By Elizabeth Renter, Race-Talk contributor,
The Racial Justice Act, only the second of its kind in the United States, has given inmates sentenced to death in North Carolina a potential route to relief. As of today, 114 death row inmates there have filed motions asserting their sentences were tainted by racial bias. While the individual circumstances in each case differ dramatically, from domestic violence to at least one case of serial murders, if they can prove they received the death penalty due in part to racial bias, they will see their death sentence converted the life in prison.
The Economist has a great article, “Rough Justice in America.” Go and read the whole thing.
This jumped out at me:
“You’re (probably) a federal criminal,” declares Alex Kozinski, an appeals-court judge, in a provocative essay of that title. Making a false statement to a federal official is an offence. So is lying to someone who then repeats your lie to a federal official.
Given that any lie you utter may be repeated to a federal official, every lie told in America is a potential criminal offense. Meanwhile, they lie to us all the time, without shame and certainly without fear of prosecution.
Also:
Such cases account for only a tiny share of the Americans behind bars, but they still matter. When so many people are technically breaking the law, it is up to prosecutors to decide whom to pursue. No doubt most prosecutors choose wisely. But members of unpopular groups may not find that reassuring.
Lifetime use of marijuana is rarely associated with emergency room visits, according to an analysis of epidemiologic survey data published online by the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.
Investigators at the University of Michigan reviewed the overall prevalence of drug-related emergency department (ED) visits among lifetime users of illicit substances. Researchers analyzed data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, which is a nationally representative survey of 43,093 residents age 18 or older. The study is the first to use nationally representative data to examine patterns and correlates of drug-related ED visits.
Among those surveyed, subjects that reported using cannabis were the least likely to report an ED visit (1.71 percent). Respondents who reported lifetime use of heroin, tranquilizers, and inhalants were most likely (18.5 percent, 6.3 percent, and 6.2 percent respectively) to report experiencing one or more ED visits related to their drug use.
Investigators concluded, “[M]arijuana was by far the most commonly used (illicit) drug, but individuals who used marijuana had a low prevalence of drug-related ED visits.”
A 2009 Swiss study published in journal BMC Public Health previously reported that the use of cannabis was inversely associated with injuries requiring hospitalization.
A prior case-control study conducted by the University of Missouri also reported an inverse relationship between marijuana use and injury risk, finding, “Self-reported marijuana use in the previous seven days was associated … with a substantially decreased risk of injury.”
Most recently, a RAND study published this month reported that fewer than 200 total patients were admitted to California hospitals in 2008 for “marijuana abuse or dependence.” By contrast, there are an estimated 73,000 annual hospitalizations in California related to the use of alcohol.
These findings belie the myth that adult marijuana use is a primary cause of hospitalizations or ED visits. The reality is that few if any therapeutic or psychoactive substances possess a safety profile comparable to cannabis.
By Alan Bean
This week, Curtis Flowers is being tried for capital murder for the sixth time in Winona, Mississippi. Friends of Justice is observing the trial. In this update from Day Eight, Friends of Justice’s Executive Director explains why the “evidence” offered by the prosecution is fundamentally misleading.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” The prosecution of Curtis Flowers rests on this bit of folk wisdom. Curtis told investigators he never strayed onto the east side of Highway 51 on the morning of July 16, 1996, a day when four innocent people were murdered execution-style at the Tardy furniture store. One witness seeing Curtis Flowers on the east side of the highway might be mistaken, but the state has half-a-dozen witnesses making this claim.
With that much smoke there must be a fire some place.
Or are we all being duped by an elaborate fog machine?
Strip the eye-witness testimony from this case and nothing remains but junk science.
There’s the bloody footprint. The Mississippi Crime Lab has shown that the print was made by a size 10-11 Grant Hill Fila running shoe. An empty shoe box for a pair of 10.5 Grant Hill Filas was found in a chest of drawers owned by Connie Moore, Curtis Flowers’ live-in girlfriend.
Grant Hill Filas were a sensation in the summer of 1996, with over 600,000 pairs in the size 10-11 range purchased nationally. Every young man in Winona who could afford the $100 price tag owned a pair.
Connie Moore says the shoe box is from a pair of Filas she purchased for her son Marcus. Marcus confirms this testimony.
Smoke or fog?
The problem pile grows. The pool of blood grew gradually between the murders and he time the first witness arrived on the scene. Moments after the killing there would have been little blood to step in.
Sam Jones, the first man to witness the scene, has testified that the print wasn’t there when he arrived at the furniture store.
