The Framing of Kevin Cooper, on San Quentin’s Death Row: 

In this interview, author J. Patrick O’Connor discusses his newly released book Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and The Framing of Kevin Cooper, explaining why he is convinced of Kevin Cooper’s innocence. O’Connor asserts that the police and prosecution orchestrated an obvious frame-up that continues to be upheld by federal appeals courts, albeit with the blatantly unfair rulings by US District Court Judge Marilyn Huff blocking critical forensics tests that had been ordered by the US Ninth Circuit Court in 2004.

This week, O’Connor launches a California book tour, beginning in the San Francisco Bay Area (view schedule here). On Monday, O’Connor sat down for a video interview with Prison Radio, where he discusses aspects of this story not addressed in the text interview below (watch videohere). Marking the book release, Prison Radio has recorded a special message from Kevin Cooper himself (listen here). To learn more about Cooper’s case and what you can do to help, visit www.savekevincooper.org.

Prison Radio:  How did you get involved in Kevin Cooper’s case?

J. Patrick O’Connor:  During the fall of 2008, I was in the Bay Area on a book tour for The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  During the tour, supporters of Kevin’s approached me at various venues and asked me to consider writing a book on Kevin’s case.

PR:  How did you go about writing this book?

JPO:   I took on this project with no preconceived notions of Kevin’s guilt or innocence. Each case is different, radically so.

My first step was to read and notate the trial transcripts, documents of over 8,000 pages.  I then read all the police reports, witness interviews, and various newspaper accounts. I reviewed the most shocking crime scene and autopsy photos I’ve ever seen — and those I will never forget.  The autopsy reports on the four victims spoke of an incredibly frenzied killing field inside the Ryens’ master bedroom.

Finally, I read all of the appeals and the judicial rulings.  By this time I was ready to begin interviewing various people involved in Kevin’s trial and his subsequent appeals.

PR:     What’s the main obstacle to researching a case that is 25 years old?

JPO:   The biggest problem is that a number of key people involved in the investigation and trial have died, have retired, or have simply forgotten important factual details.

Another obstacle is that, because Kevin technically still has appeals open to him, the San Bernardino County D.A.’s Office refused to discuss the case with me.  Nonetheless, I was able to interview Kevin’s trial attorney, his investigator, and the lead prosecutor at his trial as well as many other people familiar with Kevin’s trial and appeals.  For important background on the Ryens, I was able to interview Peggy Ryen’s half-sister and Doug Ryen’s sister.

PR:     Did you ever interview Kevin Cooper?

JPO:  I visited with Kevin for nearly three hours at San Quentin in the summer of 2009.  During this intense interrogation — I was in the process of deciding whether to take on this book possibility — I could sense Kevin felt a number of my questions were intrusive, if not insensitive.  There were things about his past and about his stay at the hideout house, and his fleeing to Mexico that I simply had to know to be able to go forward.

By the end of the interview I was taken with his equanimity and his resolve to prove he was wrongfully convicted of the gruesome Chino Hills murders. Over the next two years, I was able to pose many other questions to Kevin in written form, through his defense team at the Orrick law firm.

PR:     What convinced you that Kevin was innocent of these crimes?

JPO:  A lot of different things. To just cite one here: The prosecution and the police withheld and destroyed evidence that would have exonerated Kevin — evidence that was so exculpatory to him that had it been revealed Kevin would not have even been on trial for these murders.

PR:     Can you provide some background on Kevin Cooper’s case?

JPO:   Kevin Cooper was convicted of the brutal murders of a Chino Hills, California family and a young houseguest in 1985, and has been on death row at San Quentin since then. Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and The Framing of Kevin Cooper, shows how the sheriff’s office and the district attorney’s office of San Bernardino County framed Cooper for these horrific murders and how the justice system has failed him at almost every turn in his long, drawn-out appeal process.

If it were not for a court-ordered moratorium on executions in California over the lethal injection controversy, Cooper – with no appeals remaining – would have been executed by now. It is expected the moratorium will not be lifted until at least 2013.

Two days before the murders of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 11-year-old Christopher Hughes, Cooper escaped from a nearby prison and holed up in a vacant house 125 yards below the murdered family’s hilltop house.  Two days after the San Bernardino sheriff’s department established that Cooper had hid out there, it locked in on him as the lone assailant despite numerous eye witness reports that implicated three, young white men as the perpetrators.

From that day forward, four days after the murders were discovered, the sheriff’s department discarded information that pointed at other perpetrators, destroyed evidence that exculpated Cooper, and planted evidence that implicated him.

PR:     What eyewitness testimony is there pointing to other perpetrators?

JPO:   The only survivor of the attack, 8 1/2-year-old Josh Ryen, told ER personnel and a sheriff’s deputy that his assailants were three white men. Cooper is black.

Around midnight on the night of the murders, a couple, attempting to exit a driveway in their truck, saw three, young white men driving rapidly down the only road that leads away from the Ryens’ house in a station wagon that it turned out was stolen from the murdered family.

Shortly after that sighting, two women in a nearby bar saw two young white men, one wearing coveralls, with blood splatter on their faces and clothing.

Four days after the murders, another woman turned into the sheriff’s office bloody coveralls her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, had left on the floor of her closet.  The woman stated she had other information that implicated her boyfriend in the murders but wanted to be interviewed by homicide detectives.  She would have told them that her boyfriend’s hatchet was missing and that he no longer had the tan T-shirt he wore the Saturday of the murders.

PR:     What aspects of the crime scene challenge the case against Cooper?

JPO:   The murders were committed with at least three, and probably four, weapons: a hatchet, an ice pick and one or two knifes. The theory that one perpetrator could or would use three or four weapons, is fundamentally counterintuitive.  At trial the prosecutor argued that Cooper was ambidextrous, which he is not.

Nor could one person control two able-bodied adults and three children running around the house, one of whom, Jessica, made it outside the house during the attack. The adult victims were each fit, 41-year-old chiropractors and both were mobile during the onslaught and fought hard for their lives, sustaining numerous defensive wounds to their hands and arms.

