Since the Fort Worth Police Department started using Taser stun guns in 2001, four people have died.  One of them was Michael Patrick Jacobs Jr, a 24 year-old black man suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  On April 18th Michael’s family called 911 after he started acting out at home.  A Fort Worth police officer arrived at the Jacob’s home, finding Michael combative, pulled out his Taser and hit the five-foot-five, 150 pound man with 50,000 volts for a full 49 seconds.

That’s a long, long time.  When 50,000 volts is coursing through your body, it’s an eternity.

It is unclear whether Jacobs was handcuffed before or after being tased.

Yesterday, Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani declared Michael Patrick Jacob’s death a homicide.  This does not mean that the officer who held down the trigger on his Taser for almost a minute will be charged with murder or any other crime.  It simply means that Mr. Jacob’s death was caused by 50,000 volts of electricity plus nothing.

You can find the full story in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.    After the incident, Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders had this advice for police chief Jim Halstead:

He should issue a moratorium on the use of Tasers until there is another thorough review of the department’s policies on the stun guns and until there can be more independent analyses of their effectiveness versus their danger. For the most part we’ve depended on the manufacturer’s analysis.  Since 2001, according to Amnesty International, 351 people have died after being shot with a Taser.

The newly formed Fort Worth chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil-rights group founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, is seeking a federal investigation into the incident.  SCLC president Rev. Kyev Tatum,  issued the following statement:

Mr. Jacobs did not have to die and no parent should have to experience the death of a child at the hands of the very officials who have sworn to protect and serve them and the entire community.  Justice should be color blind and social class should not play a role in administering it.

A news conference has been called for noon today at the Jacobs home.

Time Magizine’s David Von Drehle sheds some much-needed light on the Troy Davis story.  Von Drehle projects a world-weary and slightly cynical view of the legal world.  You don’t get the impression that he would shed a tear if Davis met his death at the hands of a Georgia executioner.  Consider this, for instance:

Like most death-penalty cases, this story is maddening and convoluted. Davis was convicted in 1991 of a tawdry and pathetic 1989 murder. On a hot Savannah night almost exactly 20 years ago, Davis and two acquaintances were hassling a homeless man at a Burger King parking lot next to the bus station. They wanted his beer, and one of the bullies — either Davis or a fellow known as Red Coles — clubbed the victim with a handgun. As it happened, an off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail, was providing security at the restaurant. When he came running to the scene, the man with the gun shot the officer to death.

Coles pointed the finger at Davis; Davis pointed the finger back at Coles.  The state of Georgia had to side with one story and provide witnesses to back it up.

Investigators built a case from the available materials: ambiguous ballistics, jailhouse snitches, witnesses with grudges and the often unreliable observations of the sort of folks who need a burger at 1 a.m. The amalgam was enough to persuade 12 jurors that Davis was guilty, and because the dead man wore a badge, the sentence was death.

Nobody was really sure about anything in this case, but a police officer was dead and somebody had to pay the price.  Then, one by one, the trial witnesses started recanting their original stories.  Witness recantation isn’t unusual, especially when the state twists arms and brokers sweetheart deals to get people singing in harmony with the official story.  But you rarely see the kind of recantation avalanche that has transformed the Coles case into a cause celebre.

How does the state of Georgia respond?  Thanks to strict new federal laws they didn’t have to.  Five years after the McPhail killing, “Congress, exasperated by the seemingly endless nature of death-penalty appeals, passed a law intended to speed the death-row journeys of prisoners like Davis. Optimistically called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), the new law attempted to limit death-row prisoners to one set of appeals in federal court.”

The practical result of AEDPA was that you get one bite ofthe federal apple.  Which is why Judge Antonin Scalia can’t understand why his judicial colleagues decided to send the Davis case back to a federal district court.  Davis already had one apple bite and AEDPA rules out bite number two.  Scalia isn’t arguing that Davis is guilty; he’s saying that, innocent or not, federal law has deprived Troy Davis of further appeals and that means the State of Georgia has the right to execute Troy Davis at a time of its choosing.  It may be immoral or unethical to execute an innocent man; but it’s perfectly legal.

Legal and constitutional.  There is nothing in the US Constitution barring the states from executing innocent people if that is their desire. 
If you believe that Troy Davis deserves a federal evididentiary hearing you are declaring AEDPA null and void.  Even if the hearing finds the evidence for evidence to be compelling, Scalia asserts, there are no legal provisions for doing anything about it.  That’s why he calls the hearing “a fool’s errand”.