An older white witness, Charles “Porky” Collins, claims to have seen two black men walking toward Tardy’s at around 10:00, a moment or two after Sam Jones ran off to report the crime.
Additionally, a single particle of gunshot residue was found on the web of the defendant’s right hand. District Attorney Doug Evans has a mantra: particles of lead, barium and antimony can only be produced by the discharge of a firearm.
Does this mean Curtis Flowers fired a gun that morning? The jury may be thinking along these lines, but claims from expert witnesses are more modest. A single particle of residue can easily be picked up by casual contact, especially in a highly contaminated environment, such as a police station or police car. Studies have shown that gunshot residue is ubiquitous in these environments.
Judge Joey Loper was asked to restrict testimony on the residue issue but ruled for the state, his standard practice.
Smoke or fog?
For the past few days a parade of compromised black people testified that fourteen years ago they saw Flowers walking in the direction of a garment factory, hanging around a parking lot, returning home, heading downtown, walking in the direction of Tardy’s, arguing with an unidentified stranger in front of Tardy’s and running from the scene of a crime.
Smoke or fog?
Many people claim to have seen the defendant doing many things at many times and in many places; even the prosecutor and defense counsel have a hard time keeping it all straight.
Who are these people, and why do they keep repeating the same testimony year-after-year?
There’s Patricia Hollman, who saw Flowers heading North to arrive at a southern destination.
Elaine Ghoulston, the sharp-eyed neighbor who detected a pair of Grant Hill Fila running shoes at a distance of 200 feet.
Katherine Snow said she saw a five-foot-six stranger with a cap leaning against a car in the garmet factory parking lot. A month later, she remembered that she had seen a five-foot-ten, hatless, Curtis Flowers.
Jeanette Fleming waited seven months to report meeting Curtis Flowers. Fleming was working at McDonald’s when officers took her to the police station. She has no idea how they got her name.
Charles “Porky” Collins witnessed Carmen Rigby entering Tardy Furniture for the last time, Curtis Flowers arguing with an unnamed man in front of the store and Doyle Simpson reporting his gun stolen.
Odell Hallomon claims an extreme addiction to cigarettes drove him to accuse his sister of perjury. In the second trial, Hallomon testified that he and his sister Patricia Hallomon cooked up a story about Flowers to obtain the $30,000 reward.
“When I got out of prison, my momma was on me everyday,” Odell said. After a few weeks of constant harassment from his mother and sister, he got on the phone and told District Attorney Evans he was going to change his story.
Mr. Evans has done his best to harmonize this flurry of testimony, but serious problems remain.
Jeanette Fleming saw Curtis a block from Tardy’s at 9:00 am and Clemmie Fleming saw him running away from the furniture store 60 minutes later. Would a murderer spend a full hour at the crime scene? Where did he go between 9:40, when the bodies were first discovered, and 10:00 when Clemmie Flemming saw him leaving the scene?
While Clemmie Fleming saw Flowers fleeing the scene, Collins saw him engaged in a vigorous argument on the boulevard.
Police initially had two suspects: Doyle Simpson and Curtis Flowers. Shortly after Collins reported his strange tale to the police, Simpson had been eliminated as a suspect. This made Simpson superfluous, but the report could not be altered. Evans copes by pretending that Collins never mentioned a second man.
Why is there no overlap in the way the various witnesses describe the defendant’s physical appearance? They have him wearing clothing in a variety of colors, shapes, lengths and sizes, including a jacket on a scorching Mississippi summer day.
Is the state’s case generating smoke, or is a fog of confusion settling over the courtroom?
Why would any prosecutor allow himself to be associated with witnesses this unconvincing? Because Doug Evans created these witnesses. They are his puppets. They twirl and sing at his command.
At the end of Clemmie Fleming’s testimony on Monday, defense attorney Ray Carter asked her why it took nine months for her to turn on Curtis Flowers.
“They told me there was a baby in it,” the dead-pan witness responded.
“A baby?” Carter said.
Clemmie Fleming explained that 16 year-old Bobo Stewart, one of the victims, was just a baby in her eyes. Outraged by this new information, she broke her silence.
Carter asked one final question. “You don’t believe that Curtis Flowers killed those people at Tardy’s, do you Clemmie?”
“No, sir,” she replied softly.
Outraged by the death of an innocent adolescent, Clemmie Fleming decided to implicate an innocent man.
Ponder that, dear reader, and you’ll know why Friends of Justice is in Winona.
The tension at the courthouse deepens by the day. By now, everybody on the white side of the room knows who I am, and they’re all glaring
I was standing outside the courthouse when I glimpsed a middle-aged gentleman looking in my direction.