The crime scene evidence, according to the medical examiner, showed that the mother was cradling the daughter before the mother died, which meant one of the attackers had brought Jessica back into the house.  More than anything else, this meant there had to be more than one assailant because each parent kept a loaded gun in the master bedroom where the assault occurred.

There was an uncommon viciousness to the attack as though the killers meant not only to murder but to send a message of payback or retribution.  The medical examiner counted 144 wounds on the four murder victims, including 28 fractures and two amputations.  While Cooper’s trial was in progress, an inmate in a California prison told prison authorities and a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s detective that his cellmate had confessed to the Chino Hills murders, stating it was an Aryan Brotherhood hit but the three killers had gone to the wrong house.

PR:     What about the destroyed evidence you cited earlier?

JPO:   During Cooper’s preliminary hearing, the sheriff’s office destroyed the bloody coveralls.  The sheriff’s office claimed it never conducted any tests of the coveralls and admitted it never sent homicide detectives around to interview the woman who had turned them in.

The sheriff’s office also destroyed a bloody blue T-shirt discarded not far from the bar. Coupled with a tan T-shirt found the next day near the bar, the two bloody T-shirts were strong proof that at least two assailants had murdered the Ryens and Chris Hughes.  Testing of the tan T-shirt showed the blood on it matched the blood profile of Doug Ryen and no one else.

PR:     You also said that evidence was planted?

JPO:   Years later, in 2002, as Cooper was attempting to prove his innocence with DNA testing now afforded death row inmates by the California Legislature, his blood was now found on the tan T-shirt. To Cooper and his appeal attorneys, this showed rank tampering and planting of evidence, a belief that was greatly reinforced when it was revealed in 2004 that the vial containing Cooper’s blood, taken from him when he was arrested and kept all those years in the crime lab, was discovered now to contain the DNA of at least one other person.

A hatchet sheath and a bloody green button from a prison jacket were found at the hideout house a day after two detectives had searched the house and found nothing of evidentiary value.  Under oath one of the detectives denied looking in the bedroom but crime scene technicians lifted his fingerprints from the door of the closet where Cooper slept.  It would be established at Cooper’s trial that when Cooper escaped he was wearing a brown jacket, not a green one.

PR:     In 2004, Cooper came within hours of being executed before an extremely rare en banc ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed his execution and granted him a successive habeas corpus hearing in federal district court in San Diego. Can you explain more about this 2004 ruling?

JPO:   In particular, the Ninth Circuit ordered the district court to conduct DNA testing on the numerous blonde or light brown hairs found clutched in Jessica’s hand and other similar hairs deposited on other victims.

The Ninth also ordered EDTA testing to determine if Cooper’s blood had been planted on the tan T-shirt.  EDTA is an anti-clotting substance used in crime labs to preserve blood in vials, to prevent it from coagulating and breaking down. If tests conducted showed high levels of EDTA on the blood attributed to Cooper on the T-shirt, it would establish tampering.  If tampering were established, it would call into question all the forensic evidence the prosecution used to link Cooper to the crime scene.

It seemed that Cooper, after nineteen years of asserting his innocence from death row, would be vindicated.  At a minimum, the district court would have had to order a new trial or exonerate him outright.

Federal District Court Judge Marilyn Huff was not going to let that happen.  She had turned down both of Cooper’s previous habeas appeals, finding evidence of his guilt “overwhelming.”

PR:     How did Judge Marilyn Huff treat Cooper’s third habeas appeal?

JPO:   Over a period of a year, Judge Huff periodically held evidentiary hearings.  As she did, she methodically thwarted Cooper’s attorneys at every turn, refusing to allow Cooper’s experts to participate in the EDTA testing.  When the private lab the court hired to test Cooper’s blood on the T-shirt found elevated levels of EDTA, Judge Huff allowed the lab to retract its findings three weeks later on the grounds the lab itself was contaminated with EDTA during the testing.

Judge Huff dispensed with any further EDTA testing by ruling that the EDTA testing of the tan T-shirt conducted was not conclusive and that EDTA testing in general was an unproven science and of no value.  She was wrong on both counts:  both Cooper’s expert and the private lab found high levels on EDTA on the samples tested from the tan T-shirt and EDTA testing is a proven science.

The extreme bias against Cooper that Judge Huff displayed with impunity throughout the evidentiary hearings was at its most obvious when it came to the DNA testing of the hair clutched in various victims’ hands ordered by the en banc Ninth Circuit.  When a portion of those hairs had been tested in 2002, they were found to have no antigen roots, denoting that the hairs had fallen out rather than been yanked out during the assault.  Those hairs, the tests showed, were either from the victims themselves or were dog hairs.

There could be no purpose in retesting those hairs. However, over half of the hairs in the victims’ hands or adhered to their bodies had not been tested in 2002 and may well have contained antigen roots.    If the mitochondrial testing of those hairs resulted in a DNA that excluded all the victims and Cooper, there would be proof positive that someone other than Cooper was a perpetrator.  Judge Huff, incredibly, ordered testing only of the already tested hairs.

PR:     Did anything new come out at this point?

JPO:   During the evidentiary hearings, Cooper’s lawyers inadvertently learned for the first time about the bloody blue T-shirt found not far from the bar.  How could Judge Huff get around the implications of a bloody blue and a bloody tan T-shirt found one day apart near the bar?

In addition, the prosecution’s not disclosing the blue T-shirt to the defense was a major Brady violation that was so exculpatory to Cooper on its own that it mandated a new trial.

Judge Huff’s way around this inconvenient hurdle was to find that the blue T-shirt was in reality the tan T-shirt, even though the blue shirt was found the day before the tan shirt in a different location from the bar and the woman who found the bloody blue shirt testified at the hearing that the shirt she found was blue.

Judge Huff’s handling of Cooper’s habeas proceedings led Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William Fletcher to write, “There’s no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and flouted our direction to perform the two tests.”

PR:     Judge Fletcher also made a strong statement about Cooper’s case, as a guest speaker at Gonzaga University School of Law on April 12, 2010.

