Over the last couple weeks, North Carolina’s GOP has successfully passed a bill that essentially repeals the state’s landmark Racial Justice Act (RJA). Orginally passed in 2009, the RJA allows death row inmates to present evidence, most importantly statistical patterns, that prove racial bias played a major role in their trial and sentencing. Nearly all of North Carolina’s 157 death row prisoners have since filed claims under the act, leading to an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty. Thus far, one inmate has had his death sentence commuted to life in prison without parole under RJA.

Given that North Carolina has the nation’s sixth largest number of inmates on death row, over half of whom are black, the RJA was lauded as a civil rights victory. Nevertheless, NC republicans have been relentless in their attempts to repeal it, arguing that the RJA is really part of an underhanded plan to ban the death penalty that makes it too easy for criminals to avoid punishment. Of course this completely ignores the endless stacks of empirical evidence showing defendants of color are overwhelmingly more likely to be sentenced to death than their white counterparts, particularly if the victim is white.

House Republicans, with the help of five conservative democrats, successfully passed the repeal last week. On Wednesday, it flew through the Senate which voted along party lines to send the bill to Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue, who vetoed a similar piece of legislation last year.  But according to the News Observer, “Both the Senate and the House have just enough votes to sustain an override if Perdue vetoes this bill.”

In 1987, the US Supreme Court ruled in McCleskey v. Kemp that evidence of systemic racial bias in the application of the death penalty t is not enough to commute a death sentence. NYU law professor Anthony Amsterdam once called the ruling “the Dred Scott decision of our time” because it allowed racial disparities in the criminal justice system to remain unchallenged. So when North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act passed, it was celebrated as a model for the nation because race could no longer determine who would live and die under the state’s death penalty system. However, North Carolina Republicans have shown themselves to be hell bent on preserving racism in criminal justice, not matter the cost.

Over the last 23 years more than 2,000 wrongfully convicted individuals in the United States have been exonerated, according to a new study by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of law.

The schools also launched the National Registry of Exonerations, an incredible website where a detailed and regularly updated list of every known exoneration since 1989 can be viewed. As of now it includes 891 people, the largest assembled database of exonerations to date (1,200 exonerates are excluded from the list because not enough information is known about their cases).

Of the 873 exonerees analyzed in the study, researchers found that they spent over 10,000 years behind bars with an average of more than 11 years each, with about a quarter of exonerees facing the death penalty. Exonerations were overwhelmingly rape and murder cases where the leading causes for wrongful conviction included perjury, false eyewitness identification, and misconduct by officials. In 80 percent of sexual assault exonerations, the leading cause for conviction was false eyewitness identification, 53% of which involved black men who were accused of raping white women. Unsurprisingly, about half of all exonerated defendants were black, likely reflecting the disproportionate number of African Americans locked up in the U.S.

While there is no telling how many innocent people are serving prison sentences, the authors of the study are clear that there are more wrongful convictions than exonerations. For example, last week I wrote about the 1989 execution of Carlos DeLuna (you can read it here), a poor hispanic man whose trial was plagued by shoddy eyewitness testimony and serious misconduct by the authorities. If not for the diligence of the academics and lawyers who investigated Deluna’s case years after his execution, no one would know that Texas likely executed an innocent man. Of course, it’s now to late to fix it since DeLuna is dead.

So, what does this say about our criminal justice system? For starters, it shows that it’s far from perfect and in desperate need of reforms, which raises the question: Why do we continue to sentence people to death despite knowing that the system is flawed? And for those who are exonerated, how do we make up them?

I addressed this in my latest piece at Salon, where I tell the story of Glenn Edward Chapman, a black man who spent 15 years on death row in North Carolina for murders he didn’t commit. But since his 2008 exoneration, Chapman hasn’t received a penny from the state that tried to kill him, despite North Carolina being one of the 27 states with statutes that provide compensation to the wrongfully convicted. That means in 23 states around the country, the exonerated are offered nothing for their loss of freedom, reputation, family, friends, income, and emotional stability.