“By the way,” he said, “I find you disgusting.”
“Thank you, sir,” I replied.
“You’re welcome,” he snarled.
###
Dr. Alan Bean is Executive Director of Friends of Justice, an organization that defends due process in Texas and the South. Friends of Justice emerged as a grassroots response to the 1999 Tulia drug sting, and was the first organization to attract national attention to the “Jena 6” case.
Marijuana prohibition continues to be a windfall for drug treatment providers. According to the most recent figures published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nearly six out of ten (57 percent) persons referred to treatment for marijuana as their ‘primary substance of abuse,’ were referred there by the criminal justice system.
By contrast, criminal justice referrals for all drugs accounted for just 37 percent of the overall total of drug treatment admissions in 2008.
“Primary marijuana admissions were less likely than all admissions combined to be self-referred to treatment,” the study found. Specifically, the reported noted that only 15 percent of marijuana treatment admissions were self-referred (a category that includes individual self-referrals, as well as referrals by friends and family). This percentage is less than half the number of self-referrals for alcohol and cocaine, and about one-quarter the number of self-referrals reported for heroin abuse (56 percent).
Given the longstanding criticism that America’s drug treatment resources are woefully underfunded and unable to meet demand, it is shocking and shameful that so many of these facilities are being used to warehouse minor marijuana offenders whose sole criteria for admission is that they ran afoul of the criminal law. Yet since 1998 the percentage of individuals in drug treatment primarily for marijuana has risen approximately 25 percent — even though the proportion of marijuana treatment admissions from all sources other than the criminal justice system has been declining since the mid-1990s.
In fact, as I previously wrote for Alternet earlier this year (“The Feds Are Addicted to Pot — Even If You Aren’t”), some 37 percent of the estimated 288,000 thousand people who entered drug treatment for cannabis in 2007 (the most recent for which data is available) had not reported using it in the 30 days previous to their admission. Another 16 percent of those admitted said that they’d used marijuana three times or fewer in the month prior to their admission.
Are these people addicts? Hardly.
The latest federal statistics make it clear that it is not marijuana use per se that is driving these treatment admission rates; it is marijuana prohibition that is primarily driving the drug ‘treatment’ gravy train. More often than not, ordinary (and typically young — the average age of admission for marijuana is 24) Americans are being busted for marijuana and are being forced to choose between rehab or jail. It’s a dirty little secret that’s been a boon for treatment clinics, and a bust for everyone else.
By Kathleen Wells, Race-Talk contributor
Randy Credico is a former comedian turned political activist/drug law reformer who has worked as Director for the William Moses Knustler Fund for Racial Justice the past 12 years.
Now, he’d like to take on and challenge Senator Chuck Schumer for his seat in the Senate.
Kathleen Wells: Randy, talk to me about the challenge you are mounting for the Senate seat of Senator Chuck Schumer?
Randy Credico: I’m running to get on the ballot against Chuck Schumer – on the Democratic ballot line for the primary in September. I am also seeking the endorsement of other parties, lest the Democratic Party pulls some tricks and tries to keep me off the ballot. I’ll probably have to go through the signature route. If I don’t make it that way, if I get challenged by Schumer, which I believe I will, then I will end up with the Green Party.
Kathleen Wells: So essentially you’re saying you have got to collect signatures and it may not…
Randy Credico: I have to collect 15,000 signatures, which is not really a tall order and would include half the congressional districts in the state — 200 signatures from 200 registered Democrats in 15 congressional races. And we’ve got 14 of those congressional districts that kind of border or [are] inside of New York City. So, it’s not that difficult.
Kathleen Wells: It’s not that difficult, but what is the likelihood of it happening?
Randy Credico: Well, it depends on how well I’m able to organize this group of supporters and volunteers that are joining my struggle to beat Chuck Schumer. He is basically a Blue Dog Democrat in the State of New York. And there are a lot of progressive Democrats, particularly in the primary, the activist Democrats who are not happy with Chuck Schumer. He has never faced a real test since he ran against D’Amato in 1998 and beat him.
Kathleen Wells: You’re a self-professed political satirist/impressionist and social activist? Tell me, what is your motivation to run for political office and specifically to run against Senator Chuck Schumer?
Randy Credico: Well, for many years I did political humor, I did impressions. I worked in Vegas back in the late 70s, mid 80s. Then I worked comedy clubs. I was on the Tonight Show in 1984 with Johnny Carson. And I was on the Charlie Rose show as a political satirist back in 1992, and I’ve done a couple of albums.
