Criminal Justice: A Tale of Two Prosecutors

A Tale of Two Prosecutors

By: Llenda Jackson-Leslie

Two recent events showcase the difference a prosecutor can make. The first is the decision to reduce the death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal to life imprisonment, and the second is the exoneration of Thomas Haynesworth after serving twenty-seven years for rapes he did not commit.

In both cases, Abu- Jamal and Haynesworth had family, friends and advocates who fought to prove their innocence, and legal teams who donated their services. Mumia has become an international cause célèbre, known for his radio broadcasts from prison, stinging political commentary and media interviews. Both men struggled for years to be heard and in both cases, a prosecutor played a critical role in the final outcome. In Mumia’s case the prosecutor chose not to seek the death penalty again. For those of us who believe in Mumia’s innocence—this is a bittersweet ending but a victory nonetheless.

In Haynesworth’s case, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli known for his tough-on-crime stance, decided that Haynesworth’s case deserved a second look, two state prosecutors agreed and supported exoneration. Cuccinelli became so convinced of Haynesworth’s innocence that he gave him a job after his March parole. Read about Haynesworth’s exoneration here.

Troy Davis was not so fortunate.  In that case Larry Chisholm the current district attorney refused to even consider withdrawing the death warrant, despite the flimsy evidence and flawed prosecution meticulously documented by Troy’s legal team. The former prosecutor Spencer Lawton refuses to acknowledge even now that the case was flawed and Troy was put to death on September 21, 2011. Apparently for some prosecutors, preserving the façade of infallibility matters more than a man’s life.

Criminal Justice: Never Ending Crime and Punishment

Never Ending Crime and Punishment

By Llenda Jackson-Leslie

One of the harshest realities of our criminal justice system is that punishment can be never ending. Walking through the prison gates doesn’t guarantee a fresh start. The lingering stigma of a previous conviction continues to haunt many former prisoners and often fuels their return to prison. Finding a job with a prison record is next to impossible, regulations bar them from public housing and many states have enacted punitive restrictions which make it next to impossible for former prisoners to regain their right to vote.

 
The Washington Post posted a recent blog on the high rate of unemployment among the formerly incarcerated in the DC area 46% , you can read the article here the article is based on a report by the Court Excellence Project, you can access the report here.

Harold Hill is luckier than most, he’s found a job and re-connected with family. His struggle to turn his life around was published in the Washington Post, you can read the article here

Strong Laws and Lax Enforcement

The DC police are being called out once again for failing to enforce laws that intended to protect gay, lesbian and transgender District residents from violence and intimidation based on their sexual identity. Activists have taken to the streets to put DC cops on blast. Read Police Chief Kathy Lanier’s response here.

We are the 90%

We are the 90%

By: Llenda Jackson-Leslie

We’ve all heard of the 99%. Most of us are in the 99%-- in New York there’s also the 90% that’s the percentage of New Yorkers who are stopped for no good reason whatsoever and are innocent of any crime or suspected criminal act or behavior.

What’s even more astonishing of the 3 million New Yorkers who have been stopped, questioned or searched between 2004 and 2010--- 90 % of them--- were you guessed it Black and Latino. The New York ACLU did an exhaustive report—using the figures from NYPD records. Yes, the police department admits that 90% of the people they stop are completely innocent. So why hasn’t NYPD cleaned up its act. Maybe the Justice Department needs to step in. Read the report here.

The prison industrial complex is also one of the key issues undermining the stability of communities of color, and we are more likely to be focused on Attica or San Quentin than Wall Street, unless the linkages are made. Occupiers must pay attention to occupants.  

What about the 13%

That’s the percentage of African American men who are permanently barred from voting by felony disenfranchisement

Nationally, an estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. Felony disenfranchisement is an obstacle to participation in democratic life which is exacerbated by racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resulting in an estimated 13% of Black men unable to vote.  Sadly, in the all-out assault on voting rights by right wing extremists financed by the Koch brothers, several states have rolled back paths to enfranchisement for former prisoners.

Sotomayer dissents from SC refusal to hear death penalty appeal

The Supreme Court refused to hear controversial death penalty case—from our nation’s leading executioner-Texas. That’s the case where death row prisoner Duane Buck appealed his sentence arguing his right to a fair trial was violated when an expert witness testified that African Americans pose a greater risk of "future dangerousness." In Texas, a jury must find that a defendant poses a continuing threat to society in order to recommend a death sentence. Justice Kagan joined the dissent. Read Sotomayer’s dissent here here.

Criminal Justice: The Prison Industrial Complex Hurts The Economy

The Prison Industrial Complex Hurts The Economy

By Llenda Jackson-Leslie

Lately, some surprising folks have been talking about what needs to change in the criminal justice system. There have been repeated calls for a national conversation. But at the moment, people are understandably preoccupied with the worst economic crisis since the Depression.

