Send Karl Rove to Jail
Posted On Saturday, July 19, 2008 at at 10:09 AM by Dan
Brave New Films has a bunch of propaganda films out that make for good viewing. This one though just struck me. Although I'm against the idea of filling up the jails and prisons with more people, I can live with this one.
Does Georgia Law Enforcement Stand in the Way of Justice?
Posted On Thursday, October 04, 2007 at at 10:48 AM by Dan
The title is a bit provocative, isn't it? Unless, of course, law enforcement does stand in the way. That answer depends on what happens this year with eyewitness ID reform legislation. Frankly, I believe criminal justice law has been taken out of the hands of the public, even out of the hands of legislators, and is now determined by district attorney's and, to a lesser degree, law enforcement. If the DA's want it, they get it. If they don't want it, it doesn't happen. What do the DA's want? Easier convictions.
The only true thing I've seen on Law & Order is a quote by a judge saying the court is not a search for truth, but for admissable evidence. Easier convictions happen when evidence is easier to admit. A coerced confession for example. Or bad eyewitness testimony. How bad is eyewitness testimony? The Innocence Project has worked on the exoneration of more than 200 people nationwide and 75% were convicted based on bad eyewitness testimony. Six people have left Georgia prisons when eyewitness testimony has proved to be bad. Think about how hard it is to prove a witness was wrong, especially years after the fact. Without something like DNA evidence, getting a conviction reversed is like climbing Mt. Everest without oxygen. Or climbing equipment. Yet 6 Georgians have reached that summit. How many are at the base waiting for their turn?
There's a decent solution. Record all confessions on video/audio and institute guidelines for eyewitnesses. If a cop violates the guidelines, at least the impact on the case can be argued. Of course, law enforcement hates the idea. Police accountability doesn't usually go over well with the police. Rep. Stephanie Stucky Benfield is sponsoring legislation on eyewitness ID reform. It hasn't gone anywhere for the last two years, but momentum seems to be building. There are a series of committee meetings, the last one was this last Monday. Spokes people from both the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police (GACP) and the Georgia Sheriffs Association (GSA) were there to say reform is a bad idea. The GACP said this was a problem with university studies not accurately reflecting what happens. Also, that while there may have been a problem in the past things are better now.
The GSA rep, Sheriff Mike Jolley, laid out a doozy. Jolley said a state law would impede law enforcement's efforts to have better procedures. One law would mean an agency couldn't update their polices when new information came out. This would be almost believable if 83% of law enforcement agencies in Georgia had no policy at all. According to Jolly though, freedom is equal to lack of accountability. Or standards. Or even knowing what they hell you're doing.
The next meeting of the committee is November 13. At that meeting they will determine whether or not to put forward a bill and what it will look out. Check it out if you're free.
Good Links on Eyewitness Reform:
The Innocence Blog: By The Innocence Project, good info on stuff happening across the country.
Georgia Innocence Project: A state version of the national project. Great work there.
Eyewitness Identification Reform Blog: A whole blog devoted to pushing this reform. Focusing a lot on Georgia right now.
Savannah Morning News Article: This has details on the GACP and GSA testimony at Monday's committee meeting.
Online Athens Story on Committee Meeting: A different take on Monday's meeting.
The Justice that Jena Demands
Posted On Thursday, September 27, 2007 at at 6:26 PM by Dan
by Xochitl Bervera
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC)
I want to tell you about Emmanuelle Narcisse. He was a tall, slim, handsome young man who was killed by a guard at the Bridge City Correctional Center for Youth – a Louisiana juvenile prison – in 2003. Apparently, he was "fussing" in line, talking back to a guard. The guard punched him in the face, one blow, and Emmanuelle went down backwards, slamming his head on the concrete. He took his last breath there behind the barbed wire of that state run facility. The guard was suspended with pay during the investigation. No indictment was ever filed against him.
There is also Tobias Kingsley,[1] sentenced when he was 15 to two years in juvenile prison for sneaking into a hotel swimming pool (his first offense). Tobias endured physical and sexual abuse inside the prison. He said that guards traded sex with kids for drugs and cigarettes, and sometimes set kids up to fight one another, making cash bets on the winner. His mama said he was never the same after he came home. She said the nightmares, the violence, the paranoia persisted years after the private lawyers helped him come home early. His battles with addiction and depression are not yet over.
