Twila Busby’s uncle, a man with a violent temper who had an incestuous relationship with Busby. 

Skinner claims that he was passed out on the couch at the time of the killings, under the influence of vodka and codeine.

Obviously, we are not dealing with sympathetic, high-status folks here.  If we were, state officials would do the right thing in a heart beat.  Instead, process trumps truth yet again.

Skinner’s attorney at trial was a former Gray County district attorney who had twice prosecuted his client in the past for drug-related offenses.  Amarillo attorney Matthew Wright theorizes that the original defense attorney may have passed on a DNA test because he feared it might indicate guilt.  Perhaps so, but now that Skinner is facing execution what possible reason (apart from procedural issues) could there be for denying a DNA test?  Several groups have offered to pay for the test, so cost is not a factor.

“In 2000, the state agreed to test some of the evidence,” Wright says, “expecting it to disprove Skinner’s claims. But that didn’t happen; a hair found clutched in the victim’s hand came, not from Skinner, but from one of the victim’s relatives.”

This case isn’t going away, so the state of Texas might as well conduct the tests.  If the DNA suggests guilt, state officials can lay the matter to rest.  If the evidence implicates someone other than Skinner, Texas can claim to be tough but fair.  But if Skinner goes to his death with the evidence untested, Texas will once again have shown callous disregard for truth and justice.

In her article in the Texas Tribune, Brandi Grissom offers a grim assessment of the The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles:

The seven-member board makes life-or-death decisions, recommending to the governor whether an execution should be delayed, called off or carried out. Yet it’s one of the least transparent agencies in state government, making it all but impossible for Owen, or any other member of the public, to decipher how or why it makes decisions. The board doesn’t have to hold public meetings on clemency cases like Skinner’s. It’s not required to give any reasons for its recommendations. Most times, the seven members simply fax in their votes. Without a majority vote, clemency is denied. What’s more, there are no guidelines in statute or in the board’s rules that outline a basis for decision-making. And nearly all the documents the board uses to make its decisions are kept secret under state law — even after an inmate is executed.

Hank Skinner has two remaining legal options: Governor Rick Perry could order a 30-day reprieve and order that the DNA evidence be tested, or the federal Supreme Court could issue a stay of execution.  Perry is unlikely to intervene unless the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends intervention.  The board rarely makes this kind of recommendation and, even when it does, Perry has a history of ignoring their advice.

On the other hand, the Skinner case is getting nationwide attention and, as we learned in Tulia and Jena, national scrutiny changes the functioning of the criminal justice system in fundamental ways.

It should never have come to this.  State officials are clearly afraid that DNA evidence might raise questions about the fairness and credibility of capital justice in Texas.  Better just let the man die, they reason.  But if Hank Skinner dies on March 24th his name will be added to a growing list of innocent or possibly innocent inmates proudly executed by the Lone Star State.

(You can find a follow-up to this post here.)

Glenn Beck just nailed it.  As a professional controversialist, Beck does his best to offend as many people as possible.   His argument that churches that preach social justice are merely front groups for communists and Nazis is being denounced via every medium and from every perspective imaginable.

First, what did Beck actually say?  Here’s a verbatim account.

“I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site,” Beck told his viewers. “If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. … Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If they’re going to Jeremiah Wright’s church, yes!  If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.  Go alert your bishop and tell them, ‘Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?’ If it’s my church, I’m alerting the church authorities: ‘Excuse me, what’s this social justice thing?’ And if they say, ‘Yeah, we’re all in on this social justice thing,’ I am in the wrong place.”

Okay, thus far we have learned that the phrases “social justice” and “economic justice” are code words.  Code words for what?

Beck didn’t leave his audience guessing.  Holding up pictures of a swastika and a hammer and sickle, Beck noted that “social justice” was the stated goal of both communists and Nazis.

Ergo, if you believe in social justice, you might as well wearing a swastika armband or waving the red flag of Bolshevism.

How offensive is that?

