PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across this country at more than five times the rate of whites (5:1 ratio) while African Americans comprise only 13 percent of the population of the United States as a whole. There can be no doubt about it: Young people, regardless of race, are simply more likely to be wrongfully convicted than adults. There are many reasons for this, many of which are rooted in the special developmental vulnerabilities of children. “Children and teenagers are categorically more suggestible, compliant, and vulnerable to outside pressures than adults. They are less able to weigh risks and consequences; less likely to understand their legal rights; and less likely to understand what attorneys do or do not do or how attorneys can help them. Notwithstanding, the United States stands alone as the only nation in the free world that sentences people to life without parole for crimes committed before turning 18.“
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: " Critical questions regarding the quality of life among young male adults must be addressed by our criminal justice system. First, why is one third of the prison population in America black, regardless of the crime, when African Americans constitute only 13 percent of the total population as a whole? Second, why do police officers who conduct these outrageous programs of framing innocent drug defendants concentrate on African Americans? Third, why were so many innocent black defendants arrested for drug possession when there is no reason to believe that African Americans are more likely than whites to use illegal drugs? Fourth, why are African American teen age boys convicted and imprisoned for murder, attempted murder, and accessory to murder at five times the rate as their white male teen age counterparts? The simple answer, according to Samuel Gross and his colleagues, is ” Because that’s what they do in all aspects of drug-law enforcement. Guilty or innocent, they always focus disproportionately on African Americans."
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PAPER: Critical Race Theory; Wrongful Convictions and disparate exonerations of minority and white youths in the United States. By Prof. Kenneth A. Jordan, Dept. Of Social and Behavioral Sciences; Savannah State University; Savannah; Georgia.
GIST: From the abstract: "Critical Race Theory is a dialogue for raising awareness of policies and practices that have had a disproportionately negative impact on racial minorities in particular and youth in general irrespective of race. There were 2,310 people serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed as juveniles (known as JLWOP) at the end of 2016. This study examines the data extracted from the national registry of exonerations in the United States on every known exoneration from 1989 to 2020. Contributing factors to such disparate convictions among young African American males such as false confessions, mistaken identity, false accusations, witness tampering, perjury or false statements under oath particularly by police officers, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate legal defense, and mistaken witness identification are highlighted and discussed as major contributing factors to the exoneree’s eventual release. This study assumes the position that, although all lives matter, it appears that The study proffers policy implications and policy changes that appear to be viable solutions to this egregious and tragic abuse of humankind.
GIST: From the text: "In America today, an extended police record and/or prison sentence for most African Americans is tantamount to a death sentence.
Once you become a convicted felon in America, you have no more rights than you had while you were enslaved on America’s plantations as indentured servants [4].
“After all, with a criminal conviction often comes a lifetime of discrimination in employment, housing, and in some states in the United States, a permanent loss of voting rights” [5].
The Netflix miniseries “When They See Us” is a documentary on the exonerated 5 known as the Central Park five.
These were five Black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were coerced into providing false confessions and then wrongly convicted of raping a white woman who was jogging in New York’s s Central Park in 1989.
The boys served between six and 13 years before a serial rapist admitted to the crime and his confession was supported by DNA evidence.
In 2002, the convictions were vacated and in 2015, New York City settled with the five for $40 million dollars [6].
While this money may provide some consolation or solace to the families for the pain, suffering, and hurt of being without the company and presence of their loved ones, it can never be overstated that no dollar amount can be attached to the loss of years and quality of life and human experiences endured while sitting behind bars in any jail or prison system especially for a crime in which they did not commit.
The story of the Exonerated 5 brought to light the influence of the media on the criminal justice system in American, but one of the most memorable moments of the case was actually an ad taken out in the New York Times on May 1, 1989 where real estate developer Donald Trump paid $85,000 for a full-page ad calling for the death penalty for the five boys prior to their trial [6].
“Sadly, the story of the exonerated 5 is not a unique one in American.
What happened to those boys is often compared to the story of The Scottsboro Boys in 1931, where nine Black teenage boys from 13 to 21 years of age, entirely innocent of any crime, were framed and convicted on false charges of “rape” and condemned to death in the Alabama electric chair for being falsely accused of rape by two white women.
They were tried by an all- white, all-male jury who quickly sentenced 8 of them to death while the trial of the youngest, a 13-year-old child, ended in a hung jury when one juror favored life imprisonment rather than death.
After four years in prison, all charges were dropped against 6 of the boys, a seventh boy was paroled and two returned to prison after violating their parole.
In 2013, they all finally received justice as an Alabama Judge pardoned the remaining men who had not already been pardoned.
These are only a few of a litany of cases, many of them decades long, that have represented racial injustice in the Deep South.
One of the defendants received a pardon before his death in 1976. At that time, he was the only Scottsboro Boy known to be alive.
Nothing was done for the others because state law did not permit posthumous pardons.”
This case has, over the years, inspired books, and films, as well as a Broadway musical [7]. African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across this country at more than five times the rate of whites (5:1 ratio) while African Americans comprise only 13 percent of the population of the United States as a whole. There can be no doubt about it: Young people, regardless of race, are simply more likely to be wrongfully convicted than adults.
There are many reasons for this, many of which are rooted in the special developmental vulnerabilities of children. “Children and teenagers are categorically more suggestible, compliant, and vulnerable to outside pressures than adults. They are less able to weigh risks and consequences; less likely to understand their legal rights; and less likely to understand what attorneys do or do not do or how attorneys can help them. Notwithstanding, the United States stands alone as the only nation in the free world that sentences people to life without parole for crimes committed before turning 18 “ (Rover, 2021).
Critical questions regarding the quality of life among young male adults must be addressed by our criminal justice system.
First, why is one third of the prison population in America black, regardless of the crime, when African Americans constitute only 13 percent of the total population as a whole?
Second, why do police officers who conduct these outrageous programs of framing innocent drug defendants concentrate on African Americans?
Third, why were so many innocent black defendants arrested for drug possession when there is no reason to believe that African Americans are more likely than whites to use illegal drugs?
Fourth, why are African American teen age boys convicted and imprisoned for murder, attempted murder, and accessory to murder at five times the rate as their white male teen age counterparts? The simple answer, according to Samuel Gross and his colleagues, is ” Because that’s what they do in all aspects of drug-law enforcement. Guilty or innocent, they always focus disproportionately on African Americans."
The entire paper can be read at:
https://gexinonline.com/uploads/articles/article-jmhsb-148.pdf