Chapman isn’t alone in his struggle. The National Registry of Exonerations study includes the following about life after exoneration for the 873 falsely convicted individuals analyzed:

Ten innocent defendants were exonerated after death, even though it is highly unusual to reconsider the guilt of defendants who are dead. Many more left prison with disabling injuries or diseases. Some died within a year or two of release, sometimes at their own hands. Others returned to prison for new crimes that they did commit. Almost all irretrievably lost large portions of their lives – their youth, the childhood of their children, the last years of their parents’ lives, their careers, their marriages.

ICYMI, here’s my article published at Truthout over the Weekend. It’s about Gary Freeman, a 1960s black civil rights activist who is banned from re-entering Canada, where his entire family lives, because of the unsubstantiated claim that he’s a former member of the Black Panthers Party. 

The consequences of America’s racist history still linger deep into the present. No one understands this better than Gary Freeman, a 1960s black civil rights activist whose life has been turned upside down by the racial and political injustice perpetuated first by the United States and now by Canada.

Freeman has spent the last four years separated from his Canadian wife and four grown children due to false allegations that he is a former member of the Black Panthers Party. This accusation stems from an incident that took place in 1969, when Freeman, just 19 at the time, shot a white police officer in the arm, which he claims was in self-defense.

Freeman, known back then as Joseph Pannell, was charged with aggravated battery and attempted murder, which carried a 30-year jail sentence. Given the racial bigotry of the time, he feared a fair trial was impossible, so he changed his name and began a new life in Canada, where he spent nearly four decades building a life as a father, husband and research librarian.

That all changed in 2004, when he was arrested at gunpoint and thrown into pre-extradition Canadian detention, where he spent four years fighting extradition to Chicago.

In 2008, following three years of negotiations with prosecutors, Freeman agreed to voluntarily return to Chicago, where he accepted a plea bargain in exchange for a 30-day prison sentence and two years’ probation, which he finished serving in 2010 without incident. He was also required to donate $250,000 to the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, a fund for families of officers killed or injured in the line of duty.

Since then, Freeman says, “American authorities have treated me with dignity and respect.” Canada, on the other hand, refuses to allow Freeman back into the country, not because of the shootout, but based on the discredited rumor that Freeman was formerly a member of the Black Panthers Party.

Still, if not for the injustice perpetrated against Freeman by the United States, Canada would not be in the position to refuse him entry. So, let’s rewind and examine how this all began.

A White Cop Stops a Black Kid

On March 7, 1969, 19-year-old Freeman (still known then as Joseph Pannell) was stopped in the south side of Chicago by Terrence Knox, a 21-year-old white police officer. Knox claimed that he stopped Freeman to ask why he was not in school and that Freeman responded by inexplicably firing shots at him.

Freeman vehemently disputes Knox’s version of events, saying he was compliant until Knox attempted to frisk him. Freeman refused on the grounds that the officer lacked probable cause, at which point Knox threw him over his squad car, put a gun to his head and began screaming, “I’m gonna blow your head off, nigger.”

“I was waiting to be killed. I turned my head around and closed my eyes,” recalled Freeman.

“And then I heard a voice. We were in front of a school. Some of the black kids were hanging out at the window asking, ‘Hey brother, what’s wrong, what’s happening?’ That paused him [Officer Knox] for just a second.”

“Things were very fast, but in slow motion,” said Freeman. “So, I drew my own, I swung around and he started firing and I started firing and I happened to be more accurate. My purpose was to disarm him.”

Black and Radical in 1960s Chicago

Freeman insists that he was carrying a firearm because it was, “a dangerous time.”

“The question was and remains why self-defense is not okay for those held to be the ‘other,’ or less than that,” argues Freeman.

Chicago was indeed a scary place for African-American youth in the 1960s. As the Boston Review points out, “Chicago police led the nation in the slaying of private citizens, who were euphemistically characterized as ‘fleeing felons’ to mask the routine use of excessive force by police against racial minorities.”