JPO:   Yes, Judge Fletcher delivered a lecture on the subject of the death penalty, holding that the problems with the administration of it are widespread and endemic rather than merely regional or local.

To illustrate he cited the Kevin Cooper case, stating “The case I am about to describe is horrible in many ways.  The murders were horrible.  Kevin Cooper, the man now sitting on death row, may well be – and in my view probably is – innocent.  And he is on death row because the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department framed him.”

Judge Fletcher, a Rhodes Scholar who roomed with Bill Clinton at Oxford University, said what happened in the Cooper case “is a familiar story.  It is by no means the usual story.  But it happens often enough to be familiar.  The police are under heavy pressure to solve a high profile crime. They know, or think they know, who did the crime.  And they plant evidence to help their case along.”

PR:     A closing thought?

JPO:   Kevin Cooper has now spent half of his life on death row for a crime he had nothing to do with.  He is, in a word, a scapegoat.

Hans Bennett, Prison Radio

Hans Bennett is a multimedia activist/journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia (www.abu-jamal-news.com).

Prison Radio first began recording prisoners in 1990.  Our mission is to challenge unjust police and prosecutorial practices which result in mass incarceration, racism, and gender discrimination by airing the voices of men and women victimized by an unjust criminal justice system. Our website www.prisonradio.org features Mumia Abu-Jamal’s essays and much more, including the latest news about his case. To receive our email newsletter, please sign up on the bottom of our website’s front page.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye

Desperately Seeking Obsolescence: Capital Defenders Hope To Replace The Death Penalty

This Presidents’ Day weekend, criminal defense attorneys, investigators and experts will gather at the Monterey Conference Center, as they have done for the past 25 years, to develop and hone their skills in death penalty cases.  The Capital Case Defense Seminar, sponsored by two stalwart organizations, the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and the California Public Defenders Association, draws well over a thousand practitioners every year.

It is hoped, however, that this year will be the last, as many of the attendees join others around the State in supporting the SAFE California Act, a voter initiative which calls for replacing the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole.  The push for gathering signatures to put SAFE California on the November 2012 ballot is in its final stages and there is cautious optimism with polls showing a majority of Californians support the measure.

In the early 1980s, when California’s death penalty (reinstated in 1977-78) was just gearing up, the Seminar was a far more modest gathering of a few hundred people, and could be held at the much cozier confines of Asilomar Conference Grounds.  But with thousands of capitally-charged cases over the years and a growing death row population (now more than 700 — twice as many as any other state), a much larger facility was required to accommodate the expanding number of lawyers, paralegals, mitigation specialists, investigators and experts needed to ensure that cases with such high stakes are provided competent representation.  Indeed, the expansion of the Conference is a reflection of the enormous costs in maintaining what has been described by judges as well as former wardens and prosecutors, as a bloated, broken, wasteful system.

If there is to be a death penalty then defense teams must be funded sufficiently so they can adequately develop and challenge evidence so that judges and juries making life and death decisions are adequately informed about the circumstances of the crime as well as the defendant’s background and history.  But this doesn’t come cheaply, and together with the costs associated with the prosecution – whose resources outstrip the defense – as well as for housing death row inmates, the tab comes close to $200 million a year, according to an exhaustive study released last summer.

And for what?  The report, by Arthur Alarcon, long-time judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, and law professor Paula Mitchell, concluded that “since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, California taxpayers have spent roughly $4 billion to fund a dysfunctional death penalty system that has carried out no more than 13 executions.”  As the California Commission for the Fair Administration of Justice concluded after its extensive review in 2008 of the state’s death penalty system, death sentences are unlikely ever to be carried out (with extremely rare exceptions) because of a process “plagued with excessive delay” in the appointment of post-conviction counsel and a “severe backlog” in the California Supreme Court’s review of death judgments.  According to CCFAJ’s report, the lapse of time from sentence of death to execution constitutes the longest delay of any death penalty state.

This has led Tani Cantil-Sakauye, after one year as the Chief Justice of the State of California, to conclude that the state’s capital punishment system is “not effective” and requires “structural changes” that the State cannot afford.  Her predecessor, Ron George, who was Chief Justice for 15 years, came to the same conclusion, describing California’s death penalty scheme as “dysfunctional.”

A recent New York Times editorial explained that, “California’s system of government-hobbled-by-referendum” means that the only way to replace the death penalty is by a voter initiative.  As noted above, signatures are currently being gathered to put the SAFE California Act on the November 2012 ballot.  If it passes it would replace California’s multi‑billion dollar death penalty with life imprisonment without parole and require those convicted of murder to work and pay restitution to victim families through the victim compensation fund.  It would also set aside $100 million in budget saving for local law enforcement for the investigation of unsolved rape and murder cases.

A benefit to support the SAFE California Act campaign is being held during the Capital Case Defense Seminar on Saturday February 18, 6 – 8 pm, at the Portola Hotel & Spa.  (All are welcome.)  Speakers will include two of the most brilliant, dedicated and eloquent death penalty lawyers in the country, Steve Bright and Bryan Stephenson, as well as Jason Baldwin, one of the wrongfully convicted West Memphis Three. (Click here for more information about the event, and click here to learn more about the SAFE campaign.)

It is not as ironic as it may seem that capital defense practitioners who have devoted their lives and careers to death penalty cases are trying to make their jobs obsolete.  Being on the front lines they have experienced first hand the unfairness, arbitrariness and unreliability of California’s capital punishment scheme.  They know that the imposition of death sentences does nothing to make us safer, and they understand that the resources wasted on this broken system can be far better used during this time of fiscal crisis.  And they will happily do without the intensity and unrelenting pressure of litigating cases that are literally a matter of life and death — even if it means having to find a new line of work.

Andy Love
Fair and Unbalanced 

Supporters Demand Transfer to General Population

An interview with Bret Grote of Human Rights Coalition

By Hans Bennett of Prison Radio

On December 7, following the US Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the Philadelphia District Attorney’s final avenue of appeal, current DA Seth Williams announced that he would no longer be seeking a death sentence for the world-renowned death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal–on death row following his conviction at a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Japanese Diet, Nelson Mandela, and many others. Abu-Jamal’s sentence of execution was first “overturned” by a federal court in December, 2001, and during the next ten years, he was never transferred from death row at the level five supermax prison, SCI Greene, in rural western Pennsylvania.

