Rick Perlstein doesn’t believe in gradual, incremental reform.  Writing in the American Prospect, he argues that FDR and LBJ rammed through ambitious legislative agendas as quickly as possible because (like the Devil in Revelation 12:12) they knew their time was short.  The great depression gave FDR his opening; with LBJ it was the civil rights movement and the assassination of JFK. 

Perlstein is too young to remember the 1960s, but his attention to the historical record gives him a deep understanding of past epochs.  His latest book, Nixonland, provides a 780-page travelogue through the trauma of the 1960s and early 70s.  Perlstein argues that the Watts riot (and the apocalyptic horrors that followed in its wake) sounded the death knell for the civil rights movement. 

Friends of Justice understands how quickly windows of opportunity can slam shut.  In the wake of the Tulia drug sting, laws were passed restricting the use of uncorroborated snitch testimony.  This legislation wouldn’t have stood a chance prior to Tulia (and might not if it were introduced today).  Similarly, the distressing rash of DNA exonerations has produced what theologians call a “Kairos moment”: a time of crisis when the stars align and a new thing becomes possible.

The American public thinks the criminal justice system is tilted to the advantage of the accused with little thought for victims’ rights.  It is commonly believed that dangerous criminals are frequently returned to the streets by silly technicalities; that draconian sentences make criminals think twice; that young people will say no to drugs if the penalties for using and dealing go high enough and that serial killers stalk the land (after all, you see five or six or them in action every night on TV).  People believe the system is equitable because, on television shows like CSI and Law and Order, the perps are always rich and white.  When crime rates soar it shows we need to be even tougher; when they fall it demonstrates the success of harsh sentencing.   

We believe these things because we are afraid of muggers and gang violence and drugs and things that go bump in the night.  Politicians act tough because macho posturing attracts votes.  Why else would a sensible man like John McCain tell Rick Warren’s congregants that he aims to defeat evil?

It takes a blunt shock (to borrow Rick Perlstein’s phrase) to transcend the paranoia that appears to be America’s default position. 

Last Friday, Bill Moyers devoted an entire hour to an intriguing conversation with Andrew J. Bacevitch, a conservative military expert who wonders how American leaders ever believed they could remake the Middle East through military might.  Bacevitch, like most traditional conservatives, focuses on the limits of power and the dangers of hubris. 

The same mentality that took us into Iraq has created an American Gulag that now houses over 2 million souls.  We think we can solve complex social problems with hammers and steel.  American fortunes in Iraq improved considerably when our soldiers began treating the populace like human beings.  This shift doesn’t make the invasion any less of a disaster, but it has limited the damage.  A similar approach to America’s poorest and most volatile neighborhoods would improve public safety the way a thousand prisons never could. 

Street criminals and suicide bombers are both driven by a desperation so deep that the normal human concern for self-preservation goes by the boards.  Most drug dealers and petty thieves know they will eventually be caught; they simply can’t envision an existence apart from the streets.  There is a nihilism at work in the suicide bomber and in the street punk.  Neither will step back from the cliff unless they see a reason to hope. 

The criminal justice system will stagger down the same dysfunctional path until prominent politicians have the guts to call insanity by its proper name.  Will Barack Obama or John McCain be the one?  Probably not.  No knock against either of these men, but advocating a more compassionate approach to crime, poverty and violence is a sure recipe for political suicide–at least in the present environment.  

That’s why we must keep the tragic consequences of the prevailing madness before the eyes of the American people.  Only in the wake of a blunt shock like Tulia or Jena can politicians act decisively.  Incremental reform has gained a tenuous foothold.  We have stopped the bleeding.   But we won’t see any real healing until ordinary voters grasp how badly broken the system has become.

Journalists like DNA exoneration stories.  Who couldn’t feel for a guy who has suffered through a decade or more of prison hell for somebody else’s crime.  The exoneration story is becoming a media staple, especially here in the Dallas Metroplex.   Everytime you turn around another innocent person is walking out of prison or being freed from parole as cameras roll and reporters scribble. 