Not offensive enough to outrage everyone.  In fact, it is doubtful that any of Mr. Beck’s faithful followers were bent out of shape by their master’s incendiary rhetoric.  That’s because, although few have the guts to put the matter as boldly as Beck, his rant is orthodox lunatic-fringe conservatism–the dominant philosophy in America today.

Lunatic fringe conservatism isn’t dominant because the majority of Americans embrace it (they don’t); it dominates by being so simple, bold and consistent that folks take it in by a process of osmosis.  It’s in the air, the water and the soil.

Between the early 1930s and the early 1970s, the American social experiment was shaped by a moral vision that was virtually the obverse of everything Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement subscribes to.  Lets call it the social justice movement. 

There were three parts to the program: religious, economic and (in the later stages) racial.  The religion was liberal, moral and ecumenical.  The economic program was New Deal orthodoxy.  By the 1950s, ridding the world of Jim Crow apartheid  had become the movement’s primary goal.  Picture liberal Protestant clergymen, radical Roman Catholic priests and Jewish Rabbis marching arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy and you’ve got the idea. 

The civil rights movement couldn’t have succeeded without this movement.  As every white southerner realized, it took progressive rulings from the Supreme Court, progressive legislation from Congress and powerful intervention from the White House and the Justice Department to drive Jim Crow to his knees.  In short, it took the government.

Why are the Tea Party people and Glenn Beck’s fans are so upset about the federal government?  Because, in their view, integration was forced down their unwilling throats by judicial and legislative fiat.  

The lunatic fringe conservatism that Mr. Beck espouses with such goofy eloquence is driven, among other things, by southern white resentment.  Remember Beck’s weird comment about President Obama having it in for white people and white culture?  

Lunatic fringe conservatism isn’t just about racial resentment.  Like the social justice movement it replaced, Beckian conservatism had economic and religious components.  The economic vision was trickle down, supply side economics–what’s go0d for General Motors is good for America so government regulation is always bad.  The religious message was a sectarian form of Christian fundamentalism, (Mormons like Beck were eventually tolerated because national power needed a broad coalition). 

 Corporate America and American evangelicals had their own reasons for resenting, even fearing, the federal government.  They just had to tap into southern white racial resentment and the conservative revolution was on.  Ronald Reagan, let’s remember, kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Neshoba County Mississippi, sixteen short years after three civil rights workers were murdered there.  You didn’t have to be a dog to hear the racial whistle.

The power shift took place during the latter years of the Jimmy Carter presidency. With each passing decade, the old social justice coalition becomes a little grayer and a bit more decrepit.  Most mainline denominations (Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, the United Church of Christ etc.) retain a sentimental attachment to the old social justice movement, but most of these groups are in steep numerical decline.  The passion that drove the movement in the 50s and 60s has largely dissipated.  All the fire is now with the lunatic fringe conservatives. 

The GOP, to the dismay of many moderate conservatives, has little choice but to play along.  Without southern white racial resentment, Ronald Reagan and his latter-day compatriots wouldn’t have had a chance.

Nothing could be more natural, therefore, than for Glenn Beck to associate terms like “progressive”, “social justice” and “economic justice” with the greatest evils his feverish mind can conjure.  That’s the white southern racial resentment talking.

This post is from Friends of Justice founding member, Charles Kiker

On Thursday, March 4, my Alma Mater, Wayland Baptist University, hosted Dr. David Gushee as the featured speaker for the Willson Lectures. Since Wayland is only about 25 miles away, and since it is indeed rare that a noted Progressive Evangelical speaks so nearby, my wife and I took advantage of the opportunity, and took our Methodist pastor as our guest. I was glad for the opportunity, and our pastor seemed appreciative of the rare opportunity as well.
 
The lecture was entitled “Theological Foundations for the Baptist University.” For the most part it was more descriptive than prescriptive. He characterized educational institutions that had church related roots as falling into four broad categories: (1) those who have become completely secular; (2) those who are mostly secular but who have retained some vestiges of their original Christian roots; (3) those who have a “critical mass” of openly Christian faculty, staff, and students; and (4) the lower case “orthodox” schools who vigorously defend their Christian heritage narrowly defined, schools such as Bob Jones and Liberty.
 
