Trayvon Booknotes: Mosley and Hochschild

It's a relief to see justice moving forward in the Trayvon Martin case. Amnesty International has issued a press release welcoming the Florida State's Attorney's decision to press charges against George Zimmerman,

"Trayvon's death has struck a nerve across the country, raising disturbing questions about the justice system, race relations, gun violence and the "Stand Your Ground" law itself," said Everette Harvey Thompson, Southern Regional Director for Amnesty International. "Many troubling issues have come into focus in this case, including the searing history of violence against minorities in the United States. Only the courts can establish justice. A young man has lost his life and we must have answers and accountability. It is up to the criminal justice system to find out what happened and hold someone accountable if a crime is committed. That determination is now in the hands of the courts."

See also AIUSA's earlier post Race Matters for a human rights framing of the issues raised.

A couple of book-related footnotes: Several years back we read Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlin's mystery set in the wake of the Watts Riots, Little Scarlet. Mosley has written a piece for the the Daily Beast on the Trayvon Martin case where he shares his own story of 'walking while black' and riffs from there, poetry slam style,

The crime is an unarmed man-child shot down in the streets of America when the admitted shooter is allowed to walk free. The crime is a nation of possible Florida vacationers who have to march in protest in order to get the tourism-based state to turn its eye toward justice. The crime is a corporate-owned media that picks and chooses among the cases for which it will open the floodgates of national opinion. The crime is the everyday citizen of America in the 21st century using archaic and inaccurate terms such as white and black rather than fellow American. The crime is a broader media that has convinced our citizens that they are in such imminent danger that they feel it necessary to vote for legislation such as Stand Your Ground.

And he hasn't even got to the critique of our prison system or our involvement in Afghanistan yet!

The other piece of note to our Loyal Readers also comes from the Daily Beast, about the namesake for the town of Sanford where the shooting took place.  We read Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost so long ago that you may have forgotten that Henry Sanford was a lobbyist for the interests of King Leopold II of Belgium. Michael Daly reminds us,

As recounted in Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, Sanford mounted what he called a “gastronomic campaign,” supplementing discreet payoffs with lavish feasts as he convinced Congress to officially recognize Leopold II’s claim of the Congo as a colony. Sanford assured the legislators that the king’s primary aim was to “humanize” the people there. 

In fact, the exploitation of the Congo by the King's rubber barons resulted in millions of lost lives. Sanford also believed that African-Americans should be sent to Africa and proposed subsidies to encourage emigration.

Now that the immediate need for justice has been met and we begin to think about whether this case will have any lasting impact, learning about the town's namesake is another reminder of how difficult it is to confront the ghosts of historical injustice and bring about the kind of systemic change Mosley urges on us.

Preventing Wrongful Convictions

The LAT has a couple of excellent editorials today, one drawing attention to the 'Benghazi Six' - a case concerning the death sentences of health professionals who have been convicted of deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV in Libya which we featured previously, and another pointing out the company we keep in maintaining our allegiance the death chamber,

The spectacle of state-ordered death has been on display across the world this week — in the sentencing of a Los Angeles serial killer whose case revealed that another man had been wrongly convicted for several of the crimes; in the dispiriting case of a Georgia man set for execution despite the shaky evidence against him; in the abrupt killing of a Chinese official by a government more interested in image than justice; in the stoning of an Iranian man for violating his nation's moral code; in the sentencing of six almost-certainly innocent foreign medical workers in Libya. Which of these is more barbaric?

These editorials follow on an op-ed, Doing time for no crime, by Arthur Carmona, a young man wrongfully convicted of robbery and sentenced to 17 years in prison, serving three before gaining his release. Carmona is now campaigning for criminal justice reform and recommends legislation that will prevent wrongful convictions,

Senate Bill 756, sponsored by Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), would require the state Department of Justice to develop new guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures. For example, guidelines in other states limit the use of in-field show-ups like the one that led to my wrongful conviction.

Senate Bill 511, sponsored by Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), would require recording of the entire interrogation, including the Miranda warning, in cases of violent felonies. Electronic recording of interrogations would not only help end false confessions but also discourage police detectives from lying during interrogations — as they did in my case by claiming to have videotaped evidence of me.

Senate Bill 609, sponsored by Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), would prevent convictions based on uncorroborated testimony by jailhouse snitches.

These bills were crafted in response to the findings of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice which will issue an opinion on the ultimate fairness of the death penalty in the near future. See our sidebar for information on contacting Gov. Schwarzenegger and your state legislators with your views on these measures to prevent wrongful convictions.

Meanwhile, congrats to Rwanda! They abolished the death penalty this week.

Child Life Without Parole

At our last non-virtual meeting we discussed California Senate Bill 999, legislation to reform criminal sentencing which can result in life without parole sentences for children. The author of the bill, Senator Leland Yee, explains the legislation in a press release here. The introduction of SB 999 is great news following on Amnesty International's recent report on this issue. The effort to pass the bill has its own website childrenwithoutparole.org where you can learn more and check out a list of organizations supporting this reform including Amnesty International. Then take action!