Recently, these stories have featured people who have struggled to maintain stable relationships, a decent job and a religious faith after being set free.  The horrors of prison life, the humiliation of registering as a sex offender, and the mind-boggling ineptitude of the criminal justice system leave a mark.  Some of these guys bounce back with remarkable resiliency; others are down for the count.

This morning, a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram told the story of John Michael Harvey’s post-exoneration saga.  It hasn’t been an easy ride.  Harvey’s health has recovered and he’s got a girlfriend, but the faith he lost in prison hasn’t returned and the emotional walls haven’t come down.  Here’s a telling quote:

“You might think it is a dumb or ridiculous thing to say, but I proved my innocence and I’m free now – but the price was too high,” Harvey said. “I remember when I first got out my cousin says, ‘You won! You finally won!’ No, the punishment stopped, but what did I win?

Last week, the Dallas Morning News featured a story about David Pope, the first inmate exonerated by DNA evidence in Dallas County seven years ago.  Mr. Pope still lives with his mother–the two seldom speak.  Wome adapt well to the peculiar rhythms of prison life that they have difficulty functioning in the free world.  David Pope appears to one of them.  Consider this:

“There were a lot of good guys in there,” he says, noting that troublemakers are usually separated from the general population. “When you’re living in that environment, around hundreds of people, there was an energy. And when you get out, that’s gone,” he says.

 Some ex-inmates commit dumb crimes just to get back in the joint.  It isn’t that they enjoy being in prison that much; they just don’t know what to do with themselves in the free world.

Another Dallas Morning New Story features the more upbeat experience of exonerees who have made a healthy readjustment to the outside world.  Sadly, these men express little sympathy for fellow exonerees who can’t reconnect with family and the working world.

Though he knows how hard it is to find work as a parolee and sex offender, (James Giles) has little patience for people who say they can’t get hired. “They don’t have the determination,” he says. “If you don’t give me a job, I’ll make my own job. That’s what they don’t have – that zeal.”

Many inmates, innocent or guilty, respond to the free world like military veterans with post traumatic stress syndrome.  Others struggle for a few years before regaining their equilibrium.  When we lock up innocent people (or when the guilty spend too much time behind bars) we eliminate potential employees and create unnecessary public safety hazards.

I wish journalists would start asking why so many innocent people are being prosecuted and convicted.  Many of these stories (the Star-Telegram piece on John Harvey is a good example) contain strong evidence that exculpatory evidence has been withheld from defense counsel.  As I have argued elsewhere, investigators, prosecutors and jurors are driven by a desire for closure.  The passion to nail somebody is so strong that sometimes anybody will do.  Busy professionals want to clear their desks and move on to the next case; they hate question marks and love exclamation points. 

Journalists are often reluctant to hold criminal justice professionals accountable–they depend on these people for valuable information.  Still, there is a growing awareness that the system is badly broken and needs fixing.  If DNA evidence has exonerated so many people, shouldn’t we assume that hundreds of innocent people are doing time in Texas for crimes they didn’t commit.  Few cases involve DNA evidence.

These questions form the unstated sub-text of the new journalistic genre: the exoneration story.

Aaron Graham, featured in this intriguing clip from ABC News, is a good friend of my daughter (and Friends of Justice Development Director) Lydia Bean.  Before moving to Washington DC to work with the progressive evangelical group Sojourners, Aaron, and his wife Amy, served as pastors in a poor neighborhood in Boston.  That might not sound like typical evangelical behavior (aren’t evangelicals the folks who hate poor people?) but Graham is 100% evangelical–his parents are Southern Baptist missionaries, for crying out loud.

Also featured in the ABC report is prominent evangelical pastor Rick Warren.  Religious leaders like Warren and Graham conform to the usual evangelical mold: they take their Bible straight and they are opposed to abortion.  But they also care about things like global warming, poverty, war and injustice. 

Aaron Graham is responsible for organizing a series of Sojourners-sponsored “Justice Revivals” across America.   Friends of Justice (and others) are working hard to make Dallas the next location.  In the process, we are hoping to stir a table spoon of criminal justice reform into the issue mix.  Poverty is the primary focus of a Justice revival, and that is appropriate.  But can you talk about poor people without addressing the criminal justice system?  We think not. 