Here’s the conclusion of the Time piece:

The court’s August eruption highlights once again the fundamental screwiness of America’s death penalty. In the marble halls of our rational humanity, we demand absolute clarity and justice. As one of the many judges who has reviewed Davis’ case puts it, “I do not believe that any member of a civilized society could disagree that executing an innocent person would be an atrocious violation of our Constitution and the principles upon which it is based.”

But most murders don’t happen in the precincts of the rational or the just. They happen on the late-night mean streets, where truth is often a figment, and memory is as slippery as the greasy pavement.

In other words, we frequently send people to death row on the basis of hopelessly muddled facts.  Nothing is nailed down.  Nothing is certain.  But a police officer is dead and somebody has to pay.  Then we pass a law (AEDPA) restricting Davis’s right, even after a recantation avalanche, to take his innocence argument to the federal level.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Davis case is just one more indication that AEDPA went way too far and needs to be revised.

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

Stacey’s Cafe in Winona, Mississippi did a roaring business back in 1961 when middle class southerners still traveled by bus.  White patrons could order a hamburger and fries while waiting for the next bus to Memphis or New Orleans.  If you were black, you had to patronize the less impressive “colored cafe” at the other end of the waiting room.  There was a big neon sign over the door at the white cafe; the colored restaurant was around at the back.

Early in 1961, Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Director, Albert Jones, sent agent Tom Scarborough to Winona on urgent business.  A Montgomery County Negro named Johnny Frazier was telling the US Attorney in Oxford Mississippi that Montgomery County Sheriff Earl Wayne Patridge and his deputies had arrested him at the bus station and “whipped” him in the County jail. (more…)

Breaking News.  The Supreme Court has just called for an evidentiary hearing in the case of Troy Davis.  This is a highly unusual deviation from legal business as usual.  As I have explained elsewhere, American courts are remarkably adverse to re-opening cases once a jury has ruled, a defendant has been sentenced, and the appeals process has upheld the conviction.  In Tulia, Texas, we didn’t get an evidentiary hearing until Bob Herbert of the New York Times had written six columns on the case, politicians like Hillary Clinton were appealing to the Department of Justice, and the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP and a legal dream team had entered the fight.  In the Troy Davis case, it took the support of folks like Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Pope to shift the legal balances. (more…)

Over at Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson has an excellent post contrasting racially segregated California prisons with the Texas system which has been racially integrated since federal Judge William Wayne Justice laid down the law decades ago.  A riot at California’s Chico prison has drawn attention to the deep racial enmity within the California system.  Although the common areas of these prisons (as opposed to the living quarters) are integrated, the various racial groups keep to themselves and any social contact across racial lines is dangerous.  Within races, inmates self-segregate according to gang affiliation.   Pay particular attention to the comments that follow Scott’s post–most informative.

This post was submitted by Friends of Justice founding member, Dr. Charles Kiker.

“The poor can’t afford diamonds either.”

I know it’s not polite to speak disparagingly of the dead, but that was William F. Buckley’s response a couple of decades or so ago to the plight of the poor when it comes to health care.

Mr. Buckley was right. The poor cannot afford diamonds. But he was wrong to suggest that diamonds and health care are comparable. I’m perfectly willing for the “free market” to control the availability of diamonds. Health care is in a completely different category. (more…)

David Scott, a moderate black Democratic congressman from Georgia, has been getting hate mail laced with swastikas the n-word.  Recently, a Swastika was painted on the sign outside of his office after a contentious public meeting in Smyrna, Georgia. 

In a New York Times column, Gail Collins documents recent cases of anti-health care reform protesters packing heat at contentious town hall meetings. 

While CNN personality Lou Dobbs lends credence to the idea that Barack Obama isn’t an American citizen, health-care protesters (aided and abetted by reputedly sane politicians like Chuck Grassley) have been darkly hinting that reformers, given their way, would end up euthanizing seniors. (more…)

On December 19, 2007, Grace Head, a 66 year-old resident of Arlington, Texas, set her Doberman Pinscher on two black neighbors, Silk Littlejohn and Broderick Gamble after telling them they had to abandon their home.  Then, while Gamble was fending off the dog, Grace Head struck Ms. Littlejohn across the head with a 2-by-4.  Not satisfied with this atrocity, Head jumped onto the hood of Gamble’s Toyota Camry and started stomping.

This is not your average granny.

On Tuesday, August 10, 2009, Grace Head was sentenced to 180 days in State Jail and a $4,000 fine.  It was the lightest sentence allowed by law.   (more…)

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

What happens when the state of Mississippi takes a man to trial five times and fails to obtain a final conviction?

If the defendant is Curtis Flowers you try him a sixth time.  So far as I can gather, no American accused of murder has ever faced trial on the same facts six times.  But if it takes ten trials to convict Flowers, the state of Mississippi, represented by District Attorney Doug Evans, is determined to do it. (more…)