Dr. Gushee was basically addressing the Baptist University (note the lecture title). And most Baptist universities would fall loosely into the “critical mass” category, with something of a continuum of those schools which have become more secularized to those who intentionally retain more of their Baptist and Christian heritage.
 
It would be difficult to discuss theological foundations for Baptist universities, especially in the South, without taking note of the theological controversy that engulfed Southern Baptists starting about three decades hence. And Dr. Gushee observed that the reaction to the controversy, on both sides, has unfortunately led people to think and act more out of fear than of love. Moderates tend to fear fundamentalism, while fundamentalists fear heresy.
 
I think his observation about fear applies on a much broader scale than just the Baptist university scene. It’s certainly observable in politics, in church life, and in discussions of racial justice.
 
Churches and Christian institutions are mandated to be dominated by love. “Perfect love casts out fear.” Where fear is cast out, the level of discourse can be markedly more respectful.
 
While our civil institutions, and thus our civil politics, are not and should not be dominated by Christian theology, is it too much to ask that they be dominated by respect?
 
For those of us who are “progressive” in working toward racial justice, I think we need to be circumspect in avoiding the use of the word “racist” in characterizing individuals, without pulling our punches regarding actions which are racist. I think we need to work harder in educating the public about systemic as opposed to individual racism. When confronting racism or other injustices, in regard to individuals let our aim always be to educate and persuade, rather than castigate and condemn.
 
Easier said than done.

On Thursday, March 4th,  177th District Judge Kevin Fine of Houston ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

Judge Fine granted a motion filed by defense attorneys representing John E. Green who has been charged with capital murder in connection with the June 2008 shooting death of Thien Huong Nguyen.  The defense motion argued that Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071 “violates the protections afforded to the Accused by the 8th and 14th Amendments … and that the option to sentence the Accused to die for a crime that he did not commit should be precluded as a sentencing option.”

“What he’s saying, and what the motion is saying, is that you can’t administer the Texas death penalty fairly in Texas,” says John P. Keirnan, a lawyer for the defendant. “Kevin Fine has taken a courageous stance, finally. This is the beginning of the end of the death penalty in Texas.”

Well, maybe not.  Fine’s ruling unleashed a firestorm of controversy.  Texas Governor Rick Perry responded told the media that he supports the death penalty and so do the people of Texas.  Attorney General, Greg Abbot lashed out in an unseemly display of righteous indignation: “In an act of unabashed judicial activism, a state district judge ignored longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent and improperly granted John Edward Green’s request that the court declare the death penalty unconstitutional. The Attorney General’s Office has already offered to provide help and legal resources to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office — which is handling the Green prosecution — and will take appropriate measures to defend Texas’ capital punishment law. We regret that the court’s legally baseless order unnecessarily delays justice and closure for the victim’s family — including her two children, who witnessed their mother’s brutal murder.”

So now we know, the Texas political establishment is firmly on the side of the death penalty.  It’s good to have that clarified.

Overwhelmed by this torrent of condemnation, Judge Fine rescinded his ruling, calling instead for an April 12 hearing in which both sides can present arguments on the issue.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Judge Fine made it clear that “his ruling is limited to whether the Texas Code of Criminal Procedures allows for the execution of innocent people.  He said there is no precedent to guide him.

‘There’s nothing in my research that say’s it is OK to execute innocent people so that we may have a death penalty,’ Fine said on the bench.

He said that society’s standards of decency and fairness have changed and ‘that we have executed innocent people.'”

I wish it were so.  I suspect we have executed innocent people.  But  according to the most recent Gallup poll, “The data show that 57% of those who believe an innocent person has been executed also support the death penalty. This is significantly higher than the 39% who hold this belief and (perhaps more consistently) oppose the death penalty.”