Shortly after the DA’s announcement in early December, Mumia Abu-Jamal, now 57 years old, was transferred to SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pennsylvania, 100 miles from Philadelphia. Once there, it was expected that he would be released from solitary confinement and transferred into general population where he would finally have contact visits and generally less onerous conditions. However, he was immediately placed in “Administrative Custody,” in SCI Mahanoy’s “Restrictive Housing Unit” where his conditions of isolation and repression are now in many ways more extreme than they were on death row.

Presently at SCI Mahanoy, Mumia Abu-Jamal is shackled around his ankles and wrists whenever he is outside his cell, even to the shower and during already restricted visits–where he is already behind Plexiglas; Before going to the yard he is subject to strip searches before and after the visit; He is only allowed bits of paper to write notes on, with a rubber flex pen, and four books (no shelves); No access to news reports; Letters delayed; Glaring lights on 24 hours a day; Only one brief phone call to his wife and one to an attorney; No access to adequate food or commissary, and more.

In the first week of January, at Abu-Jamal’s request, supporters began a campaign directed at the Pennsylvania Secretary of Corrections, SCI Mahanoy, and DA Seth Williams, demanding that Abu-Jamal be immediately transferred to the general population. The National Lawyers Guild (for whom Abu-Jamal serves as the Vice President) has released a statement and created an online petition demanding his transfer to general population.

Furthermore, Abu-Jamal has asked for supporters to not just call for his release from the hole, but to challenge the very practice of solitary confinement and what are called in Pennsylvania “Restricted Housing Units.” Supporting Abu-Jamal’s call to action, the Pennsylvania-based prison-activist organization called Human Rights Coalition explains that “Mumia may be in solitary, but he is not alone. The PA Department of Corrections holds approximately 2,500 people in solitary confinement on any given day, many of them for years at a time.”

Ten Extra Years Spent On Death Row

In 2001, US District Court Judge William Yohn first “overturned” Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death sentence, ruling that for a death sentence to be reinstated, the Philadelphia District Attorney must first hold a sentencing-phase jury trial, where the jury could only decide between execution or life without parole. The DA immediately appealed this ruling, in an effort to execute Abu-Jamal without bringing him to court before a jury in Philadelphia.

Following Yohn’s 2001 ruling, Abu-Jamal could have been transferred from solitary confinement on death row at SCI Greene, and into general population. If transferred, he would have had more freedom, including contact visits with family and friends.  However, Judge Yohn granted the motion by the DA to keep Abu-Jamal in punitive conditions on death row while the DA appealed Yohn’s ruling. As a result, Abu-Jamal stayed on death row during an appeals process that lasted almost ten years, a process that has now upheld the sentence’s removal.

In March 2008, the US Third Circuit Court affirmed Yohn’s 2001 ruling, but in January 2010, the US Supreme Court vacated the 2008 ruling and remanded it back to the Third Circuit. In April 2011, the Third Circuit affirmed the 2001 ruling for the second time. Finally, in October 2011, the DA’s final attempt to challenge the decision was rejected by the US Supreme Court, and in December the DA officially accepted the life sentence.

Fighting for Mumia’s Release

While Abu-Jamal and his international network of supporters celebrated the final overturning of the death sentence, it was a bittersweet victory for a movement that has long fought for his release. In 2008 when the Third Circuit first affirmed Yohn’s 2001 ruling, the Court also ruled against a new guilt-phase trial, effectively ended that avenue of appeal for Abu-Jamal to be released from prison.

At this point, a new trial will likely require the bringing forth of new evidence.  The investigation of police and prosecutorial misconduct, including the suppression of crucial evidence and the intimidation of witnesses could also lead to a new trial. These are the avenues that will be pursued to obtain Mumia’s freedom. Among the new evidence that has come out in recent years, Philadelphia journalists Linn Washington Jr. and Dave Lindorff have recently performed a ballistics test, (watch video) fundamentally challenging the DA’s shooting scenario/theory used to convict Abu-Jamal.

In Philadelphia on December 9, the 30^th anniversary of Abu-Jamal’s arrest, supporters organized a large event at the National Constitution Center that was attended by over 1,000 people. Declaring that a sentence of life without parole is unacceptable, speakers ranging from author/activist Cornel West to Ramona Africa of MOVE & the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, pledged to continue fighting for Abu-Jamal’s freedom. Prerecorded video messages to the December 9 event were delivered by author/activist Michelle Alexander and the internationally renowned human rights activist Desmond Tutu, who days before has already released a statement declaring:

“Now that it is clear that Mumia should never have been on death row in the first place, justice will not be served by relegating him to prison for the rest of his life—yet another form of death sentence. Based on even a minimal following of international human rights standards, Mumia must now be released. I therefore join the call, and ask others to follow, asking District Attorney Seth Williams to rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice: drop this case now, and allow Mumia Abu-Jamal to be immediately released, with full time served.”

Interview with Bret Grote

In this interview we speak with Bret Grote from Human Rights Coalition (HRC), whose website describes itself as “a group of predominately prisoners’ families, ex-prisoners and some supporters,” whose “ultimate goal is to abolish prisons.” HRC seeks “to empower prisoners’ families to be leaders in prison organizing, while at the same time reduce the shame of having a loved one in prison or being formerly incarcerated,” and “to make visible to the public the injustice and abuse that are common practice throughout our judicial and prison systems across the country, and eventually end those abuses.” Learn more at www.hrcoalition.org.

Prison Radio:         Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal argue that his current time in the hole is a form of retaliation for his being a longtime political activist.  In his recent article entitled, “Sadism in the Cell: Thanks to a Vindictive Prison System, Abu-Jamal is Still in ‘The Hole,’” Linn Washington Jr. contextualizes recent events by documenting a long history of repression, ultimately arguing that “while Abu-Jamal detractors indignantly dismiss all claims of his being a political prisoner, his post-arrest ordeals provide a compelling case of a person specifically targeted by authorities for who he is politically more than for the crime he is supposedly serving time for.” Why do you think it is that Mumia is currently being held in “Administrative Custody?”

