Category: Race and the Law

Fox News lacks Common courtesy

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Common

This summer, four college interns will be working at the Arlington office of Friends of Justice.  Each week, each intern will write a blog post on a topic of personal interest.  Chaka Holley, a student at the Chicago Theological Seminary, arrived in Texas on Monday night and has been hard at work ever since.  

By Chaka Holley

“Well I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”

Hip-hop artist, poet and actor Common recites these old-time lyrics in his song “misunderstood”. The lyrics seem fitting now that Common’s creditability, character and personhood are being attacked after First Lady Michelle Obama invited him to perform poetry at a White House event. Fox News and conservatives like Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have criticized the Obama’s for the inviting a supporter of “cop killers” to the White House. Critics accuse the Obama’s of exercising poor judgment due to Common’s support for Asata Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jamal. (more…)

Michelle Alexander: ‘Interest convergence’ won’t end mass incarceration

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“Public relations consultants like the FrameWorks Institute — which dedicates itself to ‘changing the public conversation about social problems’ — advise advocates to speak in a ‘practical tone’ and avoid discussions of ‘fairness between groups and the historical legacy of racism.’  Surely the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have rejected that advice.”

-Michelle Alexander

– “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.  Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation .  For years now I have heard the ‘Wait!’  It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.  This ‘Wait!’ has almost always meant ‘Never!”

-Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail (more…)

Laura Moye of Amnesty International discusses the Troy Davis case

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The state of Georgia will soon be announcing an execution date for Troy Davis even though the state’s case has largely disintegrated.  

Troy Davis with family members

Our Friends at Angola 3 News have published an informative interview with Laura Moye, director of the Amnesty International USA Death Penalty Abolition Campaign that addresses most of the questions this tragic case inspires and holds up the Davis case as a symbol of a broken system. You can sign an Amnesty International petition and a Color of Change petition calling on Georgia officials to back away from their date with death. 

 

Troy Davis Execution Date Expected Anytime –An interview with Laura Moye of Amnesty International

Laura Moye is director of the Amnesty International USA Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. In this interview, Moye talks about 42-year-old Troy Davis, an African American who has been on death row in Georgia for over 19 years—having already faced three execution dates. The continued railroading of Davis has sparked outrage around the world, and public pressure during the last few years of Davis’ appeals has been essential to his survival today. (more…)

Michelle Alexander: The human rights nightmare nobody wants to talk about

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Michelle Alexander

By Michelle Alexander

How a Human Rights Nightmare Can Happen in Our Country on Our Watch — and Go Virtually Undiscussed

If we fail to commit ourselves to ending mass incarceration, future generations will judge us harshly.

April 28, 2011

So much about our racial reality today is little more than a mirage. The promised land of racial equality wavers, quivers just out of our reach in the barren desert of our new, “colorblind” political landscape. It looks so good from a distance: Barack Obama, our nation’s first black president, standing in the Rose Garden behind a podium looking handsome, dignified, and in charge. Flip the channel and there’s Michelle Obama, a brown-skinned woman, digging a garden in the backyard of the White House — not as a servant or a maid — but as the first lady, schooling the nation on better health and the need to be good stewards of our planet. Flip the channel again and there’s the whole Obama family exiting Air Force One, waving to the crowd, descending the flight of stairs — a gorgeous black family living in the White House, ruling America, cheered by the world.

Drive a few blocks from the White House and you find the Other America. You find you’re still in the desert, dying of thirst, wondering what wrong turn was made, and how you managed to miss the promised land, though you reached for it with all your might. (more…)

Will Georgia execute Troy Davis?

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By Alan Bean

This article by Amnesty International’s Brian Evans provides the most concise status report on the Troy Davis case I have encountered.  According to judge William T. Moore, Mr. Davis failed to prove his innocence.  Meanwhile, the essential features of the state’s case have crumbled to dust.  Will the State of Georgia execute Troy Davis because he can’t prove his innocence to a legal certainty?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to commute his sentence to life without parole so his attorney’s can continue the fight? (more…)

Head in the sand over prosecutorial misconduct

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Law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky is dismayed by Supreme Court rulings that protect unscrupulous prosecutors from the consequences of their actions.  The Friends of Justice share this concern.  The pious doctrine that American citizens stand before the law as equals is a worthy aspirational goal, but it bears little relation to actual practice.  The title of this post is taken from the title of professor Chemerinsky’s article in the National Law Journal.

