criminal justice system
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ACLU Sues Philadelphia Courts Over Money Bail Practices
In 2015, Eugene Lee spent three months in jail for a botched armed robbery. While that might not seem like a long time, you should know that Lee was not convicted before being sent to jail. He was also not the gunman in the incident. In fact, the robbery involved a toy gun that someone…
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Paul Manafort’s Sentence Proves White Lives Matter
I know black people like Paul Manafort. Like Manafort, Larry Langford, the former mayor of Birmingham, Ala., was essentially jailed for collusion after he directed $7.1 million in county bond business to investment bankers in exchange for $230,000 in cash, a few suits and some jewelry. Like Manafort, Larry Langford was found guilty in a…
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American Justice: Abuse Domineque Ray as a Boy, Discriminate Against Him as a Man, and on Death Row, Kill Him
Domineque Ray was born in a country that is proud of its stated principles, which supposedly include justice for all. For Ray, justice in America meant enduring sexual and other forms of physical abuse throughout his childhood, so much so that he was ashamed to even admit it to save his own life. Propublica summed…
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Police Pocketing Innocent People’s Money: Report Shows Huge Racial Gap in South Carolina Civil Forfeitures
A new investigative project from the Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail analyzing civil forfeitures in South Carolina reveals that police departments across the state have netted millions of dollars from state residents—the vast majority of them being black men. Despite accounting for just 13 percent of South Carolina’s population, black men composed 65 percent…
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Almost 70 Years After Being Falsely Accused of Rape, the Groveland Four Have Finally Been Pardoned
Throughout the course of American history, justice has proven itself to be a privilege that far too often eludes black people. And while often times this infringement on our humanity is rectified retroactively, it can never replace our dignity or the lives broken or engulfed by a corrupted criminal justice system. The most recent example…
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Confronted by Black Lives Matter Activist, Tennessee Governor Says He’s Considering Clemency for Cyntoia Brown
Questioned by a Black Lives Matter activist during a recent speaking engagement, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam announced that his office is considering offering clemency to Cyntoia Brown, a sex trafficking victim currently serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Tennessee’s outgoing governor gave a speech on Monday at the Nashville Public Library on the importance…
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A List of Things the Tenaha, Texas Police Department Can Do With the $70 They 'Seized' In a 'Drug Bust' Last Week
1. Buy five whole orders of the surprisingly filling Vietnamese Shrimp Summer Rolls at The Cheesecake Factory. 2. Catch a Greyhound from Pittsburgh to Hampton, Va., on Friday the 14th—but only if you book the trip in the next two hours and use the code GREY4CHAR. 3. Pay the parking ticket I got last month…
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The One Place Colorblindness Will Benefit Black People: America’s Courtrooms. The Supreme Court Should Take Note
Black people usually recoil when we hear a white person say, “I don’t see color,” and with good reason. It usually denotes a form of racial denialism, at best, and a subtle, yet clear implication that there is something wrong with race, and specifically, something wrong with being black. But there is one venue that…