The first debate between Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton (way back in June of 2007) was co-sponsored by Sojourners and CNN.  And now, it appears, the first debate between John McCain and Mr. Obama will be hosted by evangelical pastor Rick Warren. 

Does this mean that white evangelicals are waking up to the biblical call to justice and compassion.  Not really.  The shift in focus, particularly among young evangelicals like Aaron Graham, is real, but it isn’t big enough to swing an election anytime soon.  When most white evangelicals think of “justice” they picture criminals getting their “just deserts”.  Evangelicals generally fail to grasp the radical truth: God stands on the side of the oppressed and Jesus came into the world to preach good news to the poor (Luke 4:18). 

A biblical awakening at the heart of evangelicalism may not help Democrats get elected in the next decade; but it may transform the face or Republican politics.

Gerald Britt is Vice President of Public Policy and Community Program Development for Central Dallas Ministries.  In a previous life he was pastor of New Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Dallas.  Rev. Britt argues that the media flap over Jeremiah Wright’s preaching shows how little white people know about the Black church. 

When I was just cutting my teeth as a Baptist minister a seasoned black pastor joined the staff of my home church, McLaurin Memorial, in Edmonton, Alberta.  “You do pretty good for a white preacher,” he said after hearing me preach.  “I like the way you modulate your voice.  Too many white preachers drone along in a monotone, and that’s hard for folks to listen to.”

Black preachers (at least the good ones) are masters of modulation.  They move from a whisper, to flights of rhetorical fury and back again.  They make church musicians (generally the organist) and the congregation part of the production.  Black worship is participatory.

Rev. Britt agrees with the old bromide that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week, but he has no great passion for integrated worship.  The traditions of Black worship are rooted in a painful and singular history and it is unlikely that many white people could relate even if they wanted to.  

Nonetheless, segregated worship has its downside.  White America (especially secular white America) misread Jeremiah White’s preaching because they weren’t familiar with the extreme emotion black preachers can unleash in the pulpit.

When Jeremiah Wright shouted “God damn America,” he wasn’t being unpatriotic, Britt argues, he was being prophetic.  When the congregation responded rapturously to this rhetoric it was showing an appreciation for the difference between patriotism and nationalism.  

Although I grew up worshipping white, I was baffled by the media’s feeble grasp of black preaching and the tradition of Black liberation theology.  As Rev. Britt argues, historical prophets like Jeremiah Write’s namesake subjected ancient Israel to the same scathing critique the Chicago preacher unleashed against his country of birth. 

Christians, even the most patriotic, are citizens of the Kingdom of God first, and citizens of their country of residence second.  Few white Protestants have come to grips with this fact.  America, like every other nation on earth, is subject to the judgment of God.  Living under oppression makes this fact obvious; the fruits of white privilige make it hard to grasp.  As Jesus put it, we cannot worship God and Mammon (material prosperity). 

Rev. Britt isn’t signing off on every word that has proceeded from the mouth of Jeremiah Wright, nor does he criticize Barack Obama for distancing himself from his controversial mentor.  But the furious outcry generated by Wright’s “God damn America” theme reveals how much white people have to learn about the Black church and about biblical religion. 

If you care about bridging the perception gap between white and Black America, please give this excellent essay from the ezine New Wineskins your respectful attention.

The ex-officer who used a taser to torture Baron “Scooter” Pikes to death has been indicted by a Winn Parish grand jury.  This outcome, and the fact that the grand jury heard two days of testimony, suggest that Winn Parish DA Chris Nevils grasps the seriousness of the charges against Scott Nugent.  A failure to indict would have created a national scandal.  The good people of Winnfield can thank their district attorney for allowing their community to sidestep the unwanted scrutiny that towns like Tulia, Texas and Jena, Louisiana have received.