In other words, most of those who believe Texas has executed at least one innocent person maintain their support for the death penalty.  This may sound a bit counterintuitive, but there is a perverse kind of logic at work.  Perhaps the innocent are being executed, folks reason, but most of those who die are guilty and the innocent ones are almost always poor and black so . . .

The Star-Telegram’s editorial board congratulated Judge Fine for expressing concern about the fairness of the Texas criminal justice system, but said the judge picked the wrong issue.  “He is far from alone in questioning the system or in worrying about the risk that not everyone on Death Row is guilty as charged,” the editorial admitted, “but his ruling was grounded on assumptions, not facts, musings, not law.”

Here, the Star-Telegram appears to be following the reasoning of Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos who released a statement deploring Fine’s ruling (using virtually the same language employed by AG Abbot).  Lykos also states that the ruling has “no basis in law or in fact.”

The facts are open to dispute.  Judge Fine appears to have misstated a few statistics (see the S-T editorial) but the key issue is whether innocent people have been executed in Texas.  Timothy Cole did not die by lethal injection, but he did succumb to asthra-related health issues before he could be cleared of a rape he didn’t commit.  Forensics experts have argued that Cameron Todd Willingham may well be innocent of killing his own children in a Corsicana house fire.  Governor Perry has been moving heaven and earth to bury the Willingham case but it just won’t quite die.

So, yes, the facts suggest that innocent people have been executed in Texas, we just don’t have definitive proof.

So much for the facts; what about the law?

That all depends what you mean by the law.  There are certainly state statutes making it legal to execute people, but I don’t think that is what Judge Fine’s opponents are talking about.  Constitutional challenges to the death penalty have repeatedly failed in Texas and elsewhere since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.  But Judge Fine’s concern is based on his belief that innocent people have been executed in Texas and there is no law establishing the right of Texas officials to execute the innocent.  There isn’t a lot of legal precedent on that issue for the simple reason that Judge Fine is the first member of the Texas  judiciary to all the issue to be debated in open court.

But again, Fine’s critics aren’t simply talking about statutes and legal precedents when they say his ruling has no basis in the law.  By “the law” they mean the transcendent legal truth that all statutes and bench rulings strive to replicate.  We are running up against the idea that if we could just frame the right legal equation there is, in all the great mass of legal argument out there, a simple legal truth that all people of good will should accept.

Does “the law”, per se, tell us anything of value about the legitimacy of the death penalty in Texas?  Or does Rick Perry grasp the essence of the legal system when he argues that the majority gets to decide what is right and wrong?

 Eddie Glaude, a professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton, believes the Black Church is dead.  Glaude wrote the obituary for a Huffpost article and it has created quite a stir.   (Dr. Glaude’s remarks are at the bottom of this post.) 

You can read several reactions to Dr. Glaude’s obituary from black intellectuals at Religious Dispatches.  Perhaps the most arresting response came from Ronald Neal of Claflin University.   Neal questions the notion that the black church has ever been the bastion of progressivism that black civil rights leaders and university professors have made it out to be.  Here’s the heart of Neal’s critique. 

“Most Americans are largely unaware of the diverse Christian congregations and denominational structures that comprise what is called the Black Church. For many Americans, the oratory, quasi-liberal politics, and charismatic swagger of Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse L. Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Tavis Smiley are the primary windows into Christianity in black America. Beyond these living caricatures of black and Christian America, PBS specials, black-and-white footage of the Civil Rights era, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, have informed what many Americans know about black Christians, especially the Black Church.” 

“Unfortunately, these narrow and misleading representations of Christianity in black America, including the iconic legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., have contributed to a view that is deceptive and mythical. In significant respects, American mass media is responsible for this myth.” 

“However, part of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of highly educated black religious elites: seminary trained clergy and professors at theological schools, divinity schools, colleges, and universities. These elites are responsible for shaping and perpetuating a view of the Black Church: the Black Church as socially progressive and liberation oriented. Overall, the prophetic and progressive view of the Black Church is a myth that bamboozles too many Americans, including black Americans.” 