But criminal justice is not unrelated to the economy. Our nation’s prison industrial complex contributes in large and small ways to our overall economic decline. We pay a cost through incarcerating large numbers of men and growing numbers of women who could be a productive part of the economy, and making them basically unfit for anything other than prison or continued criminal pursuits. We pay for the toll their absence plays on families in poor communities and communities of color. And all of us suffer from the warped economic priorities that push states to direct more and of their scare resources to maintaining prisons, while starving education, human services, arts and infrastructure.

As people organize to speak truth to power whether on Wall Street  or at the nation’s capital, real criminal justice reform needs to be on the agenda.

A recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics featured on the Sentencing Project’s weekly electronic newsletter proves that when it comes to traffic stops, we’re not post-racial. Read more from the Sentencing Project, here.

Blacks Three Times as Likely as Whites to be Searched in Traffic Stops

The survey showed that African Americans were slightly more likely to face multiple contacts with police officers, but that blacks were about as likely to be pulled over in traffic stop as whites and Hispanics. However, when pulled over blacks were more likely than whites and Hispanics to be arrested, while both blacks and Hispanics were more likely to receive tickets than whites. Blacks were also more likely to have force used or threatened against them by police officers.”

“A special report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics has found that black drivers in 2008 were three times as likely to have their cars searched during traffic stops as whites. The study, which looked at contact between citizens and law enforcement, also found that traffic stops involving blacks were roughly twice as likely to result in a search as those involving Hispanics.

Former Harvard law professor William J. Stuntz says the American justice system is unraveling.

 

Justice System Unraveling

Still more so the African American portion of that prison population: for black males, a term in the nearest penitentiary has become an ordinary life experience, a horrifying truth that wasn’t true a mere generation ago. Ordinary life experiences are poor deterrents, one reason why massive levels of criminal punishment coexist with historically high levels of urban violence.

“Among the great untold stories of our time is this one: the last half of the twentieth century saw America’s criminal justice system unravel. Signs of the unraveling are everywhere. The nation’s record- shattering prison population has grown out of control.

Outside the South, most cities’ murder rates are a multiple of the rates in those same cities sixty years ago — notwithstanding a large drop in violent crime in the 1990s. Within cities, crime is low in safe neighborhoods but remains a huge problem in dangerous ones, and those dangerous neighborhoods are disproportionately poor and black. Last but not least, we have built a justice system that strikes many of its targets as wildly unjust. The feeling has some evidentiary support: criminal litigation regularly makes awful mistakes, as the frequent DNA-based exonerations of convicted defendants illustrate. Evidently, the criminal justice system is doing none of its jobs well: producing justice, avoiding discrimination, protecting those who most need the law’s protection, keeping crime in check while maintaining reasonable limits on criminal punishment.”

 

Read the whole article on Salon.com  

New Rules to Retroactively Re-Sentance Prisoners for Crack Cocaine Possession

New Rules to Retroactively Re-Sentance Prisoners for Crack Cocaine Possession

Via the NAACP:

"On June 30, 2011, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to apply the new guidelines for a federal conviction of crack cocaine possession as established by the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively to those men and women currently incarcerated. This means that more than 12,000 men and women currently incarcerated for crack cocaine possession, more than 10,000 of whom are African American, will be eligible for an adjustment of their sentences.

[...]

With the Sentencing Commission’s decision to support a retroactive application of the guidelines as established by the Fair Sentencing Act, the federal government can begin to mend the mistrust which has resulted between African American community and our criminal justice system due to the disproportionate and disparate incarceration of black men and women. By applying the guidelines retroactively, the Sentencing Commission will be reducing the sentences of over than 12,000 prisoners nationwide, more than 10,000, or 85% of whom are African American. Another 8.5% of those who would see their sentences reduced are Hispanic, and 5.5% are Caucasian."

Via Wikipedia:

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. As of year-end 2009 the rate was 743 adults incarcerated in prisons and jails per 100,000 population. At year-end 2007 the United States had less than 5% of the world's population and 23.4% of the world's prison and jail population (adult inmates).

Calling for Prison Reform

Source: Statistics as of June 30, 2004 from Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2004, Tables 1, 14 and 15 and U.S. Census. (Peter Wagner, June 2005)

As the nation rightfully pauses this weekend to remember our soldiers, who died in battles to win, protect and preserve our freedoms, we still have a ways to go before we win social justice. The critical need for prison reform draws us to the battlefield of public conscious. Today, 2.3 million Americans are behind bars. Blacks are 6.4 times as likely to be incarcerated as whites, reports the Prison Policy Initiative. Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University, has written a must-read analysis on the incarceration of blacks.  This weekend pick up The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

For more information on this subject, visit: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html

Calling for Prison Reform