In the real world, American citizens are scattered along a continuum stretching from low-status black males (who can be prosecuted and convicted on the basis of uncorroborated snitch testimony) all the way to prosecutors and judges whose professional behavior, no matter how flagrantly illegal, cannot be prosecuted at all.  We cannot admit that some can be convicted without real evidence (ala Tulia) while others smoking-gun isn’t enough to put people like Terry McEarchern (Tulia, TX), Brett Grayson (AUSA, Western Louisiana) and Harry Connick Sr. (New Orleans) out of business.  (more…)

Crucified with Christ: Holy Week through a prisoner’s eyes

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Enrique Salazar, Irma and Ramsey Muniz, Alan Bean, Ernesto Fraga

By Alan Bean

Friends of Justice was introduced to Ramiro (Ramsey) Muniz by Ernesto Fraga, a ember of our board who publishes the Tiempo newspaper in Waco, Texas.  Ramsey ran for governor of Texas on two occasions in the early 197os for La Raza Unida party and worked with Mr. Fraga and other members of the Chicano movement.  Ramsey was a standout with the Baylor football team in the late 1960s and graduated from Baylor Law School in 1971.  After his brief sojourn in the world of Texas politics, Muniz returned to south Texas where he worked as an attorney.  You can find more biographical information at FreeRamsey.com.

Ramsey Muniz sees himself as a political prisoner.  The Texas Anglo establishment had no problem with the Latino presence in the 1960s and 70s–somebody had to work the fields and mow the lawns.  But the Texas power structure had no place for a charismatic Latino football hero with a law degree who had the gall to run for governor. 

Texas was firmly in the grip of the Democratic Party in the early 1970s. La Raza Unida was formed because Latino activists believed (correctly) that the Democratic establishment had no interest in running Latino candidates or sharing political power with the Hispanic community.  If the Democrats represented the white population, the reasoning went, Latinos needed to create a separate party to represwent the interest of Chicanos.

It is difficult to exaggerate the sense of outrage and resentment the Chicano movement generated among Texas Democrats.  Ramsey Muniz was commonly viewed as a wild-eyed revolutionary, little more than a terrorist.  Shortly after beginning his post-politics legal career, the federal government charged Muniz with engaging in a narcotics conspiracy with some of the accused drug dealers he was defending.  The only evidence was the uncorroborated testimony of an inmate who agreed to testify for the government in exchange for lenient treatment.  Believing he had no chance before an all-white jury, Muniz accepted a plea agreement and served five years in an Alcatraz-like federal prison off the coast of Washington State. (more…)

Kellogg challenges the colorblind consensus

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By Alan Bean

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation recently launched a $75 million grant-making program dedicated to racial healing.  “We believe that all children should have equal access to opportunity,” the foundation’s website reads.  “To make this vision a reality, we direct our grants and resources to support racial healing and to remove systemic barriers that hold some children back. We invest in community and national organizations whose innovative and effective programs foster racial healing. And through action-oriented research and public policy work, we are helping translate insights into new strategies and sustainable solutions.”

In an article written for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Dr. Gail Christopher, Kellogg’s vice president for program strategy, addressed the issue squarely:

The vision that guides the work of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is clear: we envision a nation that marshals its resources to assure that all children thrive.  What may be less self-evident to some is the pernicious and self-perpetuating way in which racism impedes many children’s opportunities to do so. (more…)

Innocent man: Why has the system left my prosecutor free to re-offend?

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By Alan Bean

Sometimes innocent people go to prison even though everyone in the legal system behaves with integrity.  But what happens when a wrongful conviction results from a prosecutor sitting on a pile of exculpatory evidence?  Shouldn’t the man we pay to represent the state be held accountable? 

I wish this was a hypothetical question; it isn’t.  In this gripping op-ed for the New York Times, John Thompson tells us how it feels to come within a whisker of the electric chair.  He also explains the prosecutorial misconduct that placed him in that situation and wonders aloud why the Supreme Court of the United States thinks its okay for prosecutors to withhold evidence.

The Prosecution Rests, but I Can’t

John Thompson

I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I’d won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn’t mine. (more…)

Right-winger + hard time = compassion

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prisonBy Alan Bean

Why are so many right-wingers suddenly arguing the case for criminal justice reform?  In this fascinating piece in Salon, Justin Elliot of Salon directs this question to Doug Berman, author of the influential Sentencing Law and Policy blog. 

Here are the highlights:

1. Prison is far more brutal than most people believe it to be

2. Most of the conservatives currently leading the smart on crime crusade have been locked up: Duke Cunningham, Charles Colson, Pat Nolan, Conrad Black

3. The religious concept of redemption generally plays a large role in these conversions.

4. Historically, mass incarceration required the enthusiastic cooperation of the political left

5. When you do hard time you realize that harsh penalties are typically applied to crimes disproportionately committed by minorities

6. Busting budgets and historically low crime rates make this a good time for reform, but . . .

7. The political forces that drove mass incarceration are always lurking. (more…)