In 1969, the same year the shooting occurred, 11 black youths from Chicago’s South Side were killed at the hands of Chicago police. Meanwhile, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) was illegally surveilling, infiltrating and disrupting lawful political activity with the participation of the Chicago Police Department, and adhering to an obsessive focus on the Black Panther Party. John Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, even called the Black Panthers, “the greatest threat to internal security of the country.”

In fact, in 1969, Chicago Police actively conspired with the FBI to carry out the pre-meditated murder of 21-year-old Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, whose apartment was sprayed with nearly 100 bullets in a midnight raid, two of which were fired in his head at point blank range.

Black men fared no better in Chicago’s prisons. The UN Committee on Torture has even compared the treatment of black men in Chicago jails from 1971 to 1991 at the hands of Chicago police to the unaccountable torture unleashed on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Was Freeman on the FBI’s Radar?

Although he was not a Black Panther, it is conceivable that Freeman was on the FBI’s radar.

Read More

I wrote a piece for Salon this week about a black man named John McNeil. He is serving a life sentence in Georgia for shooting and killing a white man that assaulted him and his teenage son on their property. Like Florida, Georgia is a pro guns rights and stand your ground state, yet this man was not afforded the same benefit of the doubt as was Zimmerman, whose victim was unarmed and posed no threat.

I should point out that my piece was published just hours before Zimmerman was arrested and charged with second degree murder. Some commenters claimed that Zimmerman’s subsequent arrest made the theme of my piece—the discriminatory application of stand your ground laws—irrelevant. But I disagree.

It took a mass movement of protesters around the country for Florida’s governor to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Trayvon Martin’s death. If not for that mass outcry, the Sanford police and DA would likely have let Zimmerman go free. There shouldn’t have to be nationwide protests to force the authorities to properly investigate a homicide.

From my Salon article:

The McNeils weren’t the only ones who felt threatened by Epp. David Samson and Libby Jones, a white couple who hired Epp to build their home in 2004, testified that they carried a gun as a “precaution” around Epp because of his threatening behavior. According to Jones, Epp nearly hit her when she expressed dissatisfaction with his work at a weekly meeting. The couple even had a lawyer write a letter warning Epp to stay away from their property. Samson testified that after they fired him, Epp would park his car across the street and watch their house, saying “it got to the point where my wife and I were in total fear of this man.” Read More

Here is my in depth article on Rekia Boyd published last week at Truthout. Her family has since filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago which you can find more about here.

“Her death certificate says killed by police, but I feel like my sister was murdered,” says Martinez Sutton, whose 22-year-old little sister, Rekia Boyd, was shot in the head by an off-duty Chicago detective on Wednesday, March 21. She died the following day at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Boyd’s death comes less than a month after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, leaving many troubled by the regularity with which unarmed people of color are shot, particularly by individuals claiming self-defense. And for those left grieving, the failure of authorities to hold the shooter accountable is the greatest injustice of all.

In the case of Boyd, Chicago police almost immediately echoed the account of the off-duty detective responsible for her death. Police say the officer in question drove up to a group of people in Chicago’s Douglas Park around 1 AM on Wednesday, March 21, to investigate a disturbance near his home. He rolled down his window and asked them to quiet down at which point police say 39-year-old Antonio Cross pulled out a gun forcing the detective to open fire in self-defense, hitting Cross in the hand and striking Boyd in the head.

But neighbors, witnesses and Cross paint a vastly different picture. Cross told WGN News that he was unarmed and on his cell phone at the time of the shooting. When Cross asked why the officer shot him, he says the officer’s response was, “I thought your phone was a gun.” Cross has since been charged with a misdemeanor of aggravated assault.

Local news outlets initially reported that police failed to recover Cross’ alleged weapon. However, Police would not confirm or deny this to Truthout and referred all further questions to the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority (IRPA), the outside body tasked with handling the investigation. The IPRA’s Deputy Chief Administrator William Weeden declined to comment on any details as well, saying, “We cannot comment on an open and ongoing investigation.”