Neal is certainly right that most black churches are conservative theologically.  If you are a big fan of homophobia, sexism, escapism and cults of the personality, you can certainly find what you’re looking for in the black church.  

But just when you are inclined to believe that black evangelicals are cut from the same bolt of ecclesiastical cloth as their white counterparts, a black man strolls into the White House.  

Black evangelicals are thrilled.  

White evangelicals wring their hands and ask what happened to their country. 

White conservatism (and that includes most white evangelicals) remains wedded (perhaps unconsciously) to the tenets of white supremacy; black conservatism is not. 

But enough of that . . . you want to read Eddie Glaude’s obituary.  Here it is. 

The Black Church is Dead

Dr. Eddie Glaude 

The Black Church, as we’ve known it or imagined it, is dead. Of course, many African Americans still go to church. According to the PEW Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, 87 percent of African Americans identify with a religious group and 79 percent say that religion is very important in their lives. But the idea of this venerable institution as central to black life and as a repository for the social and moral conscience of the nation has all but disappeared. 

Several reasons immediately come to mind for this state of affairs. First, black churches have always been complicated spaces. Our traditional stories about them — as necessarily prophetic and progressive institutions — run up against the reality that all too often black churches and those who pastor them have been and continue to be quite conservative. Black televangelists who preach a prosperity gospel aren’t new. We need only remember Prophet Jones and Reverend Ike. Conservative black congregations have always been a part of the African American religious landscape. After all, the very existence of the Progressive Baptist Convention is tied up with a trenchant critique of the conservatism of the National Baptist Convention, USA. But our stories about black churches too often bury this conservative dimension of black Christian life. 

Second, African American communities are much more differentiated. The idea of a black church standing at the center of all that takes place in a community has long since passed away. Instead, different areas of black life have become more distinct and specialized — flourishing outside of the bounds and gaze of black churches. I am not suggesting that black communities have become wholly secular; just that black religious institutions and beliefs stand alongside a number of other vibrant non-religious institutions and beliefs. 

Moreover, we are witnessing an increase in the numbers of African Americans attending churches pastored by the likes of Joel Osteen, Rick Warren or Jentzen Franklin. These non-denominational congregations often “sound” a lot like black churches. Such a development, as Dr. Jonathan Walton reminded me, conjures up E. Franklin Frazier’s important line in The Negro Church in America: “In a word, the Negroes have been forced into competition with whites in most areas of social life and their church can no longer serve as a refuge within the American community.” And this goes for evangelical worship as well. 

Thirdly, and this is the most important point, we have witnessed the routinization of black prophetic witness. Too often the prophetic energies of black churches are represented as something inherent to the institution, and we need only point to past deeds for evidence of this fact. Sentences like, “The black church has always stood for…” “The black church was our rock…” “Without the black church, we would have not…” In each instance, a backward glance defines the content of the church’s stance in the present — justifying its continued relevance and authorizing its voice. Its task, because it has become alienated from the moment in which it lives, is to make us venerate and conform to it. 

But such a church loses it power. Memory becomes its currency. Its soul withers from neglect. The result is all too often church services and liturgies that entertain, but lack a spirit that transforms, and preachers who deign for followers instead of fellow travelers in God. 

Black America stands at the precipice. African American unemployment is at its highest in 25 years. Thirty-five percent of our children live in poor families. Inadequate healthcare, rampant incarceration, home foreclosures, and a general sense of helplessness overwhelm many of our fellows. Of course, countless local black churches around the country are working diligently to address these problems. 

The question becomes: what will be the role of prophetic black churches on the national stage under these conditions? Any church as an institution ought to call us to be our best selves — not to be slaves to doctrine or mere puppets for profit. Within its walls, our faith should be renewed and refreshed. We should be open to experiencing God’s revelation anew. But too often we are told that all has been said and done. Revelation is closed to us and we should only approximate the voices of old. 

