By Glenn E. Martin
The mass incarceration of minority communities, and the resulting mass reentry and lifetime collateral consequences, have created the “perfect storm” to ensure that criminal record-based employment discrimination serves as a surrogate for race-based discrimination.
Read full entry »Neesmith was arrested and is expected to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct, which might bring a year in a special detention program that requires no time behind bars. The dead man’s parents, Deede and Julius Patterson, watched news of Trayvon Martin's death in Florida and--noting the similarities--began to wonder why no one was marching for their son.
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African American youth in VA are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system as compared to their white counterparts, found a new study from the University of Virginia.
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By Hubert Williams
Former Newark Police Director Hubert Williams looks at what it means to "stand your ground."
Read full entry »Homeowners could be at risk financially in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, reports the Orlando Sentinel. The shooting happened Feb. 26 at the Retreat at Twin Lakes development in Sanford, Fla. George Zimmerman, who shot Martin, was the point man for the subdivision's Neighborhood Watch. If he is charged with and convicted of killing Trayvon, the community's homeowner association and property-management company will likely be sued by the victim's family regarding the way the watch program was established and operated, said Donna Berger, a lawyer who specializes in homeowner-association law.
"They may wind up getting sued and getting hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and damages," said Berger. "Who will pay is every member of the association, and they will have to make special assessments.().It's a cautionary tale for other associations." Located about six miles west of downtown Sanford, the 6-year-old Retreat at Twin Lakes contains about 200 two-story town homes.
Read full entry »Police station surveillance video from the night Trayvon Martin was shot dead in Sanford, Fla., shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who says he shot Martin after he was punched in the nose, knocked down and had his head slammed into the ground, reports ABC News. The video gives the first public images of Zimmerman since the shooting last month. His face and head are cleanly shaven.
The initial police report noted that Zimmerman was bleeding from the back of the head and nose, and after medical attention it was decided that he was in good enough condition to travel to the police station for questioning. His lawyer later insisted that Zimmerman's nose had been broken in his fight with 17-year-old Martin. In the video an officer is seen pausing to look at the back of Zimmerman's head, but no abrasions or blood can be seen in the video and he did not check into the emergency room following the police questioning.
Read full entry »Last year, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police investigated just 55 homicides, fewer than they have at anytime since the late 1980s. A conference next week...
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Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy promised his department will never conduct blanket surveillance of Muslims like the New York Police Department...
Read full entry »Montana Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull admitted to sending a racially charged email about President Barack Obama from his courthouse chambers, reports the Great Falls Tribune. Cebull is a nominee of former President George W. Bush. The message said, "A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?' His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"
The judge acknowledged that the content of the email was racist, but said he does not consider himself racist. He said the email was intended to be a private communication. Cebull said his brother initially sent him the email, which he forwarded to six of his "old buddies" and acquaintances. "The only reason I can explain it to you is I am not a fan of our president, but this goes beyond not being a fan," Cebull said. "I didn't send it as racist, although that's what it is. I sent it out because it's anti-Obama."
Read full entry »For nearly three weeks, convicted murderer Marcus Reymond Robinson has listened in a North Carolina court to intricate testimony about statistics that could get him off death row, reports the Los Angeles Times. Robinson, a black man convicted of killing a white teenager in 1991, is the first inmate to test North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, the nation's only law that allows death row prisoners to reduce their sentences to life without parole by proving racial bias in jury selection or sentencing.
The 2009 act has drawn condemnation from prosecutors and Republican legislators who call it a backdoor attempt to repeal the death penalty. It allows inmates to cite statistical patterns in statewide jury selection — rather than focusing solely on their own cases. "It's new territory," Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. Robinson's case is being followed by legal scholars, lawyers, and politicians. If he's successful, it could prompt calls for similar laws in 20 other states that have conducted studies on race, jury selection and the death penalty. Robinson's case, and possibly others, hinges on a voluminous study of peremptory challenges by prosecutors in 173 death penalty cases in North Carolina between 1990 and 2010.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly defended his department's counterterrorism program, saying “people have short memories as to what happened here in 2001,” reports the New York Times. Kelly spoke on WOR-AM radio in response to growing criticism of his department's surveillance methods, including monitoring Muslim communities in New York City and beyond and its reliance on stop-and-frisk tactics as a crime-fighting tool.
The New York Police Department's intelligence division focused far beyond New York City as part of a surveillance program targeting Muslims, reports the Associated Press. Police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and 13 other colleges in the Northeast. They talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.
Asked about the monitoring, police spokesman Paul Browne provided a list of 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the U.S. States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations. "I see a violation of civil rights here," said Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Muslim Student Association at Syracuse University. "Nobody wants to be on the list of the FBI or the NYPD or whatever. Muslim students want to have their own lives, their own privacy and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that everybody else has." AP has reported on secret programs the NYPD built with help from the CIA to monitor Muslims at the places where they eat, shop, and worship.
Read full entry »A longtime senior Seattle prosecutor who went on leave after being rebuked by the state Supreme Court for using racially charged language during a 2007 murder trial has resigned, reports the Seattle Times. Last year, the Supreme Court found that James Konat had engaged in "prosecutorial misconduct" in questioning witnesses during the 2007 trial of Kevin Monday, who was convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree assault, and sentenced to 64 years in prison.
During the trial, Konat questioned witnesses, many of them black, about a purported street "code" that he claimed prevented some from talking to the police. Konat referred to police as the "PO-leese." During his closing argument to jurors, Konat said that while witnesses denied the presence of such a code, "the code is black folk don't testify against black folk. You don't snitch to the police." The Supreme Court overturned Monday's conviction and awarded the man a new trial. Monday is black; Konat is white.
Read full entry »A small group of East Haven, Conn., police officers who worked together on the evening shift were arrested Tuesday following a long federal investigation and charged with terrorizing Latinos in their town. Federal authorities called them "bullies with badges," and the indictment against them alleges a long list of crimes ranging from excessive force to obstructing justice, reports the Hartford Courant.
The four were "allegedly formed a cancerous cadre that routinely deprived East Haven residents of their civil rights," said Janice K. Fedarcyk, assistant director-in-charge of the New York office of the FBI. The investigation was prompted by a video recording of an encounter between some of the officers arrested Tuesday and the Rev. James Manship, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in New Haven. The federal probe found a pattern of discrimination by police, particularly against Latino residents. Connecticut's U.S. Attorney, David B. Fein, said more arrests and additional charges could be forthcoming.
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