Rekia Boyd’s older brothers, Martinez Sutton and Darian Boyd, told Truthout that their family has received no explanation or even condolences from the Chicago Police Department. “We’ve made multiple attempts to contact them and even asked news stations to please contact them since they won’t talk to us,” said Darian Boyd, adding, “It just makes it that much harder to deal with the grief.”

Read More

Less than a month after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, another unarmed black citizen was gunned down in Chicago. Last week 22-year-old Rekia Boyd was shot in the head by an off-duty Chicago detective. She died the following day.

Police say that the officer in question drove up to a group of people in Chicago’s Douglas Park around 1 am last Wednesday, rolled down his window and asked them to quiet down at which point 39-year-old Antonio Cross pulled out a gun forcing the detective to open fire, hitting Cross in the hand and Boyd in the head.

But Cross, who has since been charged with a misdemeanor of aggravated assault, maintains that he was unarmed and police have yet to recover a weapon. While witnesses have verified Cross’s account to the media, Alderman Michael Chandler of the 24th Ward where the shooting took place says residents who witnessed the shootings have called to complain that they have yet to be contacted by authorities. Chandler also says that police have failed to investigate neighbors’ claims that the officer in question told a crowd “What do I have to do around here to get some peace, quiet and respect? Shoot someone?”, the day before Rekia was shot.

An innocent young woman of color is dead under extremely questionable circumstances, and her family, just like Trayvon Martin’s, is calling for justice. Besides a handful of local Chicago news reports, the death of Rekia Boyd has received little to no attention.I think this speaks to a broader problem. That is to say, the frequent shootings of unarmed African Americans has become so normalized in America that it takes the most outrageous, unjust, and clearly racist cases such as Trayvon’s to get our attention. But as the death of Rekia Boyd and Ramarley Graham, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, and many more before her shows, this will not end with Trayvon Martin.

The fact of the matter is that people of color, particularly black people, in this country are viewed as suspicious and until we confront and organize against the systemic, institutionalized racism that permits the murder of unarmed people of color, things will never change.

Crossposted From AlterNet:

Five longtime activists are challenging a federal law that defines a wide spectrum of peaceful – and in some cases, otherwise lawful – animal rights activism as acts of terrorism. They say that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) violates their First Amendment right to free speech and has had a chilling effect on activists who are refraining from participating in what should be constitutionally protected activity out of fear of being labeled a terrorist.

They have good reason to worry. In 2009, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested and indicted four California protesters for terrorism, each of whom faced 10 years in prison. Their crimes? They “marched, chanted, and chalked” sidewalk slogans outside the homes of animal researchers and distributed fliers about their campaign.

In 2010, federal judge Ronald M. Whyte dismissed the indictments, agreeing with the defense that the charges were too vague because the “behavior in question spans a wide spectrum from criminal conduct to constitutionally protected political protest.” Nevertheless, AETA continues to pose a threat to those participating in animal rights advocacy.

AETA, a 2006 upgrade to the weaker Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA) of 1992, was a bipartisan effort cosponsored by Senators James Inhofe. R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to, in the words of Inhofe, “combat radical animal rights extremists who commit violent acts against innocent people because they work with animals.”

But the vague language in AETA categorizes as terrorism any activity carried out “for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise,” or which causes “the loss of any real or personal property,” including “economic damage” such as a loss of profits. This may apply to peaceful acts committed against “a person or entity having a connection to, relationship with, or transactions with an animal enterprise” — essentially criminalizing boycotts of people or institutions invested in an animal enterprise.

AETA defines an “animal enterprise” as any institution “that uses or sells animals or animal products for profit, food or fiber production, agriculture, education, research, or testing.” So vague and broad is this definition that it could apply to businesses ranging from megacorporations like Wal-Mart, big agribusiness or even your local turkey-serving school cafeteria. Read More