Or, we are invited to a Financial Empowerment Conference, Megafest, or some such gathering. Rare are those occasions when black churches mobilize in public and together to call attention to the pressing issues of our day. We see organization and protests against same-sex marriage and abortion; even billboards in Atlanta to make the anti-abortion case. But where are the press conferences and impassioned efforts around black children living in poverty, and commercials and organizing around jobs and healthcare reform? Bishop Charles E. Blake Sr., the presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, appears to be a lonely voice in the wilderness when he announced COGIC’s support of healthcare reform with the public option. 

Prophetic energies are not an inherent part of black churches, but instances of men and women who grasp the fullness of meaning to be one with God. This can’t be passed down, but must be embraced in the moment in which one finds one’s feet. This ensures that prophetic energies can be expressed again and again. 

The death of the black church as we have known it occasions an opportunity to breathe new life into what it means to be black and Christian. Black churches and preachers must find their prophetic voices in this momentous present. And in doing so, black churches will rise again and insist that we all assert ourselves on the national stage not as sycophants to a glorious past, but as witnesses to the ongoing revelation of God’s love in the here and now as we work on behalf of those who suffer most. 

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. is currently the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.

Florida state Senator Frederica Wilson is introducing legislation that would make it illegal to display a noose in public.  “Some people think of it as a harmless prank,” Wilson told the Miami Herald-Times, “but the noose is a sign of hate and deeply offensive to African-American people. It is wrong. And it needs to be stopped.”

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (the go-to guy on this kind of issue) told the Herald-Times that after the Jena 6 story received national attention in 2007 nooses started springing up everywhere.  There were five times as many noose-related incidents in 2007 than in the previous year.

But Potok and the SPLC aren’t thrilled by the idea of banning the noose symbol.  While admitting that “The noose has become a real symbol of racial terrorism,” Potok notes out that previous attempts to ban the symbol have been challenged on first amendment grounds.

I’m with the SPLC on this one.  The noose is a symbol of hate, no doubt about it.  But Americans have a constitutionally protected right to be hateful if they so choose.  As the article notes, politicians from Barack Obama, to George Bush to Sarah Palin have been hanged in effigy in recent years.  It ain’t pretty.  In fact it’s downright tragic.  We must find eloquent ways to say no to the noose, but censoring the image isn’t the best way to do it.

Liz Cheney (yes, she’s the daughter of that Cheney) appears to believe that Guantanamo detainees with alleged ties to Al Qaeda have relinquished the right to competent and aggressive legal counsel.  Why else would she release a video suggesting that attorneys who have represented detainees should not be hired by the Justice Department?

FOX News appears to share Ms. Cheney’s views.  She wanted to know the identity of “the Al Qaeda Seven”; FOX did the research and named names. 

Is Cheney arguing that detainees should be forced to represent themselves, that they should not be defended at all, or merely that attorneys who represent detainees are like porn stars–their work may be constitutionally protected, but you wouldn’t want your boy to marry one?

The last option appears the most likely.  Cheney seems to be suggesting that while these people may have the right to minimal representation, no patriotic attorney would agree to sit beside them in a court of law.  That work should be left to desperate hacks who will take whatever work they can get.  The mere suggestion that detainees have any legal rights worth defending, in Cheney’s view, is an insult to the men and women of the armed forces.

Fortunately, not everyone in the conservative legal establishment endorses Liz Cheney’s views.  According to the New York Times, “Many conservatives, including members of the Federalist Society, the quarter-century-old policy group devoted to conservative and libertarian legal ideals, have vehemently criticized Ms. Cheney’s video, and say it violates the American legal principle that even unpopular defendants deserve a lawyer.”

One of the voices raised in protest is that of Kenneth Starr (yes, that Kenneth Starr).  I mention this only because Mr. Starr was recently named president of Baylor University.  Since Friends of Justice has two Baylor professors on its board (law professor, Mark Osler, and sociology professor, Lydia Bean), and since four Baylor law students are currently working as Friends of Justice interns, we have more than a passing interest in the institution.  Although Starr has been a pariah to those on the ideological Left, he has a reputation, among those who know him well, as a charming individual and an irenic conservative.