Bret Grote:    In regard to Mumia, the inference should always be that the government is targeting him because of his politics due to the more than forty years that federal agents, Philadelphia police and prosecutors, governors of Pennsylvania, and prison officials have been conspiring to silence him. The current rationales offered by prison officials for his placement in solitary confinement do not withstand scrutiny, which lends further support to the inference that he is continuing to be targeted.

First, they asserted that they were waiting for the filing of paperwork by the District Attorney’s office of Philadelphia so that his sentence would be formally changed from death to life without the possibility of parole. According to information available on the DOC’s website, however, all death-sentenced prisoners are held on death row at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Greene or SCI Graterford. Abu-Jamal was removed from death row virtually as soon as Philadelphia DA Seth Williams announced he would not seek to re-impose the death penalty. If the prison were in fact waiting for a formal re-sentencing prior to placement in general population, Mumia would still be on death row.

Second, they have recently decided that his hair exceeds the regulatory length and that he needs this cut. It took them five weeks to notify him of this. Obviously, the length of Mumia’s hair was not unknown to prison officials. In fact, he was held on disciplinary status while on death row earlier during his confinement for eight years, although he was removed from that status-without cutting his hair-in the early-90s at some point.

The shifting rationales indicate that they are digging their heels in and seem prepared to try to continue subjecting Mumia to solitary confinement torture, which has been his fate for thirty years.

It is important to note that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has recently declared that, in his opinion, prolonged solitary confinement of more than fifteen days violates article 1 (prohibiting torture) or 16 (prohibiting other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment) of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. He further stated that the Convention is violated when solitary confinement is imposed as punishment. These standards applied to U.S. prisons renders the overwhelming majority of solitary confinement practices criminal.

PR:     Can you please tell us more about how PA Prisons use solitary confinement and what are called “Restrictive Housing Units.” How is it used? Against whom? Are there other examples of solitary confinement punishment being used to retaliate against political activists?

BG:     While the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC) operates in a seemingly arbitrary nature, there are some factors that place prisoners at high-risk for being kept in long-term solitary confinement: 1) political activism and jailhouse lawyering; 2) race; and 3) mental illness.

To start with, those who file grievances about staff misconduct and abuse, or file lawsuits about civil and human rights violations, are routinely subjected to repressive treatment. Pennsylvania is far from alone in this practice. Professor of Corrections and Correctional Law at Minnesota State University, James Robertson, has stated that “Retaliation is deeply engrained in the correctional office subculture; it may well be in the normative response when an inmate files a grievance, a statutory precondition for filing a civil rights action.” He also refers to a survey of Ohio prisoners that found “that 70.1% of inmates who brought grievances indicated that they had suffered retaliation thereafter; moreover, 87% of all respondents and nearly 92% of the inmates using the grievance process agreed with the statement, ‘I believe staff will retaliate or get back at me if I use the grievance process.’ [FN18] Among staff supervisors, only 21% believed that retaliation never happened, with one warden characterizing it as ‘commonplace’ when inmates resort to the grievance process.” As Robertson says, guards who retaliate “cannot be regarded as rogue actors. They act within the norm.” (“One of the Dirty Secrets of American Corrections”: Retaliation, Surplus Power, and Whistleblowing Inmates, 42 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 611 (2009)).

Russell Maroon Shoats, a former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member who has been incarcerated in Pennsylvania prisons for almost 40 years is a prominent example of a political prisoner targeted for repression via placement in long-term solitary. Maroon has been held in the hole for more than twenty years and has not had a misconduct citation during that time. Although it is true that he escaped in the late 70s and early 80s, prison officials have told supporters and family that he is being kept in solitary because he is an organizer and a leader.

Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys, two members of a group of prisoners known as the Dallas 6, have been held in solitary for approximately 11 and 9 years respectively as a result of their speaking out against torture and other human rights violations inside PA’s control units.

Damont Hagan is another who has been continually targeted for his outspokenness, including a recent incident where he was assaulted and placed in a cell with nooses at SCI Huntingdon. He was recently held in the solitary units at SCI Cresson, a prison that the Justice Departmenthas announced an investigation into, in part due to the guard-encouraged suicide of John McClellan in May 2011.

Nikki Donnelly and Brett Grote review mail written by state prison inmates alleging harsh conditions.

Caine Pelzer, Ravanna Spencer, Rhonshawn Jackson, Michael Edwards, Jerome Coffey, Andre Gay, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, and countless others have been thrown into solitary for the sole purpose of breaking their spirit. Look them up on the PA DOC inmate locator and send them a letter.

Regarding race, the disparities within the solitary confinement population may be the most extreme in the entire criminal legal system, which is saying a lot. We do not know the exact figures because the demographics are not public, but reports of solitary units overwhelmingly comprised of people of color in PA prisons are common

Over the last thirty-plus years there has been a national trend of warehousing those with mental health needs inside prisons. These people often end up in prison because of their difficulties in adapting to life outside the walls, often because of experiences of childhood trauma and substance abuse, and their challenges in navigating social life is even more difficult inside the walls. The stresses of prison can lead to them getting in trouble with prison authorities due to an inability to follow the rules, which leads them to solitary, which leads to a worsening of their underlying psychological state. This cycle of dysfunction is a normative feature of prison systems across the U.S.

This nexus of retaliation, racism, and abuse of the mentally ill is widespread in Pennsylvania prisons, and there is no shortage of examples to be found by reviewing the weekly PA Prison Reports on our website.

PR:     Besides solitary confinement, what other aspects of PA prisons does HRC identify as human rights violations?

BG:     Some of the obvious examples include physical abuse, medical neglect, racial discrimination, and sexual violence, all of which are chronic issues in prisons within Pennsylvania and beyond. In regard to the latter, a guard at SCI Pittsburgh was recently indicted on about 100 counts related to his rape and torture of prisoners at that facility. This is also being investigated by the Justice Department. This story has been suppressed in the national media, a phenomenon commented on by Mumia (1,2), in what can only be understood as yet another example of the corporate media’s complicity in enabling torture in U.S. prisons.

