Jim Crow is Alive & Well

Thanks to Ted for sending this along.

Dear Friend,

For 35 years, Jim Crow justice in Louisiana has kept Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox locked in solitary confinement for a crime everyone knows they didn't commit.

Despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence, the "Angola 3", spend 23 hours each day in a 6x9 cell on the site of a former plantation. Prison officials - and the state officials who could intervene - won't end the terrible sentence. They've locked them up and thrown away the key because they challenged a system that deals an uneven hand based on the color of one's skin and tortures those who assert their humanity.

We can help turn things around by making it a political liability for the authorities at Angola to continue the racist status quo, and by forcing federal and state authorities to intervene. I've signed on with ColorOfChange.org to demand an investigation into this clear case of unequal justice. Will you join us?

http://www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=2515-253960

When ColorOfChange.org spoke up about the Jena 6, it was about more than helping six Black youth in a small town called Jena. It was about standing up against a system of unequal justice that deals an uneven hand based on the color of one's skin. That broken system is at work again and ColorOfChange.org is joining The Innocence Project and Amnesty International to challenge it in the case of the Angola 3.

Angola sits on 18,000 acres of former plantation land in Louisiana and is estimated to be one of the largest prisons in the United States. Angola's history is telling: once considered one of the most violent, racially segregated prison in America, almost a prisoner a day was stabbed, shot or raped. Prisoners were often put in inhumane extreme punishment camps for small infractions. The Angola 3 - Herman, Albert and Robert - organized hunger and work strikes within the prison in the 70's to protest continued segregation, corruption and horrific abuse facing the largely Black prisoner population.

Shortly after they spoke out, the Angola 3 were convicted of murdering a prison guard by an all-white jury. It is now clear that these men were framed to silence their peaceful revolt against inhumane treatment. Since then, they have spent every day for 35 years in 6x9 foot cells for a crime they didn't commit.

Herman and Albert are not saints. They are the first to admit they've committed crimes. But, everyone agrees that their debts to society for various robbery convictions were paid long ago.

NBC News/Dateline just aired a piece this week about the plight of the Angola 3. And it's time to finally get some justice for Herman and Albert. For far too long, court officials have stalled and refused to review their cases. Evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations have not swayed them.

It's now time for the Governor of Louisiana and the United States Congress, which provides the funding for federal prisons like Angola, to step in and say enough is enough. Please join us in calling for Governor Bobby Jindal and your Congressperson to initiate an immediate and full investigation into the case of the Angola 3.

http://www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=2515-253960



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Oh, And By The Way . . . Roy Pearson Lost His Job

I have been remiss in reporting that Roy L. Pearson, the Washington, D.C. administrative law judge who sued his local dry cleaner for losing his pants, has not only lost that case, but also lost his job.

In a response to a Freedom Of Information Act request by Associated Press, Lisa Coleman, the District of Columbia's general counsel, wrote last week that Pearson's term as an administrative law judge expired on May 2, 2007, and that the Commission on Selection and Tenure of Administrative Law Judges voted not to reappoint him.

So, there is someone paying attention in the District of Columbia!

Pearson showed a real lack of judgment -- in fact he proved himself to be an ass -- by filing a $67,000,000 lawsuit against his local dry cleaners because they lost his pants and breached the contract implied by the "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign hanging in the establishment. His lawsuit refused to acknowledge that they found his pants and returned them to him.

Pearson was mildly ridiculed by the judge at the trial, too mildly for my liking, and has been dragged through the press much more gingerly than he deserved.

Justice, however, has been served, and it will be amusing, sadly amusing, to watch this man's career take the downturn it so richly deserves. Disbarment is too good for him, and we can only hope that he will never be involved in any job that requires him to help turn the wheels of jurisprudence.

But I hold out no hope.

After all, Clarence Thomas made it to the Supreme Court having never argued any case at any time in any courtroom in all of his career, so there might be hope for Roy Pearson. Maybe he can take the black seat on the Supreme Court when Thomas dies, resigns, or is impeached for stupidity. They're sort of peas in a pod, the two! Stupid men of color wielding power they never deserved and were unqualified to possess.

Here's the AP story at Yahoo.


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Georgia Court Orders Man Freed in Sex Case

In 2003, a 17-year-old boy, honor student, star athlete, was convicted of aggravated child molestation for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. Adult prison. Convicted of rape at 17 for having sex with another teenager, and sent to adult prison.

Does this sound as insane to you as it does to me?

It sounded insane to the Georgia Supreme Court, too; who last Friday, even though it took them four years to address the issue, finally overturned the conviction and sentence as "cruel and unusual."

Genarlow Wilson is a free young man, whose life was destroyed by an overzealous prosecutor.

I pray that Wilson will be able to continue his education and rebuild a life.

October 26, 2007
Georgia Court Orders Man Freed in Sex Case

By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, Oct. 26 — The Georgia Supreme Court today ended the 10-year prison sentence of a man who was convicted in 2003 of having consensual oral sex with another teenager. The court said the harsh sentence violated the Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

In a 4-to-3 ruling, the court’s majority said the sentence was "grossly disproportionate" to the crime, which the justices said "did not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children."

The inmate, Genarlow Wilson, who is now 21, was 17 when he was caught on videotape having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a drug- and alcohol-fueled New Year’s Eve party in 2003. He is expected to be released this afternoon.

Mr. Wilson, who is black, was convicted of aggravated child molestation for the act, a charge which carried a mandatory minimum prison term so harsh it shocked his jury and prompted an international outcry from critics who charged that prosecutors had been overzealous and racially motivated. The law, critics said, was meant to keep child molesters behind bars, not to curb teenage sexual activity. More . . .

The crazy law in the center of this miscarriage of justice has been re-written to hopefully prevent this from happening again. But, considering that it is Georgia, I hold no hope for anyone. If you live in Georgia, vote for liberals if you hope to have any chance of living in a civilized state.

Now is the time for Georgians to look at the Green Party and any other liberal-leaning option available to them. Even, God forbid, Democrats. Decent people throughout the South must work to remove conservatives from power, in hopes of avoiding further laws like this. It's really time to move into the Twentieth Century (I know I am asking too much to ask you to move into the 21st Century).



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