Friends of Justice salutes Alexandria radio journalist Tony Brown for getting this story to the media, and Chicago Tribune reporter Howard Witt for staying with it.  Sherrell Wheeler Stewart of Black America Web just sent me an in-depth story featuring comments from Mr. Brown and Baron Pikes’ mother.  Mr. Witt’s story appears below. 

Former cop indicted in Taser death in Louisiana

By Howard Witt | Tribune correspondent
8:09 PM CDT, August 13, 2008
NEW ORLEANS – Ruling in a racially explosive case that some forensic experts have described as police torture, a grand jury in the small Louisiana town of Winnfield indicted a white police officer Wednesday on charges of manslaughter and official malfeasance for repeatedly shocking a handcuffed black suspect with a Taser device, resulting in the man’s death due to cardiac arrest.

After two days of closed testimony, Winn Parish District Atty. Chris Nevils announced that the grand jury had indicted Scott Nugent, 21, for the death in January of Baron “Scooter” Pikes, 21, while in police custody. Two other Winnfield police officers who were present during the incident were not charged.

Nugent, who was fired from the police force in May, could face up to 45 years in prison if convicted on the charges. He surrendered to sheriff’s deputies immediately after the indictment was issued, a spokesman for Nevils said, and a $45,000 bond was set.

“It is our intention to show at trial that Mr. Nugent caused the death of Baron Pikes by ‘Tasing’ him multiple times, unnecessarily and in violation of Louisiana law, and by failing to get him medical attention when it was apparent he needed it,” Nevils said in a statement. “In a civilized society, abuse by those who are given great authority cannot be tolerated.”

Nugent’s attorney has said previously that his client was following police procedures during Pikes’ arrest.

Pikes, wanted on a drug possession warrant, was apprehended and handcuffed Jan. 17 after a foot chase. Although Nugent’s police report of the incident stated that Pikes did not resist or struggle after being handcuffed, the officer administered nine 50,000-volt Taser shocks to Pikes’ body after he was slow to respond to Nugent’s order to stand up.

Witnesses said Pikes pleaded with Nugent to stop Tasering him. But within 39 minutes after he was first subdued, Pikes was dead.

Winnfield police claimed that Pikes told them during the incident that he suffered from asthma and was high on PCP and crack cocaine. But Winn Parish Coroner Dr. Randolph Williams found no evidence of such drugs in Pikes’ system or any sign that he suffered from asthma. He ruled Pikes’ death a homicide and noted that Pikes was unconscious when the last two Taser shocks were administered, after he had been loaded into a squad car and delivered to the police station.

Both Williams and Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally prominent forensic pathologist who reviewed the case, said the incident “could be considered to be torture.”

The Pikes’ case, first recounted in the Tribune in July, aroused fears of a cover-up among family members and civil rights groups because Winnfield, the birthplace of Louisiana Govs. Huey and Earl Long, has a long history of political corruption.

Nevils’ predecessor as district attorney committed suicide amid allegations that he had skimmed $200,000 from his office accounts and demanded payoffs from criminal suspects. The former police chief, who was Nugent’s father, also killed himself, after losing a close election campaign marred by fraud allegations. The current police chief was convicted of drug possession as a young man and was pardoned by former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, who is now serving a federal prison sentence for corruption while in office.

Earlier this week, the mother of Pikes’ 4-year-old son filed a wrongful-death suit in federal court against Nugent, Winnfield city officials and Taser International Inc. The suit accuses city officials of civil rights violations in Pikes’ death.

hwitt@tribune.com

Matt Bai’s essay, “The End of Black Politics” stayed on the NYT’s Top Ten list for several days and has spawned a sharp reaction from Black activists like Dr. Ronald Walters of the University of Maryland.  Walters argues that the Black middle class is backing away from civil rights activism because they don’t want to upset the white folks.  Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. have always made the white establishment uncomfortable, Walters argues, and that is the last reaction upwardly mobile African Americans want to create.   The prime beneficiaries of the civil rights movement are content with the status quo not because they think it’s just but because its good for business.