Write/email your state senator to let him/her know that rehabiliation should be the primary mission of our penal system and that children are the most receptive to our efforts in this regard! See links above for additional arguments and statistics to make your case.

Look up your state senator here or see the sidebar box for contacting your legislators and send them an email.

Race to Execution

If you missed the recent LA screening of this film, PBS Independent Lens is airing the documentary Race to Execution on Tuesday, March 27 at 10:00 PM (KCET-Los Angeles). More at the Independent Lens website,

Race discrimination infects America’s capital punishment system. According to a landmark study regarding race and the death penalty, a black defendant who kills a white victim is up to 30 times more likely to be sentenced to death than a white defendant who kills a black victim. RACE TO EXECUTION, a film by Rachel Lyon, traces the fates of two death row inmates, Robert Tarver in Russell County, Alabama and Madison Hobley in Chicago, Illinois. Their compelling personal stories are enlarged and enriched by attorneys who fought for these men’s lives, and by prosecutors, criminal justice scholars and experts in the fields of law and the media.

RACE TO EXECUTION reveals how, beyond DNA and the issue of innocence, the shameful open secret of America's capital punishment system is a matter of race. Once a victim’s body is discovered, his or her race—and the race of the accused—deeply influence the legal process: how a crime scene is investigated and the deployment of police resources, the interrogation and arrest of major suspects, how the media portrays the crime and ultimately, the jury selection and sentencing.

Child Soldiers / Child Testimony

So how about some real life child testimony to compare with the fictional version in Beasts of No Nation?

Here is a short film excerpt produced by WITNESS,

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) children make up the majority of combatants in a war that has claimed over four million lives. Through the voices of child soldiers, A DUTY TO PROTECT explores the complexity of the war, the issues confronted by girl soldiers including rape and sexual exploitation, and the importance of the International Criminal Court to end the rampant impunity reigning in Eastern DRC.

(Sidenote: Witness just launched a partnership with Global Voices, featuring human rights video from around the world, some from people documenting human rights abuses with cellphones-- I'm going to try to remember that next time one rings at the wrong time! A recent post concerned Mohammed Abbou, a Tunisian writer featured in Amnesty's Banned Books Week appeals.)

In this film from Sierra Leone, a 14 year old boy, Sidibay, tells the story of how his family were killed and how he become a child soldier.



More stories, drawings and songs from former Sierra Leone child soldiers can be found atChildsoldiers.org. Sample excerpt,

I left about 8:00 pm to continue my journey. I walked for about an hour having nothing to eat ro drink then I suddenly saw a stream. I was drinking then I was surrounded by tall huge men and the one yield at me " What are you doing here you small boy you're a spy I'm going to kill you now." With these words Istarted trembling, then he said "Are going to join us or choose to die" then I say whatever you want to do with me I'm willing. I was then taken to their main base in that region and I was tied up for one week eating dry Cassava and drinking filthy water. One man who was living in my village and was one of them pleaded that they should let me go. and since that day I became a full childsoldier. I was injected with cocaine and then given an AK 47 riffle to carry. I started going to front lines killing people raping and do all sorts of bad things.

Tags: child soldiers

Lethal Injection Update

Let's start with this thought from Anna Quindlen,

The question isn't whether executions can be made painless: it's whether they're wrong. Everything else is just quibbling. And most of the quibbling simply boils down to trying to make the wrong seem right.

That said, after several months respite, lethal injection is back in the news here in California now that a hearing in the Michael Morales case is coming up later this month.  Here are a few resources to bring us up to speed: Death Penalty Focus has a page running down the various pending legal cases in the state.  For a national perspective check out the Death Penalty Information Center's resource page on the subject.

Worth remembering while the lethal injection issue progresses is that the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice continues its work of examing the causes of wrongful convictions and making recommendations to insure the fairness of the administration of criminal justice in the state.  The commission has already issued three reports and some of its recommendations are being implemented via the legislative process (see for example the recent bill to require electronic recording of interrogations of individuals charged with serious offenses now sitting on the governor's desk).  In addition to these reforms, ultimately, the commission will weigh in on the fairness of the death penalty itself and this judgment could be far more important to the retention of this practice than quibbling over the method we use to kill.  Let's not lose sight of that goal.

Tags: death penalty, California, lethal injection, criminal justice,

"Deadline" Viewing and Discussion this Thursday

Join us this Thursday, March 9 at 7:00 PM at the Metro Gallery (64 North Raymond Avenue, Old Pasadena) as our friends at Conscientious Projector lead a (free!) screening and discussion of the film Deadline. The film tells the story of Governor George Ryan of Illinois, a tough-on-crime, pro-death penalty Republican who late 2002, came face to face with a flawed criminal justice system in his state that had sentenced 13 mien to die who were ultimately proven innocent and freed. He responded first with a series of historic hearings, then altered the course of U.S. jurisprudence by granting clemency to every inmate of Illinois' death row. His courageous action has fostered a nationwide campaign for moratoriums on executions that continues today in several states, including California. More info at the film website.