And there is Shareef Cousin, who was tried as an adult and sent to death row in the state of Louisiana for a murder that he didn't commit. Shareef spent from age 16 to age 26 behind bars, the majority of those years isolated in Angola's Death Row, because an over zealous prosecutor didn't care that the evidence didn't really add up. After all, it was only a young Black man's life on the line.
These are young Black men who have encountered Louisiana's criminal justice system who I know because their mothers have become proud members of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC), the organization I have worked for over the last 7 years. These stories are about young men who have experienced incredible injustice, not unlike the Jena 6, only the national spotlight has never shined on them.
There are hundreds more. Thousands. Every day in the state of Louisiana (and in most states in this nation), injustices of epic proportions are taking place in our criminal and juvenile justice systems. We, those of us who live here, fight here, and organize here, know hundreds of families and young people – often our own - who've endured almost inconceivable levels of violence, abuse, neglect. And despite efforts to get someone, anyone to care and to act, these young people most often end up statistics in somebody's dismal report, or an anecdote in an article just like this. Because people don't care. Because these young people are not just poor, they are not just Black, they are criminals.
Hallelujah, someone noticed!
So, Hallelujah! Almost overnight it seems, the nation is looking deep into the heart of Louisiana's criminal justice system and seeing what we've been shouting about all these years! The racism, the blatant and unaccountable abuse of power masquerading as "justice." The slavery-like, Jim Crow-like, Bush-era prejudice and exploitation that has been the bedrock of white supremacy here and all over the Deep South for decades. Young people of color and mothers across the country are rising up saying "We wont take it anymore! We demand justice!" The myth that the goal of the criminal justice system is protecting public safety is slowly unraveling as youth in Philadelphia, DC, Oakland and mothers in Chicago, Jackson, and Birmingham make that most important of realizations, "that could have been me," "that could have been my child."
Many are asking, "why now?" Why, of all the horrific incidents we've seen and exposed, is this the one that set off this fire of hope? Our young people have been shot and killed by police in every city in this nation, left to die of dehydration in local jails, railroaded by white juries and judges into serving 20, 30, 40 years in the prison plantations we call Angola, Parchment, and Sing Sing...
Let me tell you what my heart tells me. What really matters is not why, but what we plan to do with this moment now that it has arrived. What will the leaders, the youth, the elders of our movement do now?
Demanding Justice for Us All
Of course we must relentlessly and persistently demand justice for the Jena 6. But we must demand justice, not only in the form of dropping the charges against these specific youth, but in the systematic and thorough rooting out of racism from all wings of the criminal justice systems across the United States of America.
Justice in Jena requires justice for all the others as well – for all those who have suffered (and some who have died) silently behind bars and for their families who have fought without benefit of TV cameras and news reporters. It requires understanding that we will not, we can not achieve racial justice in this country if we do not fight against the criminal justice system, not just in individual instances, but in its institutionalized, systemic form. If we do not understand this – and understand it deeply – then this newly discovered energy, this tidal wave of outrage, this beautiful, intergenerational protesting isn't going to mean a damn thing past next week's news.
Justice in Jena requires all of us across the country to rise up against the racism and exploitation of the criminal justice system in all the places where we've come to see it and grown to accept it whether that's allowing for an abysmal public defender office in your county or turning away when you see a police officer trample the rights, and perhaps the body, of a fellow citizen. We must cast off once and for all, the fundamental lie that the system has anything to do with criminals or justice or public safety. We must not back down, as so many movements have, when we are "crime-baited," accused of defending rapists and murderers, accused of defending crime itself. We must not make excuses for some parts of the system while protesting others. Similar to opposing the war, the whole war, and not simply certain battles or certain strategies, we must oppose the system in its entirety. We must dismiss, once and for all, the urge to discuss what's wrong with the system – what's broken and needs to be fixed.