Walters has a point, but he hasn’t come to grips with Matt Bai’s thesis.  The issues have changed.  You can get 200,000 people to drive to the national mall to dismantle Jim Crow segregation or to rally for the right to vote; but is mass action the best tactic when the locus of oppression shifts from the schools and the lunch counters to the courts and the prisons?

The jury is still out on that one.  Walters slips Jena into a litany of civil rights cases highlighted by marching feet and suggests that the September 20th protest saved the Jena 6 from “a legal lynching”.

Not so.  The march on Jena demonstrated that segments of Black America are deeply concerned about the impact of the criminal justice system on young African American males.  That much is true.  But the current team of top-flight attorneys representing the defendants was in place prior to the march and did not assemble because of it.   Friends of Justice worked with a wide variety of civil rights organizations to put the legal team together.  Jena 6 attorneys were scared to death of the September 20 march because they were afraid it would make their job harder.  I had difficulty talking them into allowing the defendants to be a part of that historic event.  Subsequent events (especially the BET fiasco in Atlanta) validated these concerns.

The September 20 revealed the depths of concern within the African American community, but when the vast throng of protesters left town the only people with a long-term plan were the attorneys representing the defendants (many of whom are white).  The men who led the march didn’t understand the legal issues in Jena and didn’t particularly want to understand.  They came for a photo op, they got what they were looking for and they hit the road.  They had no long-term plan.  They came to Jena because the cameras were there; and they left the moment the cameras were gone.  Without the attention of the media, the civil rights celebrities wouldn’t have come in the first place. 

The household names who attracted big crowds to a small Louisiana town had a role to play–nobody was coming to Jena because Friends of Justice asked them to.  The presence of civil rights celebrities swelled the crowd and expanded media attention–at least momentarily. The cameras love Mr. Sharpton as much as Mr. Sharpton loves the cameras.  But Friends of Justice got the injustice in Jena to the national media and hard working attorneys put Reed Walters and Judge JP Mauffrey on the defensive. 

Was Jena the beginning of a new civil rights movement?  Not at all.  Jena demonstrated the potential for such a movement, and that’s important.  But a genuinely new civil rights movement will require new strategies crafted in response to new issues.  Applying old methods (mass marches, for instance) to new problems (like our broken criminal justice system) won’t get us where we need to be. 

The justice system disproportionately affects Black America, no doubt about it; but it also damages Latinos and poor whites.  The problems are systemic and cross racial lines.  Only a unified, multi-racial coalition can bring long-term change. 

The criminal justice system as we now know it was shaped by white politicians exploiting the paranoia of white voters.  So long as the white electorate responds to law ‘n order, lock-’em-up, tough-on-crime rhetoric, mass incarceration will persist.  Meaningful reform will come when the white electorate moves beyond fear.  A strictly black politics can’t make that happen.

Like me, Matt Bai is a white guy who tackles the thorny issue of race.  To his credit, Bai acknowledges the insecurity his subject matter can produce.  What’s a white man know about Black America, anyway?

I profile this lengthy tome for a number of reasons.  For one thing, it touches on the reaction of Black opinion leaders (including Friends of Justice ally, James Rucker of Color of Change) to the Jena story.  For another, Bai uses the fruit of his extensive investigation to examine the often-frosty reception Barack Obama has received from traditional civil rights leaders.

Is Black politics gradually disappearing into the American political soup the way Irish or Italian issues, once distinctive, eventually became indistinguishable from mainstream politics?  Or, is the plight of Black America distinct and unique.  How long do the shadows of history stetch? 

Why does Jesse Jackson Sr. want to cut off Barack Obama’s nuts, and why has his son, Jesse Jr., taken his father to task over his incendiary remarks?  Why did so many Black politicians initially prefer a white woman to a black male?  Why did Barack Obama have a hard time finding a place in the Congressional Black Caucus?

Bai’s answers may surprise you.

Few reporters have attached much significance to the recent recusal of Jena Judge J.P Mauffray.  Sherrell Wheeler Stewart is a blessed exception.  When I talked to Sherrell on Saturday morning it was clear she had talked to virtually every person associated with the struggle for justice in Jena . . . DA Reed Walters included.