Of course, race-based policies of mass incarceration violate the human right of equality under the law and the right to be free from racial discrimination. Michelle Alexander refers to this aspect of the U.S. prison nation as “the new Jim Crow.” Under international law it is known as apartheid, and it is prohibited under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. The United States has never signed or ratified the convention for reasons that should be obvious enough.

Pennsylvania is the world leader in another egregious human rights abuse: sending children to prison for the rest of their lives. There are more than 400 people in PA prisons who were sentenced for crimes allegedly committed when they were younger than 18. In this state, life means life, an utterly despicable practice that makes a cruel mockery of any pretense that the society we inhabit is humane, enlightened, or fair.

Also of great importance in any discussion of the criminal legal system is the series of laws that enable “legal” discrimination against formerly incarcerated people, prohibiting them from obtaining access to food, housing, employment, stripping people of their right to vote in many states (though not PA) and setting them up for a life of poverty that guarantees high recidivism rates. This should be understood as a matter of deliberate policy, as it has been going on so long that it cannot plausibly be an unintended consequence of an otherwise sound system.

The system works to violate human rights in such a comprehensive manner, from the socio-economic conditions that give rise to property and drug crimes and related acts of violence to the damaging and anti-human conditions inside the walls, and then to be  released into a life of second-class status, enforced poverty, and political disenfranchisement, that it is hard to see how it is ‘legal’ in anything but pretense.

PR:     How is Human Rights Coalition working with PA prisoners and their families to improve conditions for PA prisoners?

In Pittsburgh and Philly we have weekly letter-writing to prisoners nights. Visit our website (Pittsburgh or Philly) to learn more and email us athrcfedup@gmail.com or info@hrcoalition.org. We are constantly receiving phone calls and emails from people looking to advocate for their loved ones. In 2011 we initiated a Political Action Committee in order to be better organized through the building of a membership base and engaging in consistent acts of advocacy, education events, and building other campaigns. The PAC is in real need of some committed organizers to help us build momentum.

One of the campaigns we’ve been increasingly involved with here in Pittsburgh is Decarcerate PA, which was started in Philadelphia. While the broader vision is to push for decarceration – shrinking the prison population, closing prisons, redirecting social resources to programs that care for people and communities – the immediate objective is to push back against planned prison expansion. The state of Pennsylvania is sinking some $685 million into building two new prisons and expanding a host of others. If more people are continually sent into these hellholes, then our efforts to improve conditions in any given situation will be futile.

PR:     What is HRC doing specifically to challenge the use of solitary confinement?

BG:     Aside from public education and advocacy, we are working to develop a legislative campaign with allied organizations such as theAmerican Friends Service Committee, the NationalReligious Campaign Against Torture, and the ACLU. While it is still in the planning stages, this campaign can be useful as a means for furthering political organizing objectives.

Ultimately, any efforts to push back against torture and get people out of prison is contingent upon the wholesale removal from power of both corporate-backed imperial parties, the redistribution and redefinition of political power, and the elimination of an economic system with its roots in the market, replaced by one that has its roots in the earth. Anything less spells certain doom for our specific efforts to abolish solitary confinement, mass incarceration, and prisons, as well as our very survival on this planet.

PR:     HRC is also now starting a campaign to have Russell Shoats transferred out of solitary confinement at SCI-Greene. How can our readers support this?

BG:     Russell Shoats, discussed above, is a co-founder of HRC who has spent 20 years in the hole as a consequence of his principles and resistance to the inhumanity and criminality of this system. He is a 68-year-old revolutionary who has taught and inspired countless other prisoners and activists inside and outside the walls.

Along with HRC, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild have submitted letters to the PA DOC requesting that Maroon be released into general population.

Supporters can visit a recently-created website and click the “Follow” link at the bottom right to receive email updates when new postings are available. There is a sample letter on the site, and soon more material will be added. A new interview was just posted where Maroon discusses his thoughts on the importance of democracy and self-determination to movement building, the power of the feminist movement and matriarchal politics, Occupy Wall Street, and the imperative of centering food security (and square-foot gardening) in our movements.

PR:     Anything else to add?

BG:     It is absolutely critical to the fate of movements for social justice in this country that the situation of prisoners and the function of prisons in the social order take a central role in our analysis and practice. Everybody can correspond with a prisoner, help out a local group, get on email lists, and research the reality of the prison nation. It is not the land of the free, never was, never was intended to be, and the sooner we disabuse those around us of that notion the better chance there is to win some badly-needed victories. There is no dream too big and no action too small, let’s keep at it till the walls crumble.

–Prison Radio first began recording Mumia Abu-Jamal’s radio essays in the early 1990’s and we continue to this day. Our mission is to challenge unjust police and prosecutorial practices which result in mass incarceration, racism, and gender discrimination by airing the voices of men and women victimized by an unjust criminal justice system. Our website, www.prisonradio.org features Mumia’s essays and much more, including the latest news about his case. To receive our email newsletter, please sign up on the bottom of our website’s front page.

Hans Bennett is an independent multi-media journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia (www.abu-jamal-news.com).

Nyabingi Kuti, MLK Coalition

District Attorney Steve Cooley warned prison realignment would dump thousands of dangerous criminals onto our streets and trigger a crime wave, so he threatened to throw the book at every felony defendant to keep them locked up as long as possible.

Sheriff Lee Baca seized on the controversy of realignment to plea for $1.4 billion to rebuild and expand county jails – at the same jail his deputies were being exposed for their brutal and inhumane treatment of prisoners, something that has gone on unchecked for decades.

True to form, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa simply stuck out his hand and begged for money to hire 150 cops to closely track every convict freed early under Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to reduce overcrowding in state prisons as mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The idea of actually offering help to the formerly incarcerated and reducing the 70 percent recidivism rate never occurred to any of these political heavyweights – at least they never publicly uttered a word about it.