There is nothing broken in this system. In fact, usually (when it is not disrupted by 50,000 protestors), it is quite efficient at doing precisely what it was created to do. In the Deep South, the criminal justice system as we know it was built after the abolition of slavery, as part of the terror machine which destroyed the briefly federally protected Reconstruction era. Without nuance or subtlety, the system was created by wealthy, land owning whites to keep Blacks "in line," on the plantation, and working for next to nothing. Thanks to the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime," laws and codes were invented that criminalized the very existence of Black people, police were hired to "enforce" those laws, and courts were mandated to send these newly created "criminals" to jail, or better yet, to be leased out to the very plantation owners they had been "freed" from just months before. The "justice" that was once meted out by slave owners who were "masters" of their property, was now taken care of by the law. The word "slave" was replaced by the word "criminal."
"Its not about race, it's about crime"
And yet, even with this history known, the stigma of criminality has remained so strong that our own movements have turned their backs on this issue over the years. Too many of our movements today want to dismiss, minimize, or overlook the necessity for a racial justice movement to prioritize organizing around criminal justice. Too often, our members meet others – even those who should be allies – who hold the entrenched belief that if a child is in prison, he must be "bad," he must have done something wrong. Even in progressive circles, organizations prefer to focus on the school children who need an education, the families who want affordable housing, the victims of street violence and drive-by shootings. These people are portrayed as "innocent" and deserving while currently and formerly incarcerated people are "guilty" - of something.
Of course, it's a false dichotomy. Everyone knows that the same communities, the same people, who are most impacted by violence, the lack of health care, education, and housing are those most brutally impacted by policing and prisons. But the idea of the dichotomy has been essential to maintaining the stigma which justifies the system. And it's been a handy and effective tool to explain away a great deal of racial injustice in this country.
In Jena, when asked about the incident which led to the arrests of the Jena 6, a white librarian confidently explained to the NPR reporter, "It's not about race. It's about crime." Crime -- the ultimate proxy for race, the ultimate justification for racism.
What the future holds
I believe that this moment in history can be a pivotal one if we make it so. Up to 50,000 people marched in the streets of Jena yesterday – the majority of them Black, many were from the South. All were outraged by the blatant racism evidenced by the criminal justice system. This could be the beginning of the end for a system that should have been dismantled years ago.
But what we fight for and how we fight will make all the difference. The most obvious principle is that we cannot fight for the system to expand – in any way. Asking for the white kids who hung the nooses to be charged, calling for Hate Crime Legislation -- these "solutions" just strengthen the system and give the same players – the DA, the judge, the jury – more powers and more validation. If we understand that the system, at its core, is not designed to promote justice, then why would we ask for anything that expands its reach or powers? At the very least, we must only call for things which shrink the system – closing prisons, freeing prisoners, cutting correction budgets, eliminating the death penalty and Life Without Parole, prohibiting juvenile transfers, and implementing sentencing reform.
We can also call for accountability from our elected officials. DAs and judges who perpetuate injustice, state representatives who are in bed with the corrections department and private prison companies – these people should not be allowed to hold office. They should be ousted whether by recall, regular elections, or public pressure to step down.
But we can – and should - also call for the redirection of funds into a real public safety system. We must make it clear that the issue of public safety is fundamentally distinct from the issue of the criminal justice system. The only thing they have in common is rhetoric. Developing a public safety system which is prevention orientated, based on principles of restorative or transformative justice, prioritizes making the victim and community whole, and creatively resolving conflict is a powerful and noble goal and our communities should know more about these models and fight for them. A public safety system includes community based programs, quality education and the elimination of racism.
The families of the Jena 6 are ahead of the crowd in the list of demands they have made public: 1. Drop (or fairly reduce) All Charges; 2. Reinstate School Credits; 3. No Juvenile Records; 4. Investigate "Noose" Incident of September 1, 2006; 5. Remove Reed Walters from the District Attorney's Office; 6.Conduct Undoing Racism Workshops for Staff, Faculty, Administrators, Students, Parents and Community Members.
These are good demands for Jena. What will you demand in your hometown or city?