I should clarify the remarks ascribed to me.  I refer to the “lynch mob mentality” that existed in Jena when I first arrived in town in January of 2007.  A quick perusal of the Jena Times made it clear that the defendants now known as the Jena 6 were in deep jeopardy. 

I had no problem with the idea that, if guilt could be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, these kids needed to be held accountable for their actions.  But the charges filed by DA Walters had the defendants facing between 25 and 100 years in prison without parole.  Even if these charges were considerably reduced, I feared that young lives would be destroyed.

Some suggest that would have been a good thing.  Toby Keith was on the Colbert Report this Monday singing the song he recorded with Willie Nelson a few years ago: “Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses”.  I like the song but had never listened to the lyrics.  Even a lefty like Nelson interpreted the country anthem as a gentle, tongue-in-cheek poke at red neck rage.  Steven Colbert likely did the same.  But the lyrics are really scary.  Here’s a sample:

Well a man come on the 6 oclock news
Said somebodys been shot, somebodys been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole a car
Somebody got away
Somebody didnt get too far yeah
They didnt get too far

Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done
Take all the rope in texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street for all the people to see that

Chorus:

Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles well sing a victory tune
Well all meet back at the local saloon
Well raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

The song recommends hanging as the remedy of choice for stealing a car and, one assumes, for every other criminal offense.  The boys in the saloon do their part by cheering on the hangman.  The “lynch mob mentality” celebrated by Toby Keith’s song was alive and well in Jena when I first arrived.

Unfortunately, a vocal minority really thinks this way (Jena isn’t unique); just read the “comments” section at the end of any news story featuring crime and punishment.

The folks who allegedly jumped Justin Barker were being portrayed as grown men; dark, sinister cretins lurking in the shadows, waiting for a white man, any white man, to saunter past.  It was even suggested by a local minister that Jena’s traditional innocence was being swept away on the Katrina flood waters.  Thugs from the 9th Ward of New Orleans, the minister said, had invaded a once-peaceful community.

 The notion that the assault on Barker was in any way associated with the fire that engulfed the school a few days earlier, or with a weekend of white-initiated racial violence, was rejected out of hand.  Nobody even addressed the possibility that the beef between Barker and his assailants could be traced back three months to the day when school administrators dismissed a hate crime as an innocent prank.

After interviewing everyone willing to speak with me (and a few who weren’t) it was clear that the violence at the high school could have been avoided.  The Jena 6 weren’t a street gang; they were adolescent athletes exposed to a toxic social brew beyond their understanding or control.

I have always argued that the culpability of the Jena 6 can only be evaluated against the full historical backdrop.  That said, I give you read Ms. Stewart’s report.

Judge Removed in Jena Six Case; 5 Youths Still Face Trial

Date: Monday, August 04, 2008
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

The LaSalle Parish, La., judge who had presided in the cases of the Jena Six was removed from that role, a change that legal observers and advocates said should signal a new day for the remaining five defendants who were the subject last year of national attention and civil rights marches.

“I think what will happen now is that these young men will be allowed to have a fair trial,” said Daryl Washington, deputy chief of staff for the National Bar Association, the largest organization of black lawyers in the country. “Now a new judge will be appointed. He’ll know that he is under the scope and the chances will be better for a fair trial,” Washington told BlackAmericaweb.com.

The six black youths received stiff charges following a Dec. 4, 2006 school fight with a white student that came after months of racial tension in the tiny Louisiana town of Jena. One of the youths, Mychal Bell, was convicted and later reached a plea agreement requiring him to serve 18 months in juvenile custody.
Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw and Carwin Jones still await trial.

Initially, all but Beard were charged as adults and their bonds ranged as high as $135,000. The potential maximum sentences on those felony charges could have been as high as 75 years, attorneys have said.

Those charges have since been reduced.

No charges were brought against whites who hung a noose at the school earlier that year, an incident which students and townspeople say touched off the following months of tension.
Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr., the only judge in the parish, had acknowledged calling the teens “trouble makers” and “a violent bunch” but insisted he could be impartial. Defense attorneys disagreed and asked that he be removed.