It is nice to know that liberals and most conservatives can agree on the fundamental tenets of the American criminal justice system: including the idea that all defendants, be they ever so nasty, must be defended competently and aggressively.  They may not “deserve” a quality defense; but justice demands that they receive it.

Two more men, Chris Scott and Claude Simmons, have been declared innocent by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. 

This time, no DNA evidence was involved; the real culprit, Alonzo Hardy, confessed to the crime and also pointed the finger at his buddy, Don Michael Anderson. 

Sixty percent of the 251 men exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence in recent years have been African-American.  This suggests that, adjusting for the fact that African-Americans comprise only 12% of the population, black people are twelve times as likely to be wrongfully convicted as white people. 

What if Alonzo Hardy had kept his mouth shut?  The state of Texas would remain convinced that Scott and Simmonds were guilty. 

Few people grasp how easy it is to convict black males of violent or drug-related crime.  No real evidence is required; just some person pointing the finger.  Does the man behind the finger have zero credibility?  Will he benefit from his testimony?  No problem!  So long as the person in authority says the calls the defendant plenty of nasty names the jury will convict 95% of the time. 

This is particularly true when, as in the Curtis Flowers case, the defendant is a low-status African-American and the victim is a high-status white person.  Evidence that would never convict a white-man-in-good-standing will sell a low-status black man down the river almost every time.  If you can keep black folks off the jury a conviction is virtually assured.  Evidence is nice but not necessary.

Congratulations to the innocence projects at at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Texas at Austin for bringing this case to light.  Without their advocacy a mere confession by another individual wouldn’t matter.  An inmate was willing to take the rap for the rape that sent Timothy Cole to prison. Nobody cared.  Cole died in prison before he could be exonerated.

I have been highly critical of Mississippi Senator Lydia Chassaniol.  Or, more accurately, I have been critical of the Mississippi political and journalistic establishments for not caring about Chassaniol’s intimate ties to a racist organization.  Nonetheless, Ms. Chassaniol is a savvy politician with a better-than-average grasp of criminal justice issues. 

At the moment, the state of Mississippi is in a neck-and-neck race with Louisiana and Texas for the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the union.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), Mississippi and Louisiana are two of the poorest states in the nation and they have been paying a dreadful price for their lock-em-up mania.  Senator Chassaniol asks why we can’t place folks we don’t want to parole but can’t afford to incarcerate on house arrest. 

I’m not sure its a workable solution, but it would certainly save the state a lot of money.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a frightening report on the explosive growth of extremist organizations on the radical right.  It is hard to know how to account for this phenomenon.  How do we distinguish, for instance, between mainstream conservatism and right wing fanaticism.  As Mark Potok of the SPLC writes, “The ‘tea parties’ and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism.”

Suspicion of the federal government appears to be at an all-time high.  A recent CNN poll showed that a majority of Americans (including “37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans”) believe that “the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans”.

You have to be careful with numbers.  Anyone conversant with the subversive work perpetrated by federal entities like the CIA and the FBI over the years understands instinctively that federal power has always had its dark side.  This likely explains why over a third of Democrats are concerned about the feds.

But much of the rage and resentment we have witnessed in recent months is rooted in dark political fantasy with very little basis in fact.  Notice, for instance, that the Tea Party folk, although they have no particular love for Wall Street, are inclined to blame Congress instead of the banks.  The unswerving assumption is that free enterprise is good and government is bad.  This dogma makes it impossible for the Tea Party zealots to understand what’s going on.  It wasn’t the government that created the current economic meltdown.  Government failed us by doing too little to regulate Wall Street and the financial industry, too much regulation was the least of our worries.

Please give the SPLC report your careful attention and let us know what you make of all this.