And in the last 12 years, I have done comedy sporadically, but also I ran an organization called the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. That was my primary occupation, and I worked within the criminal justice system in the state of New York, in particular [with] the Rockefeller drug laws. I also worked on a project in Tulia, Texas. Our organization spearheaded the movement to help release forty-six mostly African-Americans in Tulia, Texas, who were hand guided into the prison system in Texas based on very racist drug operations, and we were able to get a victory down there. It was a lot of work. [We] spent three and a half years [and] a couple hundred thousand dollars that we raised making the video by Sara and Emily Knustler, the [younger] daughters of Bill Knustler, and getting a lot of media attention. [We] organiz[ed] “Mothers of the Tulia Disappeared,” which was the offspring of the “Mothers of New York Disappeared,” an offspring of the William Moses Knustler Fund for Racial Justice.
So I did that and then we got some changes in the laws in New York in 2004, 2005, and 2009 — not significant changes, moderate changes. It did lead to the release of a lot of people. The other day Anthony Williams got out [after spending] nineteen years for two dime bags. Of course, he’s black, and he was tried up in Albany County, beaten up by the police there. He just got out two or three days ago. I was not there for his release, [but I] wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about him.
The criminal justice system in the United States is a repressive, racist from-top to-bottom enterprise with 3 million people in prison in the United States. There are 70,000 [in prison] in New York, now down to about 61 or 62,000 — mostly black and Latinos. They keep saying the criminal justice is the best system in the world. I think it’s one of the worst systems in the world, because we’ve got so many people in prison — three times as many as China, and they’ve got four times or five times our population. We’ve got double or triple what Russia has [in prison].
Why am I running? I am at my wit’s end. You go to the courthouse, you watch a white judge, a white prosecutor, a mostly white jury giving heavy sentences to black women, black men, Latino men, Latino women — all poor. Their families are there, the mothers watching their kids being snagged away and taken up to Attica for, manufactured crimes. It’s so profound.
I figured Chuck Schumer would be the perfect person to run against to highlight the things that really do bother me. Chuck Schumer is owned by the banks, by Wall Street. I call him Dr. Bankenstein. He is owned by them. He’s responsible for, in 1999, [during] his first couple months in office, the repeal of the protective legislation, The Glass-Steagall Act, that prohibited commercial banks from making these wild investments. He did that at the behest of his owners, and then when they collapsed, he bailed them out.
So, I’m dealing with a very, very powerful figure. I’m really testing the limits of our democracy by running against him, particularly in a financial state like New York, and I think it’s imperative that somebody runs against him.
Kathleen Wells: Is your motivation the fact that you have worked as the director for the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice for 12 years? Is that your motivation, the criminal justice system? Or is your motivation the fact that Chuck Schumer is just all-powerful, omnipotent in New York?
Randy Credico: Well, it’s twofold. The criminal justice system has driven me to the brink where I don’t know what to do at this point. Schumer was on the House Judiciary Committee, and he helped put together mandatory minimum sentences, [and] and he denied restoring an extra appeal for people on death row in the Omnibus Crime Bill. You have to take a look at his record. And that’s a really racist position as far as I am concerned. Yes, it is about race.
Race in America is my number one thing. Bill Kunstler was my idol. He was a John Brown with a law degree. [When] I look at the criminal justice system right now [or] at the drug war, I look at them the same way I look at the Fugitive Slave Law. We have slave catchers coming in from Long Island into New York City as cops, and shanghaiing African-Americans into the criminal justice system, into the prison system.
Kathleen Wells: Let’s go back a bit. You said that the criminal justice system is racist. What I want to ask you is how do you define racism? And give me an example of seeing that racism played out.
Randy Credico: Well, I’ll just give you an example. Here in New York City, for example, only three or four percent of the people that go to jail for a drug crime are white, and 96, 97 percent are black and Latinos, and they’re all poor. So the juries are mostly white, the prosecutors are almost exclusively white, the judges are white — as white as can be — so you got this triangulation there. And the police are mostly white, from rural areas like in Long Island.
You have hapless victims that usually plea out. If they don’t plea out, they get a long prison sentence, and then they’re completely screwed for the rest of their life. Once they plea out to a felony, they’re under state control [much as] you had [under] slavery. After slavery, you had convict leasing, which has been described as worse than slavery, if you read Oshinsky’s book on it or the book by the Wall Street Journal reporter that’s called Slavery by Another Name. You had that up until 1941.
Franklin Roosevelt wouldn’t pass or try to pass an anti-lynching law because the people that were being killed were black. Take a look at the figures here. You hear cops talking to kids on the street; they use the N-word. They’re only targeting blacks and Latinos and young kids; it fills up this real monster of an enterprise. They keep this dirty engine going with black and brown flesh.