FFLIC is a membership based organization consisting primarily of mothers and grandmothers. These mothers and grandmothers have seen all sides of the farce known as the criminal justice system. They have been victims of sexual and physical violence who have either kept quiet or endured the humiliation and neglect of the DA's office and the so-called victim's advocates. They have been forced to call the police on their children when mental illness or addiction has made them violent and no other services exist. They have visited their children in prison and seen boot marks on their faces. They have walked home alone through dark streets in poor neighborhoods where there are no programs, no services, no activities to keep young men busy and hopeful. They have seen their children beat by police officers, by prison guards, sometimes even by judges and district attorneys.
Standing on both sides of the system, these mothers will tell you that justice exists nowhere in the vicinity. It may sound radical, but its time we start listening to those who have been through it all and tear down the disgrace that is the U.S. criminal justice system.
--------------------------------------------------
Note:
[1] Name has been changed for purposes of confidentiality
--------------------------------------------------------------
Xochitl Bervera is co-director of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (www.fflic.org). She can be reached at xochitl@fflic.org.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) and Network of Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) have developed: Revealing Racist Roots: The 3 R's for Teaching About the Jena 6, a curriculum guide for teachers to address what's happening in Jena. Download the resource guide in PDF Version or Word Version for free at: www.nycore.org OR www.t4sj.org.
Donate to support the legal defense fund:
Jena 6 Defense Committee
PO BOX 2798
Jena, LA 71342
Sign the petitions at: http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/
For more information or to offer concrete support, email:
jena6defense(at)gmail.com
The Jena Six and the School To Prison Pipeline: http://naacpldf.org/content.aspx?article=1208
If you are in nyc and want to get involved Jena Six Support, email: da_bla2@yahoo.com.
In New Orleans, email: neworleans@leftturn.org.
Support Organizations:
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
http://www.colorofchange.org
http://www.millionsmoremovement.com
http://www.laaclu.org/
http://www.fflic.org
Please support independent media! Subscribe to Left Turn Magazine. http://www.leftturn.org .
Study Committees on Eyewitness Testimony
Posted On Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at at 10:23 AM by Dan
This from the online edition of the Savannah Morning News. They have a great feature where they print the upcoming dates for future meetings. A little thing, but if you've ever tried to figure out when a legislative committee meetings you know a level of hell. I've copied that info at the bottom.
Eyewitnesses get closer look in death-penalty cases
1A | IntownATLANTA - State lawmakers concerned about people wrongly sent to prison because of inaccurate witness testimonies plan to examine the issue in depth with defense attorneys, law enforcement agencies and researchers.
The first of five study committees about eyewitness identification is scheduled for this morning at the Capitol.
All six Georgia men, including two from Savannah, who have been exonerated after DNA evidence proved their innocence have been invited to attend and speak to legislators.
"Every single one of those original convictions was based on faulty identifications," said Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, D-Atlanta, who is chairing the committee.
Douglas Echols and Samuel Scott were convicted in Chatham County in 1987 for kidnapping and raping a woman, who identified each man. Both were released in 2001 when DNA evidence cleared them.
The pending death-penalty appeal for Savannah's Troy Anthony Davis, a convicted cop killer, also is expected to be discussed as part of the meetings. Because there was no physical evidence found in his case, his trial depended largely on witness statements.
Because six of the nine witnesses who testified against him have since recanted, lawyers for Davis are trying for a new trial.
Benfield, a former public defender, has been researching eyewitness identification and successfully pushed bills for the state to compensate some of the wrongly accused men.
She introduced legislation this year to tighten requirements for using witnesses to identify suspects, but it stalled out over several concerns about expenses for police departments and the increased difficulty prosecutors would have using witnesses at trials.
There also is dispute over some of the studies' results and how effective changing witness questioning procedures will be.
"What I'd like to see come out of this study committee is a pilot project in Georgia where we could select three law enforcement agencies of varying sizes and test procedures for a year," Benfield said.
Supporters of witness identification reform point to techniques being tried in other cities or recommended in research studies.
One example is a double-blind procedure in which neither the witness nor the officer conducting a lineup knows who the suspect is so that the officer does not unintentionally give out hints to the witness.
Another is requiring "confidence statements" from witnesses after they single out lineup suspects so they can record how certain they are before their memories gel over time.
