VIDEOS RELATED TO BLACK/AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS
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National Registry of Exonerations
- Prosecutors and Police are Assisting with Exonerations at Record High Levels, New Data Shows
National Registry of Exonerations Releases 2012 Data -
In 2012, the number of cases in which prosecutors or police helped exonerate innocent defendants increased dramatically, according to a new report released today by the National Registry of Exonerations. Of 63 known exonerations in 2012, law enforcement initiated or cooperated in 34 or more than half (54 %).
Since 1989, prosecutors and police cooperated in 30 percent of the exonerations that the Registry has been able to identify (317 of 1050 exonerations in the national database at the end of last year). In 2012, for the first time, law enforcement cooperated in the majority of known exonerations. The previous high was 2008 when prosecutors or police assisted in 22 of 57 known exonerations (39 percent). In general, official cooperation is least likely among exonerations in capital murder and mass child sex abuse cases, and most likely in robbery and drug crime exonerations.
“We see a clear trend. Prosecutors and police are more open to re-investigating cases and clearing the names of innocent people who were wrongfully convicted,” said Michigan Law professor Samuel Gross, editor of the Registry and author of the “2012 Update” released today. “This is as it should be. The purpose of law enforcement is to seek truth and pursue justice. I’m glad to see they are now doing so more often after conviction, to help correct some of the terrible mistakes we sometimes make.”
Professor Gross noted that the increase in prosecutor and police involvement in exonerations may reflect in part changes in state laws that facilitate post-conviction DNA testing and the emergence of Conviction Integrity Units in several District Attorneys’ Offices around the country, including Dallas County, Harris County (Houston), New York County (Manhattan), Santa Clara County (San Jose), Kings County (Brooklyn), Cook County (Chicago), and Lake County, Illinois. [Note: please contact mfriedman@dupontcirclecommunications.com for contact information for prosecutors involved with exonerations.]
For example, David Ranta was released from prison last month after serving 23 years in maximum-security prisons. The Kings County (Brooklyn) D.A.’s Office established a Conviction Integrity Unit in 2011, reinvestigated Ranta’s 1991 murder conviction, and uncovered mistaken identification and perjured testimony. And in December 2011 Thomas Haynesworth was exonerated after a campaign of lobbying and litigation by the Virginia Attorney General and local prosecutors.
The “2012 Update” reports 63 exonerations in 2012: 36 murder cases (57%) – including two in which the defendants were sentenced to death – 15 rape cases (24%), and 12 others.
The 2012 Update also analyzes all known exonerations between 1989 and 2012, a total of 1050 as of the end of 2012 – 178 more cases than when the Registry was launched last May. Two thirds of the cases added are “old” (pre-2012) exonerations that were found in the Registry’s on-going effort to locate more of the many exonerations that remain unknown.
In addition to the increase in prosecutor and police involvement, Registry data show a recent increase in exonerations in cases with defendants who pled guilty. In the last four years, 39 defendants who had pled guilty were exonerated for an average of 10 per year. Between 1989 and 2008, the average was three per year. This increase may reflect a greater willingness on the part of the government to reexamine cases of innocent people who took plea bargains rather than risk tougher sentences at trial.
The Registry focused attention on searching for exonerations in California, the most populous state, which had a comparatively low rate of known exonerations per capita. As a result, 40 previously unknown exonerations were added in California, which now leads the country. The Registry expects to find more cases in other states as it shifts its focus.
California contains three of the ten counties in the country that have more than 900,000 people but no exonerations or only one by the end of 2012: Riverside, San Bernardino, and Alameda. (There were two more exonerations in Alameda County in 2013, after the period covered by the report.) These numbers do not necessarily mean that there were few wrongful convictions in those counties, but rather few exonerations or a lack of publicity about them. (Table 10 at p. 16.)
At 1:00 p.m. Eastern today, Professor Gross and Maurice Possley, the Registry’s lead writer/investigator and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will host a Twitter Q & A on their findings. The media and the public are invited to participate by following #NRE12 or #innocence or @exonerationlist.
The National Registry of Exonerations is a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989 -- cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all charges. It is by far the largest and fastest-growing collection of exoneration cases ever assembled.