Kathleen Wells: Okay, but you know, I asked you to define racism. You’re a white man, and I’m…
Randy Credico: Racism? I’ve got my own level of prejudice. Everyone has a level of prejudice.
Kathleen Wells: But prejudice and racism…
Randy Credico: There’s prejudice and then there is racism. It’s this… I guess you would say it’s a hatred of another race.
Kathleen Wells: Right. But is this racism economic-motivated, psychological, sociological, biological? What is the impetus for the racism?
Randy Credico: Racism is in the fabric of the cloth of the nation. It goes [back to] the middle passage, to slavery, to convict leasing [to] Jim Crow. Jim Crow and convict leasing were simultaneous. Horrible period of time, just horrible! And now, it hasn’t changed. This country is so racist, and you have the drug laws that were initiated by Nixon and then Rockefeller and then Reagan.
These are planned schemes; they’re almost like what were called the Carlsbad Decrees, but only on African-Americans. They’ve got TV shows on it. You’ve got “Cops,” where this voyeur nation is seeing blacks and Latinos being shoved into the prison system. You’ve got MSNBC. In spite of their reputation of being a liberal news network, they have a show called “Lockup.”
There are so many prisons, but you know it’s primarily voyeurism of blacks and Latinos all over the country, and it’s an epidemic; it’s a sickness.
There have been some changes, but the beat goes on. Even though the Rockefeller drug laws have been amended slightly, but they have not been repealed. I’m for full repeal.
What’s the racism? America is one of the most racist countries in the history of the planet. Slavery was worse here than it ever was in Egypt or any other country. The Romans didn’t treat the slaves as the slaves were treated here.
How did slavery exist if it weren’t for racism? So you have 150 years later — not that long a period of time — a lot of hatred. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s a superiority complex.
You know it’s racist when you’ve been to the courtrooms like I have and you see the way blacks are treated like chattel. If they were all Italians or all Irish or all Jews only going to the prison system here, believe me, this wouldn’t exist. It’s just that there’s a collective racism in this country that allows this to happen.
I hear the way they talk — cops, judges. The whole system is corrupt, from top to bottom. And the only way it could exist is the level of racism that we have in this country. You have it in England; you have it in France; but it’s particularly vile in this country.
Kathleen Wells: So let’s talk about some specifics. You mentioned the Rockefeller Drug Law, and I know…
Randy Credico: That’s a state issue.
Kathleen Wells: That’s a state issue, I know, that…
Randy Credico: That’s a state issue.
Kathleen Wells: And I know that last April, it was reformed in your state. Now just let me give a brief overview as to the drug law — the Rockefeller Drug Law. It gave a penalty for selling two ounces or more of heroine, morphine, raw or prepared opium, cocaine, or Cannabis, including marijuana.
Randy Credico: Not Cannabis.
That’s been out since 1979. It was out early. It’s really cocaine and heroine and crack. And the crack and the cocaine are on the same level, something like the federal [law] where it was 100:1 and now [it's] 18:1.
Kathleen Wells: Exactly.
Randy Credico: Now it’s two ounces to sale, eight ounce possession, which will get you 15 to 25 years to life sentence. I see people get 62 years to life sentences because they get one for possession, one for sale [plus] the conspiracy rap. The judge would throw it all together and end up with 62 years.
They also had, until the laws were changed, what was called the Predicate Offender Law, which was from the same era, where if you sold a dime bag of cocaine you could have gotten [up to] 25 years, which is the same as [for] rape and second-degree murder. I saw it happen many times. Gary S. King is doing 12.5 to 25 years for attempted sale of a nickel bag. He is black, of course. Now you can get a flat one to nine years for selling a dime bag.
And this is not anecdotal. I can tell you a million stories like this with the raids on the homes by these white shock troops that go in with the no-knock search warrants, the stun grenades.
Kathleen Wells: What is your response to critics who say, “If you don’t do the crime, you don’t do the time?”
Randy Credico: I think it’s time for that hackneyed phrase to disappear from the American lexicon because these crimes are not really crimes. These are invented crimes. Many people smoke a cigarette or drink a beer or do drugs and it’s a social illness — drug abuse.
The economy is in such tatters that [some] people have no other way to make a living. What are you supposed to do? Just sit at home all the time since you’ve been written out of the economy? A lot of people just been written out of this economy, and they’re not allowed to jump into it. They’re not allowed to jump into the educational process. There’s so much discrimination and racism in the application of these laws.