Of the more than 200 convictions nationwide overturned eventually through DNA evidence, incorrect eyewitness identification contributed to more than 75 percent of the cases, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal group.
The group's Georgia branch has been canvassing the nearly 500 law enforcement agencies in the state to survey them on their techniques for identifying suspects through witnesses.
More than half have responded, and the results will be discussed as part of the upcoming study committee meetings, said Lisa Georgia, communications director for the Georgia Innocence Project.
"We really hope at the end of these hearings, we have an active conversation going that includes the Legislature, law enforcement and prosecutors and can reach a consensus on the need for eyewitness identification reform," she said.
----------------Georgia House of Representatives Study Committee on Eyewitness Identification Procedures:
Future Meeting DatesOct. 1 - Law Enforcement's Perspective
Oct. 22 - Scientific Studies and Best Police Practices
Nov. 5 - Evidentiary Standards for Court Admissibility
Nov. 19 - Recommendations for Implementing Change
Time and location information can be found on the General Assembly's Web site at www.legis.ga.gov under "Meeting Notices."
Note that leg committees change meeting times all the time. Keep checking and call ahead if you can.
More info on Genarlow Wilson case
Posted On Tuesday, September 04, 2007 at at 4:37 PM by Dan
This is from last weekend's Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Find out more about Genarlow Wilson by following the link on the sidebar under Struggles to Watch.
Wilson closer to fateful ruling
In teen-sex case, state's high court must see 10 years in prison is cruel, unusual
Published on: 09/02/07 at the AJC
During the Georgia Supreme Court hearing on the Genarlow Wilson case, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears asked a pertinent question:
"Where is the justice?"
Georgians may soon learn the answer to that question. The high court is expected to rule this month on whether Wilson's 10-year sentence for oral sex with a willing younger teen constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Wilson was convicted of engaging in oral sex with a classmate at a wild 2003 New Year's Eve party in Douglasville; he was 17, the girl was 15. That age difference allowed prosecutors to charge Wilson with aggravated child molestation, which by a temporary quirk in Georgia law at the time carried a mandatory 10-year sentence that cannot be commuted by the parole board or the governor.
A year after Wilson's conviction in 2005, the Legislature changed the rules for sex acts between consenting teens by passing what's known as the "Romeo and Juliet" provision. Under that law, an act of oral sex between Wilson and the younger teen would be a misdemeanor punishable by no more than 12 months in jail. However, lawmakers didn't apply the change retroactively.
The case has since become an international blot on Georgia's legal system. Reputations have been sullied, communities divided and a young man locked behind bars for two-and-a-half years so far.
No one believes that Wilson, now 21, belongs in prison any longer, even the prosecutors in Douglas County who put him there. Their initial objective had been to convict Wilson on a rape charge for an act of sexual intercourse with another girl at the party, a 17-year-old who later contended that she had been too inebriated to consent to sex.
Jurors, however, exonerated Wilson of that charge. But given the facts of the case and the wording of state law at the time, they felt compelled to convict him on the charge of aggravated child molestation because of the age difference of the two teens.
Wilson has been offered a plea bargain that would release him from jail, an offer that still stands. However, he has rejected that option because under state law he would still be categorized as a sex offender, with serious consequences for his future.
As a result, Wilson sits in the Burruss Correctional Training Center in Monroe County and waits for the Supreme Court's verdict. A lower court has already ruled in his favor, concluding that a mandatory 10-year term constituted cruel and unusual punishment for a relatively minor crime.
"The fact that Genarlow Wilson has spent two years in prison for what is now classified as a misdemeanor ... and will spend eight more years in prison is a grave miscarriage of justice," Monroe County Superior Court Thomas Wilson ruled.
The case could have ended there, but Attorney General Thurbert Baker chose to appeal the judge's ruling to the Supreme Court. At a hearing in July, some justices seemed to be struggling with how to reconcile existing case law — which says 10 years is not a shocking sentence for such a crime — with their clear discomfort over Wilson's fate.
"Today, that crime is a misdemeanor," said Sears, asking again, "Where is the justice?"
"That is not for the habeas court to determine," responded Senior Assistant Attorney General Paula K. Smith. She argued that Wilson was convicted under the old law and must suffer the punishment in effect then, regardless of the Legislature's subsequent downgrading of the punishment.