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More Than 100 Civil Rights Leaders, Elected Officials, Clergy, Former Prosecutors and Judges, Current and Past ABA Presidents, and a Former TX Governor Call for New, Fair Sentencing for Duane Buck
- NAACP Calls Mr. Buck’s Death Penalty Case a “Blatant Example of Racial Bias”
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(Harris County, Texas, March 20, 2013) Today, 102 prominent individuals from Texas and throughout the country released a statement urging Texas officials to provide a new, fair sentencing hearing for Duane Buck. Mr. Buck is an African-American man who was condemned to death after his sentencing jury was told that he posed a future danger because of his race. The signatories write: “The State of Texas cannot condone any form of racial discrimination in the courtroom. The use of race in sentencing poisons the legal process and breeds cynicism in the judiciary. No execution should be carried out until the courts have a meaningful opportunity to address the evidence of fundamental injustice in Mr. Buck’s case. A new, fair sentencing hearing for Mr. Buck is absolutely necessary to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system.”
Those calling for a new sentencing hearing free of racial bias include: Benjamin Todd Jealous, NAACP President and CEO; Gary Bledsoe, Texas NAACP President; Howard Jefferson, National Board Member, NAACP; Mark White, former Governor of the State of Texas; ten members of the Texas Legislature; seventeen former prosecutors and judges from Texas and across the county, including former Harris County Assistant District Attorney Linda Geffin (who served as a prosecutor in Mr. Buck's case); current ABA President Laurel Bellows and past ABA Presidents, Philip Anderson, William Ide, Carolyn Lamm, and Roberta Ramo; Earl Musick, President of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association and seven Past Presidents of the HCCLA; Mary Ramos, Texas LULAC Chief of Staff; Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese; Reverend William A. Lawson of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston; Pastor James Nash of Houston Ministers Against Crime; Rev. Mike Cole, General Presbyter, Presbytery of New Covenant; and Richard Cizik, President of New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, and former Vice President of Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals.
“The diverse chorus of voices calling for a new, fair sentencing hearing for Duane Buck reflect how Texas’s disturbing appeal to racial bias fundamentally undermines the integrity of the entire criminal justice system and makes each of us less safe,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, Director Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. which represents Mr. Buck, along with the Texas Defender Service and attorney Kate Black. “For anyone to trust the criminal justice system, it must be fair to everyone.”
“Mr. Buck’s hearing was tainted by racial discrimination,” stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, a signatory to the statement. “He deserves a new hearing that is not the product of race-based fear mongering posing as reasoned fact. This case is a blatant example of racial bias being allowed to seep into a justice system that is supposed to be fair and equitable to all.”
American Bar Association President Laurel Bellows also released a statement, stating: “The American Bar Association abhors racial prejudice of any kind, and it should go without saying that no one should be executed where there is a substantial issue whether race-based testimony infected the fairness of the legal proceedings.…The ABA urges that Buck receive a new and fair sentencing hearing free of racial prejudice.”
At Mr. Buck’s 1997 capital sentencing hearing in Harris County, the trial prosecutor elicited testimony from a psychologist that Mr. Buck posed a future danger to society because he is an African American. The prosecutor relied on this testimony in arguing in favor of a death sentence.[1] The jury accepted the prosecutor’s argument, declared Mr. Buck a future danger, and sentenced him to death. Three years later, then-Texas Attorney General (now U.S. Senator) John Cornyn acknowledged that reliance on testimony connecting race to dangerousness was wholly unacceptable and promised that the Attorney General’s Office would seek new, fair sentencing hearings for seven identified defendants, including Mr. Buck. The State kept its word in every case – except for Mr. Buck’s.
In their statement, the signatories highlight new research showing that at the time of Mr. Buck’s trial, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office was three times more likely to seek the death penalty against African-American defendants like Mr. Buck and Harris County juries were twice as likely to sentence African-American defendants like Mr. Buck to death. The significant new study was released in an appeal filed last week by Mr. Buck in Harris County’s 208th Criminal District Court, which will soon be pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Mr. Buck was convicted of capital murder in Harris County for the shooting deaths of Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler. A third person, Phyllis Taylor, was shot but survived her wound. Ms. Taylor is also a signatory to the statement. She has forgiven Mr. Buck and does not wish to see him executed.