Judge Thomas M. Yeager, who was appointed by the state Supreme Court to decide whether Mauffray should be taken off the case, found there was an appearance of impropriety. Mauffray was removed from the case on Thursday.

Attempts by BlackAmericaweb.com to reach Mauffray were unsuccessful. He has not returned previous call placed to his office.

The recusal can be appealed, and the LaSalle Parish district attorney said he would decide soon whether to pursue that route.

“Whatever ultimately happens concerning the judge, this does not mean these cases go away,” District Attorney Reed Walters said in a prepared statement provided to BlackAmericaweb.com. “It will just take longer to get them to trial. However, I may seek to have the decision overturned by taking a writ to the Court of Appeals.”

Walters has characterized the fight as an “assault” and said the six youths used dangerous weapons – their sneakers – to beat Justin Barker, who had to be taken to the hospital for treatment.

The Rev. Alan Bean, director the advocate group Friends of Justice, said removing the judge from the case was just the first step needed to ensure that the youths get a fair trial.

“The trials need to be moved to another venue. Because of the attention placed on this, I don’t think anyone in the parish can claim to be objective,” Bean told BlackAmericaweb.com.

“They all have been caught up in a lynch mob mentality that prevailed in Jena,” Bean said. “They thought of these young men as thugs, unlike none Jena had ever experienced and they treated them in court as dangerous adults.”

Bean also wants to see Walters removed from the case. The district attorney, he said, has not acted in the best interest of justice in matters related to the Jena youths.

“He (Walters) has to realize that no one takes him seriously as an objective prosecutor,” Bean said. “If another prosecutor is brought in, I believe they can reach a plea agreement that will be acceptable to all parties.”

James Rucker, director of Color of Change, said though there hasn’t been much talk about Jena in recent months, there still is a need to do everything possible to resolve matters there so that the young men can get on with their lives.

“Their lives still hang in the balance,” Rucker told BlackAmericaweb.com.

In addition to the trials that still await five of the defendants, the family of Justin Barker, the young man with whom their fought, has filed a civil suit.

The outcome in the Jena Six cases is something that is being observed around the country, said Richard Cohen, director of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. That organization has helped staff the defense for two of the young men and also assisted in some other legal matters, he said.
“You don’t have to look far to see the disparity in the treatment of blacks and poor in the justice system,” Cohen told BlackAmericaweb.com.

“There is a little Jena in a lot of places.”

The ACLU argues that racial profiling is all too common in the state of Louisiana and has produced the numbers to prove it.  Bunkie, Lousiana figures prominently in this story.  The full ACLU of Louisiana report can be found here, and a related article in the Alexandria Town Talk can be found here.

In 2007, after making several visits to Bunkie, I contacted the ACLU through former staff member (and current Friends of Justice board member) Tory Pegram.  The civil rights organization took my concerns seriously because they were receiving an unusual number of complaints from Avoyelles Parish in general and from Bunkie in particular.

It is a slight misnomer to say that Louisiana has a racial profiling problem.  ACLU figures compiled under the leadership of Scott Henson in Texas demonstrated that profiling is a much bigger problem in some localities than in others.  Liza Grote’s study of three Louisiana parishes yields much the same result. 

African Americans comprise 42% of the population of these three parishes but account for 53% of arrests. 

That’s not particularly surprising.  Criminal activity is highly correlated with poverty and African Americans are disporportionately impacted by poverty and its attendant afflictions. 

Nonetheless, the ACLU figures suggest that Avoyelles Parish is particularly afflicted by racial profiling.  I have seen Ms. Grotes figures, and profiling figures from the town of Bunkie are particularly bad.  Black residents are almost four times as likely to be arrested as white residents.  That is why Friends of Justice continues to monitor this troubled rural community.

Thank you, Liza, for bringing clarity to an important, but often illusive, issue.

ACLU says racial profiling in state continues

By MARY FOSTER Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 4:52 a.m.