But from Lynwood to Antelope, hundreds of caregivers with non-profits, probation officers and even police commanders were working hard to actually deal with the influx of paroles by connecting them to drug treatment, job training and support groups to give them at least a fighting chance to stay out of trouble.

It was that kind of thinking that bought two dozen people to Pasadena last week to launch the Los Angeles Reintegration Council as a countywide group that would share data and insight into what is working and what it isn’t, and to collaborate in working to create 10 to 15 regional organizations providing coordinated programs to help parolees.

Pasadena was chosen for good reason.

Mark Franco, Flintridge Foundation

Two years ago, the Pasadena Police Department working with the Flintridge Center, an incubator of non-profits, and other community groups set up an innovative program called PACT – Pasadena Altadena Community Team.

It is the model for what reformers hope to achieve, bringing police and sheriff’s deputies together with caregivers and support organizations and using an outreach program to identify the needs of paroles and get them help – if they are ready.

“PACT does work,” Flintridge Center outreach worker Mark Franco told the group at the outset. “These people have done for me what the Department of Corrections didn’t do in 22 years.”

Instead of adding to what he described as his own long, long rap sheet, Franco now spends his days connecting with parolees wherever they are, which is why he walks, rides his bike and takes public transit to move about so he can get in touch with a lot of people who have fallen through the cracks and could be guided to agencies that offer support.

‘When they ask me how I get around, I say I take the 210 – two feet, 10 toes,” he quipped.

Franco set the tone of the meeting for what needs to be done: Aggressive outreach combined with individualized support available from community-based and faith-based organizations and government.

“They have to be ready,” Franco said. “Some want it. Some don’t. Some just want a quick fix.”

The target group for early release without minimal or no supervision is the NONs – non-serious, non-sexual, non-violent offenders – and they are the most likely to be able to benefit from help, various participants in the meeting said.

“We are trying to reform a broken system,” said Nyabingi Kuti, a community organizer and activist with the MLK Coalition who has been working with probation officers and community groups to create a groundswell for change in policies at the local and county government levels and to get at least some of the funding channeled into programs that support reintegration efforts.

“We need a united front to get them to listen.”

He and Brian Biery, community organizing director for the Flintridge Center, were instrumental in putting the meeting together to start the process of building support.

Pasadena Deputy Chief Darryl Qualls and Officer Anthony Russo were on hand to describe the city’s commitment to therapeutic efforts to help, even bringing along outreach workers on routine searches of parolee homes where they can show the ex-cons and their families a caring face instead of the iron fist of law enforcement.

“Law enforcement support is vital,” Qualls said. “We can give legitimacy to your efforts.”

Biery summarized what participants identified as their action plan: Develop a resolution for cities to adopt as their commitments and to pressure the County Board of Supervisors, advocate for more funding for programs that work, collaborate closely with each other, develop better data on what efforts are working and what aren’t and use the Pasadena PD as a model for community-law enforcement relationships to get buy-in from other police agencies.

“The angle for them is public safety. We’re helping you to do your job by helping individuals to make the right decisions in these crucial moments so that they are supportive, so the community is safer and there is less risk to your officers,” Biery said.

“This is the beginning of a conversation … about what we need to do as community members to ensure that reintegration and re-entry actually happen.”

The conversation that started in Pasadena is long overdue. The failure of locking people for long sentences in overcrowded conditions without effective rehabilitation and support programs was clear a long time ago.

It is only now when the state can no longer afford to pay $50,000 a year per inmate or six-figure salaries for prison guards that we are finally beginning to look at how to help.

Ron Kaye
Ron Kaye LA 

The ad says Mr. Santorum voted to “let convicted felons vote” — something the senator says is “explicitly false” because it implies, though it never says, that he wanted felons to be able to vote from jail. The vote Mr. Santorum cast, Senate vote No. 31 in 2002, would have overridden state laws when it comes to federal elections. It would have required them to let felons register to vote once they have completed their prison sentences and any probation or parole.

Romney, at first, beat around the bush.  “I don’t believe people who have committee violent crimes should be given their right to vote.”

Santorum retorted that, while Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the law allowed people on probation and parole (including those who committed violent crimes) could in fact vote.  And Romney did nothing to fight it.

In fact, until 2000, prisoners in Massachusetts could vote- just as they currently can in Maine and Vermont.

The problem here is about creating and underclass in America, a caste of Americans with no stake in the democracy.  A group, millions strong, who are told to pay taxes, abide by the laws, yet have no representation.  How can  a democracy survive with parents barred from the ballot box?  How can such a large group, with further discrimination in employment and housing, be expected to abide by the law?  Most of them will, and most do, but this is a credit to people’s basic human instinct to live in peace and harmony.  It is not due to political leadership.

Was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts somehow saved when prisoners were barred from participation?  Was the state of Rhode Island somehow dismantled when people on probation and parole were granted their voting rights in 2006?  I was part of the latter ballot campaign, going so far as drafting the final constitutional amendment… just one year removed from prison, for a violent crime.  It is ironic that I move to Louisiana for law school and legally lose my right to vote.  It should come as no surprise that I felt much more connected to the democracy, to my responsibilities as a citizen, in the state where I could vote.

Bruce Reilly
Unprison

Jazz Hayden

PRESS CONFERENCE/COURT HOUSE RALLY

JOIN US ON THE STEPS OF THE MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT
IN SUPPORT OF HARLEM COMMUNITY ACTIVIST JOSEPH “JAZZ” HAYDEN

A LONGSTANDING MONITOR OF POLICE CONDUCT AND THE RECENT VICTIM OF AN ILLEGAL STOP AND FRISK AND RETALIATORY ARREST AND CHALLENGING NYPD POLICE MISCONDUCT IN OUR COMMUNITIES

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2012
8:30AM
100 CENTRE STREET

On Friday, December 2, 2011 Bro. Jazz Hayden was stopped in Harlem for an alleged traffic violation and when he was pulled over, the cops stated, ”We Know You” because they were the very SAME cops he had filmed during the below cop watch of a stop and frisk over the summer:

The cops then proceeded to ILLEGALLY search his car and arrested him for a PEN KNIFE. This is completely outrageous – there’s nothing remotely illegal about carrying a pen knife. Jazz was then held captive for nearly 48 hours and finally released on his own recognizance after the judge denied the DA’s attempts to have him post bail.