Another signatory to the statement, former Harris County District Attorney Linda Geffin, one of Mr. Buck’s trial prosecutors, today started an online petition on Change.org in support of a new, fair sentencing hearing for Mr. Buck: http://chn.ge/ZS0yov
Mr. Buck’s life was spared by the U.S. Supreme Court before his scheduled execution in September 2011. Although two U.S. Supreme Court justices agreed that Mr. Buck’s death sentence required review because “our criminal justice system should not tolerate” a death sentence “marred by racial overtones,” the case is now back in the hands of state officials.
Mr. Buck’s exemplary behavior while in prison demonstrates the falsity of the racially biased future dangerousness evidence used in his case: In his fourteen years in prison he has not had a single disciplinary write-up.
To speak with Mr. Buck’s attorneys, signatories to the statement, or other experts,
please contact Laura Burstein at 202-626-6868 (o); 202-669-3411(c); or laura.burstein@squiresanders.com.
[1] “You heard from Dr. Quijano, who had a lot of experience in the Texas Department of Corrections, who told you that there was a probability that the man would commit future acts of violence.” Source: State's Closing Argument, Cause No. 699684, Reporter's Record, Volume 28, p. 260 (1997).
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class action lawsuit Floyd, et al. v. City of New York
The NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy is being challenged on Monday, March 18th, 2013 as a federal court hears the class action lawsuit Floyd, et al. v. City of New York. Phillip Atiba Goff, professor at UCLA and head of the Racial Bias in Policing project at the Russell Sage Foundation, is available for interviews for your coverage. He can comment on the dynamics of the Floyd case, and put in in the broader context of racial issues in policing in the U.S.
New Yorkers were stopped by the police over half a million times in 2012. Nine out of ten were innocent of wrongdoing and the overwhelming majority of those stopped were African American or Latino, according to the NYCLU. The plaintiffs in the case claim that the NYPD is engaging in racial profiling and suspicion-less stop-and-frisks that violate the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and racially-discriminatory policing.
A professor of social psychology, Professor Goff works with police departments across the country to study the implicit and explicit racial biases of some law enforcement officers. He is available to comment on the role race plays in policing, and on what systemic reforms are needed to prevent racial discrimination by officers with broad individual authority.
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BlackRefer.com does not endorse or recommend any article on this site or any product, service or information found within said articles. The views and opinions of the authors who have submitted articles to BlackRefer.com belong to them alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of BlackRefer.com.
Legal and Policy Experts Available for Commentary On Voting Rights Case Impact on Communities of Color
- Supreme Court will Hear Challenge to Voting Rights Act on February 27, 2013 -
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments for Shelby County v. Holder on February 27, legal and policy experts urging the Court to uphold key parts of the Voting Rights Act are available to discuss the case and its impact on ethnic and minority communities.
The case challenges Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination to gain federal approval before voting law changes can go into effect. Section 5 has been instrumental in ensuring that every eligible citizen, regardless of race, has an equal opportunity to have a say and participate in our democracy.
Background materials are available to explain how the Voting Rights Act has protected voters for nearly five decades. (Available here in Spanish).
Experts available:
Myrna Pérez, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice
For interviews in English and Spanish, contact Desiree Ramos Reiner (desiree.reiner@nyu.edu, 646-292-8321)
Arturo Vargas, Executive Director, NALEO Education Fund
For interviews in English and Spanish, contact Amanda Bosquez (abosquez@naleo.org, 202-546-2536, ext. 12)
Glenn D. Magpantay, Democracy Program Director, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
For interviews, contact Ujala Sehgal (usehgal@aaldef.org, 202-966-5932, ext. 217)
Terry Ao Minnis, Director of Census and Voting Programs, Asian American Justice Center
For interviews, contact Charu Gupta (cgupta@veng-group.com, 617-830-1790, ext. 106)
Judith Browne Dianis, Co-Director (English), or Katherine Culliton-González, Senior Attorney and Director of Voter Protection (Spanish), Advancement Project
For interviews, contact Rich Robinson (RRobinson@advancementproject.org, 202-728-9557, x338, 202-696-3406 cell)
Barbara Arnwine, President and Executive Director, or Jon Greenbaum, Chief Counsel, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
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BlackRefer.com does not endorse or recommend any article on this site or any product, service or information found within said articles. The views and opinions of the authors who have submitted articles to BlackRefer.com belong to them alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of BlackRefer.com.
BLACK - AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS
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