So it’s okay to do the crime if you’re white and you got money, but it’s not okay to do the crime if you’re black and have no money? That’s the way it boils down.
And there are so many other kinds of moral crimes that are being committed by credit card companies, economic crimes committed by Wall Street, by the military. Those are real crimes. Killing a million people in Iraq — that’s a crime against humanity.
Kathleen Wells is on Facebook.
Kathleen Wells, J.D., is a political correspondent for Race-Talk. Kathleen is a native of Los Angeles and has degrees in political science and law, from UCLA and UC Berkeley, respectively. She writes/blogs on law and politics.
By Mikhail Lyubansky, Prof. University of Illinois, Race-Talk contributor
I’ve been reading, talking, and thinking a lot about justice lately. And the deeper I get into it, the more evident it is that our justice system isn’t meeting our needs. What we want, I think, is a justice system that produces not just rehabilitation, but redemption. Is it any wonder that Shawshank speaks to us the way it does?
Redemption does happens in the real world. Consider the case of Wilbert Rideau, who in 1961 killed a bank teller during a botched robbery and served 44 years in prison (decades longer than others who had committed similar crimes) before finally being released. While in prison, Rideau not only “became rehabilitated” but started an all-Black magazine in the prison and, after mandatory desegregation laws were finally implemented (Rideau is Black), took over as the editor of the main prison publication, The Angolite. NPR summarized his next 25 years:
For 25 years, Rideau reported on events that were taking place within Angola’s walls — covering topics such as the mishandling of AIDS funds for prisoners, the brutality of electrocutions and the pervasive sexual violence inside the prison. During Rideau’s years as editor, The Angolite won the George Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award — and Rideau became a correspondent for Fresh Air, reporting on what it was like to live in solitary confinement and how prisoners feared for their safety on a daily basis.
Remarkably, considering the violence and inhumane treatment he describes, Rideau says that prison saved him by introducing him to reading and writing, which in turn gave his life meaning.
Rideau’s story is as inspiring as anything produced by Hollywood. Yet, had it not been for a fortuitous court ruling having nothing to do with him, Rideau’s redemption would not have happened at all. Rideau was sentenced to death for his crime and lived on death row until 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty (temporarily, it turned out), giving Rideau the second chance he needed.
Stories of redemption are, unfortunately, all too rare. However, despite the anti-segregation laws, much of the racial bias Rideau experienced continues to pervade the entire criminal justice system.
It starts with law enforcement
In the wake of Arizona’s new legislation permitting law enforcement officials to stop anyone suspected of being undocumented and to demand documentation of legal status, racial profiling is suddenly getting front page coverage. But though it might be a relatively new approach to controlling the border, perceptions of racially biased policing practices have been around for a long time.
For example, data from a national sample of 7,034 people stopped by police in previous 12 months indicate that
Black men are 35 percent more likely than white men to report being stopped by police for a traffic violation (Lundman & Kaufman, 2003).
Though this particular study examined perceptions rather than actual “objective” data, where available (not all states require police departments to report or even track racial information during stops), such data consistently support the perception of bias.
Consider some recent racial profiling data from my home state of Illinois, where the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has been compiling racial profiling data for almost 10 years. According to the 2008 data (the most recent available at the time of this writing), “minority drivers” were 13% more likely to be be stopped (after controlling for demographic differences in population) and more than twice as likely to have their car searched (this requires consent but consent is given more than 90% of the time).
When confronted with such data, police officers (and chiefs) usually respond that they are merely doing their job — that the racial discrepancy in stops and searches merely reflects group differences in criminal behavior. Yet, the city’s own data suggest otherwise. Those consensual searches? They yielded contraband (either weapons or drugs) for 15% of the “minority drivers” compared to almost 25% of “caucasian drivers (see arrows at bottom of table below). If there were true probably cause, that kind of difference wouldn’t happen.
Of course, law enforcement is just one half of the justice system. There is also the criminal trial and the appeals that often follow. Unfortunately, this part of the process is no less biased.
Incarceration
It’s relatively common knowledge that the U.S. prisons are filled primarily by people of color. What is less commonly known is how our prison population has skyrocketed in the past 30 years and that the growth is a direct function of the government’s War on Drugs. Michelle Alexander explains in the introduction of her provocative new book, The New Jim Crow:
The impact of the drug war has been astounding. In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase (Mauer, 2006). The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the United States, the number is eight times that, or 750 per 100,000 (PEW Center, 2008).