NEW ORLEANS – Legislators should toughen a law passed in 2001 to prohibit racial profiling by Louisiana law enforcement agencies, the American Civil Liberties Union said.
“The law is not preventing racial profiling, or giving departments a way to track it and hold people accountable for it,” said Liza Grote, who led a study of three parishes from which the organization said it has received the greatest number of complaints of racial profiling. “There’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Grote is urging legislators to close a loophole in the law that makes it difficult to detect the practice. Under current law, arresting agencies are not required to record a suspect’s race if they have a policy against racial profiling. “We want them to see to it that law agencies collect racial data. It’s good for the agencies, and it’s good for the public,” she said.

Grote said the study, entitled “Unequal Under the Law” and released Wednesday, was conducted in the first three months of 2007, using arrest data from sheriff’s and police departments from St. Tammany, Avoyelles, and DeSoto parishes. Legislators have not yet seen the report.

Using demographics of communities and parishes taken from the U.S. Census, the ACLU determined the rate at which people of color were arrested compared to whites.

“In every town, city and parish examined, people of color were arrested at a higher rate than their representation in the population,” the report said.

The worst areas were Avoyelles Parish and the town of Bunkie, according to the study.

“In Bunkie, black people are 3.8 times as likely to get arrested as white people,” Grote said.

In DeSoto Parish, black people in Mansfield were more than twice as likely to be arrested than white people, the report said. With blacks making up 66 percent of the population in the parish, they comprised 89 percent of the arrests, the report showed.

Blacks make up 42 percent of the population in the three parishes, and 53 percent of the arrests.

In St. Tammany Parish, only 31 percent of the population is black, but they are 2.3 times more likely to be arrested than whites, according to the study.

Grote said she met with St. Tammany sheriff’s officials to discuss the report. Chuck Hughes, attorney for the department, disputes the charge that deputies are using racial profiling.

“There are two types of arrests – discretionary and nondiscretionary, where the officer has no say about arresting the person,” Hughes said. “If you lump those two together, it will skew the statistics, but does it show racial profiling? I suggest it does not.”

St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain has increased the number of black officers in his department from three, when he took over in 1996 to 60 now, Hughes noted.

Grote said the report had not yet been released to agencies in the other study parishes.

Steven Charles Phillips walked into a Dallas courtroom Tuesday morning wearing an ankle bracelet of a dangerous sex offender. 

“Hallelujah!  Cut that thing off!” a supporter hollered as the bracelet was removed at the conclusion of an emotional hearing. 

The story in the Dallas Morning News includes a brief video featuring representatives from the Innocence Project, Mr. Phillips, his girlfriend and his mother.  Phillips, like most of the innocent people who have done hard time in the Texas prison system, talks about God a lot.  Tragically, few churches have wrestled honestly with the dynamics of mass incarceration and its twin sister, wrongful conviction.  Ironically, those who take these issues most seriously are often non-religious.  Justice is a recurring theme in the Bible, but since the law-and-order 80s Christians have done their best to pretend it ain’t so.  No wonder those who care most about justice have been leaving the fold.

This needs to end.  Christians must start listening to their Bibles.  God loves the poor, demands justice, and holds accountable those who casually toss away human life.   

The exoneration of Steven Phillips returns national attention to a distressing string of DNA exonerations in Dallas County.  It could be argued that the criminal justice system in this North Texas town has contributed to the embarrassing pageant of once-young men who have spent up to a quarter century behind bars.  For decades, Dallas justice was notoriously corrupt . . . and damn proud of it! 

Dallas County still has an underfunded criminal justice system; but nobody cares more deeply about judicial fairness than current DA Craig Watkins.  Without the cooperation of public officials like Watkins we wouldn’t be seeing this glorious, and deeply disturbing, parade of exonerees. 

This isn’t a Dallas problem.  Not every prisoner claiming innocence is telling the truth; but many of them are.  How many, no one knows.  Our national embrace of mass incarceration has lowered the evidentiary bar, streamlining the conviction process and tripling the prison population.  Steven Phillips reminds us that we pay a staggering price for the sloppy and self-deluded prosecutors a distorted system has created.