The state's contention that the court has no choice but to uphold the previous law struck another justice as unreasonable.
"Should we do that at the expense of fundamental fairness?" asked Justice Robert Benham.
The answer, Your Honor, is that you must not.
— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)
GENARLOW WILSON UPDATE
Posted On Thursday, June 14, 2007 at at 12:11 PM by Dan
The most recent AJC article is just crazy. The mother of the girl Wilson is convicted of molesting came out and said Wilson’s conviction is unfair. Following this was a furious back and forth between the mother, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Douglas County District Attorney’s office. Frankly, I believe it’s a shameful display of the DA’s use of power. Criminal justice policy in the US is too often controlled by the DA’s, and they aren’t worthy of having that kind of power. Check out the AJC article: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/06/13/0614metwilson.html
Also related to the Wilson case, state attorney general Thurbert Baker is a punk. Within one hour of Wilson’s release being ordered, Baker said the state would appeal. Why? Because Baker is a gutless throwaway politician too scared of the good ol’ boy system to apply common sense. At least, that’s my theory. You can read Baker’s own words from his response to the AJC opinion. Baker says he’s just following orders, but he really tried to work it out with the defense attorneys. They refused everything. Why should they have taken the offer? Wilson was convicted of a felony that is now considered a misdemeanor. The judge said it should be considered a misdemeanor, but Baker and the Douglas DA want Wilson to stick to a felony. How is this a deal?
Time to dump Baker. Remember that at the polls.
And for you Douglas County residents, perhaps voting “No” for district attorney wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
For more info about the Wilson case check out these sites:
Wilson Appeal
ESPN feature
Recent ABC news article
Atlanta Magazine article
New York Times article
Wikipedia entry
GENARLOW WILSON SHOULDN’T BE IN PRISON
Posted On Saturday, February 03, 2007 at at 4:08 PM by Dan
It’s starting to be pretty common in Georgia. Imprisoning young Black men for sex, I mean. There was the Marcus Dixon case. Just recently there’s Willie Williams, but his case is really more than 20 years old. Now I’ve learned about Genarlow Wilson.
Wilson was 17 years old when he attended a party that would make Hugh Heffner blush. I’m talking the 1970’s Heffner too. Wilson was videotaped having sex with a 17-year old girl as well as receiving oral sex from a 15-year old girl. The 17 year old was apparently drunk and may have been high as well during the act. Media sites consistently point out she never says stop during the video, but they don’t mention she may have not been in a state of mind to consent. We can absolutely say that Wilson is not guilty of raping her because there was a trial and Wilson was found not guilty. Personally, I think the standards of what constitutes rape in the US is far too lax. Even so, Wilson is not in prison for rape. He’s in prison for child molestation.
Yeah, you read that right. The jury that acquitted him of rape came back with a guilty verdict for child molestation because Wilson is clearly seen receiving oral sex from a 15 year old. They didn’t want to do it, but felt they had no choice. He was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years with no parole. He’ll be classified as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Wilson wasn’t the only one charged that night, but he was the only one to go to trial. The others took plea agreements, and if Wilson had he wouldn’t be facing as much time. Last year the Georgia legislature passed HB 1059, a bill it called the Child Sexual Predator legislation. I call it the “Rep. Jerry Keen wants to be on Fox news” legislation. The bill was just stupid, you can see for yourself at the Fairness for Prisoners’ Families site on it. One part of the bill, however, did reclassify what Wilson was convicted of from a felony to a misdemeanor. It’s not retroactive though.
Crazy, isn’t it?
Wilson and others are stuck with Georgia’s horrific legislation and a 300-year history of white supremacy. The result is that a 17-year old is now considered a child molester. Of course, 85% of child molestation is done by someone close to the child (i.e. not a stranger). Something all of the laws mentioned seem to try real hard to not consider. One would think that laws allegedly aimed at ending child molestation would consider these facts.
Crazy, isn’t it?
For more info about the Wilson case check out these sites:
Wilson Appeal
ESPN feature
Recent ABC news article
Atlanta Magazine article
New York Times article
Wikipedia entry