Alexander goes on to point out that “the racial dimension of incarceration is its most striking feature” and that “in Washington, D.C….it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.” (Braman, 2004, citing D.C. Department of Corrections data from 2000). The racial comparisons are indeed striking, as evident in the national statistics below.
Even more remarkable than the racial discrepancy itself is that it cannot be explained by actual rates of drug crimes. Studies consistently show that people use and sell illegal drugs at highly similar rates (Alexander cites a dozen different studies). If anything, when race group differences in drug crimes emerge, it is white males who tend to be the highest perpetrators. Despite this, Alexander reports that in some states, black men have been incarcerated on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater than white men.
The greatest crime of all
It gets worse. Seventy five percent of those convicted of participating in a Federal drug enterprise under the general provisions of SS 848 have been white and only about 24% of the defendants have been black. Yet, 78% of the defendants chosen for capital prosecution have been Black.
The same racial bias can be seen in other capital crimes. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, since 1930 nearly 90% of those executed for the crime of rape in this country were African-Americans.
The racial discrepancy in the application of the death penalty was so severe and so clearly biased that in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court placed a moratorium on the death penalty and converted the death sentences of hundreds of death row inmates to life in prison. Wilbert Rideau was among this lucky group. As part of the 5-4 majority, Justice William Douglas explained his reasoning:
“The discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty enables the penalty to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout, or if he is a member of a suspect and unpopular minority, and saving those who, by social position, may be in a more protected position.” Justice Douglas (1972, Furman v. Georgia).
The moratorium lasted a mere four years, ending in 1976 with Gregg v. Georgia. At that time, the Court was apparently convinced that the states had enacted legislation that would remove the bias and arbitrary imposition. Unfortunately, despite the Court’s conviction, the racial discrepancy began to emerge almost immediately upon reinstatement.
At the moment, it only seems to be getting worse. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that about 50% of those currently on the nation’s death rows are from racial minority populations, which represent about 20% of the country’s population.
Put another way: If he were on death row today, Wilbert Rideau would likely remain there until his execution. And the numbers in the prisons are still on the rise, even as violent crime has dropped off. It may not be coincidence.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander asserts that the U.S. criminal justice system is currently functioning as a contemporary system of racial control, much like slavery and Jim Crow laws have in the past. She points out that though racial discrimination is no longer legal or socially acceptable, “discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public benefits; denial of the right to vote; and exclusion from jury service — are suddenly legal once you’re labeled a felon.”
Alexander argues that the fact that over 50% of the young black men in any large U.S. city are either under the control of the state or saddled with a criminal record is not just a function of poverty or poor choices but “evidence of a new racial caste system at work.”
If she is right, and the data certainly don’t contradict her position, there is no choice (for those interested in justice), but to mobilize for a new (and hopefully, final) civil rights movement.
For all the injustice we have wrought, there is still the opportunity for redemption.
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I’m a member of the teaching faculty in the department of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I teach, among other courses, The Psychology of Race and Ethnicity. My research and writing interests focus on immigration, racial/ethnic group relations and social justice. I write a blog about race and racial issues for Psychology Today. Please follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mikhaill (@mikhaill)
By Kelly Virella, City Limits Magazine
A week after Arizona enacted a law permitting local police to stop people they suspect are undocumented immigrants, advocates across the country are drawing attention to a related issue: the federal government’s ongoing efforts to nudge other police and sheriff’s departments policies closer to Arizona’s.
By 2013, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) expects to enroll every jail in America in a network that allows the agency to find and detain undocumented immigrants who have been arrested.
Nearly 150 jails (including New York City’s jail system) are already in enrolled in the program. And now, advocates allege in a lawsuit filed today, federal authorities are refusing to release information needed to protect arrestees’ civil rights. Since 2008, the program—Secure Communities—has misidentified more than 5,800 arrested U.S. citizens as undocumented workers, the lawsuit says.
“In light of ICE’s intention to expand Secure Communities, [we] seek information necessary to facilitate meaningful public discourse and increase government Transparency,” the lawsuit says. “The public needs information about the mechanism for the program’s implementation in order to hold local officials accountable for their decisions.”
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), one of the defendants, cited the merits of Secure Communities in an e-mail to City Limits. The program has identified more than 18,000 “aliens” charged with or convicted of serious crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping — 4,000 of whom have already been removed from the United States, said Matthew Chandler, the spokesman.
“ICE’s Secure Communities strategy is leading the agency’s efforts to improve and modernize the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States,” Chandler said. “Now that this FOIA request is the subject of a lawsuit, we will release release any information as appropriate through the litigation process.”
The three immigrant rights groups who filed the lawsuit allege that DHS and four other federal agencies or offices have failed to respond to their requests for information about the program. The information the groups asked for included the Secure Communities program’s policies, procedures or objectives, as well as demographic information about those detained and removed under the program.
In addition to DHS, the requests—written by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law and the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network—were sent to ICE, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The federal Freedom of Information Act required the authorities to respond to the groups’ February 3 requests within 20 days of receiving them, the lawsuit says. Four of the five authorities replied in writing that the groups will have to pay for the information and/or that the information won’t be expedited, the lawsuit alleges. One authority—the Executive Office for Immigration Review—has ignored the request entirely.
Photo courtesy of Mizue Aizeki, courtesy of New Sanctuary Coalition/City Limits. Members of Make the Road New York and the New York Civic Participation Project join with one hundred New Yorkers to stand against the criminalization of immigrants and to demand fair and just immigration reform.
By Duchess Harris, Race-Talk contributor
The information in this blog has been modified to protect my client and to comply with the Minnesota Rules of Professional Responsibility.
When I launched my blog a year ago today I wrote, “My goal is to provide legal assistance to disenfranchised women and their families. This will benefit women who are leaving prison, and their children; it will also benefit me, the law student, who is learning how to advocate for them. Women who have been incarcerated need advocates and I know what it’s like to advocate for someone who doesn’t have a voice. My experience as a parent, an academic, and as a law student will help me to bring these women’s stories to a wider audience. The stories of these mothers have the potential to inspire law schools across the nation to open clinics similar to the one that I will participate in. Just as you have listened to my story, I can listen to their stories, and let you hear their voices. God gave Noah the Rainbow sign, my name is Duch, I’m ready this time.”
I thought I was ready, but I don’t know if anyone is ready for the work I’ve done this year. Films like “Precious” present the stories of the poor and there is almost always transformation, realization, redemption, accompanied by moving theme music. Lives are changed in the span of two hours, usually through the intervention of a teacher, a social worker, one person who believes they can make a difference. I wanted to be that person. But reality is a much grimmer affair. There’s no easy solution for the crushing blows that come with poverty – drug abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, ignorance and mental illness. Not even Oprah, with all her billions, can wave a magic wand and fix it.
Here are just a few of the daunting statistics about women in prison:
- 57% have a history of physical or sexual abuse.
- 63% are non-white or minorities
- 64% have not finished high school
- 74% used drugs regularly before their incarceration
- Most women in prison are incarcerated for non-violent crimes. Women frequently engage in criminal activities with their romantic partners.
In the fall I met “Star,” a 44-year-old Black woman incarcerated at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee who could check all of the above. Her older sister’s husband molested “Star” when she was 13. She had a baby when she was 19, another child at 21, married that child’s father, and then had her third child at 28.
Her husband used to beat her and she had a restraining order against him. He eventually crossed state lines and committed several bank robberies, and is incarcerated in a penitentiary in Virginia. She shared that this was a huge relief, because he was violent and HIV positive. Her incarceration was for aiding and abetting her husband.
She arrived at Shakopee in December 2006. At the time, her youngest child was 12. She sent her daughter to live with the same brother-in law that molested her. Her daughter was molested and eventually removed from their home. He was not prosecuted. Star was set to be released four days before Christmas, and at that point she’d regain custody of her 9th grade daughter who hadn’t seen her in three years. There would be much work to do, to break the cycle of violence and poverty.
But that’s where I came in. As a certified student attorney from William Mitchell College of Law, Star asked me to help her obtain a “dissolution of marriage” from her husband, who would not be eligible for parole until 2033. That was my legal assignment. When she was released, I was also responsible for helping her re-unite with her daughter, obtain housing, and employment. She had a history of drug abuse and claimed to have been clean for four years. But that didn’t add up, because she also admitted that she missed her mother’s 2006 funeral because she was strung out. I was to help Star with rehab as well.
She was the poor, drug addict and sexual abuse survivor. I was the privileged professor/law student who was there to make the difference, to, help her turn her life around. There was no theme music. There was no happy ending.
I worked on Star’s divorce from September to December. I went to visit her a week before her release and assured her that I do everything in my power to help her “re-enter” society. When I called after the holiday to tell her that the divorce papers were drafted, I discovered that she and her daughter had left the state to return to her sister’s home, to live with her and the brother in law that had molested Star, and Star’s daughter.
In real life, it isn’t precious.
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Duchess Harris is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, author of the forthcoming Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton, and co-editor with Bruce D. Baum of the forthcoming Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity. She is also a J.D. candidate at the William Mitchell College of Law.