This is of course just the latest example of both the out-of-control racial profiling and stop and frisk tactics of the NYPD and; its targeting of Anti-Police Terror Activists like Bro. Jazz and most recently Bro. Shaka Shakur & Bro. Bullwhip.

The Pigs seriously need to understand that when they screw with ONE OF US then they are screwing with ALL OF US!

SAVE THE DATE & OCCUPY THE COURT HOUSE!

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT CAMPAIGN TO END THE NEW JIM CROW AT
212-501-2112 or campaigntoendnewjimcrow@gmail.com

Much is known of the Montgomery bus boycott that he led in the 1950s. He fought for economic justice and the plight of the poor, and supported Memphis sanitation workers before he was assassinated. And he opposed the war in Vietnam. But rarely do we hear about his position against capital punishment.

“I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included,” King said. “Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.”

King’s words are just as relevant now in the twenty-first century, over four decades after his death.

America has reached a turning point in its application of capital punishment. Last year, Illinois abolished the death penalty over concerns of wrongful convictions and executing the innocent. This came following historic decisions to end the practice in New Mexico and New Jersey. Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber recently placed a moratorium on all executions, stating that the death penalty fails “basic standards of justice.”

In addition, the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate voted to review the death penalty, in light of questions of racial, ethnic and gender bias, high costs, and a lack of a deterrent effect. And a ballot initiative in California this year will allow voters to give an up or down vote to state-sponsored killing.

Across the nation, the death penalty is an emerging civil rights issue. The execution of Troy Davis last September–an African-American man who was sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a white police officer in Savannah, Georgia– has awoken many to the inherent injustices of capital punishment. That the state could execute a man despite strong evidence of his innocence, including seven of the nine trial witnesses recanting or changing their testimony, was an indication that the death penalty has little to do with guilt or innocence.

Rather, executions in the U.S. are part of a racially-coded system of retribution. Poor people and members of racial minorities are more likely to receive a death sentence, as are those who are charged with murdering a white victim.

In North Carolina, where defendants in cases with white victims are 3.5 times more likely to receive a death sentence, the state legislature voted to repeal the state’s Racial Justice Act, which Gov. Bev Perdue signed into law in 2009. The Act allows people facing a death sentence to present statistics and other evidence of racial bias in court. Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed the repeal legislation supported by prosecutors and Republican lawmakers. Civil rights groups such as the NAACP and People of Faith Against the Death Penalty fought the repeal.

State-sponsored executions are part of an American culture of violence. Perhaps it is no accident that the former Confederate states, with their history of dehumanization through slavery and segregation, and the meting out of mob justice through lynching, are among the more enthusiastic practitioners of death.

And the late Coretta Scott King–whose husband and mother-in-law both were assassinated–spoke out against the practice. “An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation,” Dr. King’s widow proclaimed. “Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder”.

Further, the death penalty is an international human rights issue as well. The European Union, which forbids the practice among its member nations, has imposed new restrictions on the importation of anesthetics used to execute people in the U.S.

Sadly, some would dilute Dr. King’s human rights message, including his “radical revolution of values,” in which he urged America to begin the necessary shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. Meanwhile, the “drum major for justice, peace and righteousness” as the inscription reads on his memorial–stands on the National Mall as a reminder of his dedication to human rights, including opposition to the death penalty.

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy,” King said. “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

If America truly wants to follow the teachings of Martin Luther King, we should end all executions now.

David A. Love

David A. Love is the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, a national nonprofit organization that empowers exonerated death row prisoners and their family members to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty.

Republished with the author’s permission from Huffington Post.

Barbour’s pardons caused outrage in some political circles, including charges that he violated the state constitution and did not act wisely in making the decisions. And a Mississippi judge blocked 21 of the pardons after the state’s attorney general complained.

As Barbour pointed out, the majority of the people had already been released or approved by the state parole board. Besides, he wanted to restore voting rights to people who had paid their debt to society, and allow them to seek gainful employment. And some had worked in the Governor’s mansion under a program for prisoners who earned good time credits. For a man who was barred from running again due to term limits, and whose 2012 presidential aspirations ended after he defended the Jim Crow-era White Citizens Councils, the pardons made sense.

Jamie and Gladys Scott – who were serving life sentences for the 1993 armed robbery of two men that only yielded between $11 and $200 — were released by the governor in January 2011, but with strings attached. Gladys had to agree to donate one of her kidneys to Jamie, who was released because she suffers from kidney failure. The Scott sisters had hoped for a pardon from Barbour, but now will ask the new governor, Phil Bryant. But will Bryant deliver for them? His background may provide clues.

Like Barbour, Bryant is a conservative Republican in the nation’s most conservative state. A former state representative, state auditor, and most recently lieutenant governor, he beat his gubernatorial opponent, Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree – the first black candidate for statewide office in Mississippi — by 61 percent to 39 percent. Bryant outspent DuPree at a rate of 4-to-1.

Candidate Bryant was co-chairman of an anti-birth control ballot initiative last November that would have banned abortion even for rape and incest, and defined a fertilized egg as a human being. The personhood ballot measure, which Dupree also supported, albeit with concerns, failed.

But it is Governor Bryant’s positions on race that speaks to his civil rights record and whether he would pardon two black women.

In addition, the new governor supported the state’s successful voter ID ballot measure, requiring voters to present a government-issued photo identification at the polls. The measure had the overwhelming support of white voters, while most blacks opposed the initiative. Bryant has pressed for voter ID requirements on the grounds that it prevents voter fraud. According to civil rights proponents, voter ID laws are voter suppression tactics that discriminate against black and Latino voters, who are less likely to possess a photo ID. Meanwhile, as a lawmaker Bryant did not provide any evidence of voter fraud practiced in his state.

But as a state legislator, Bryant helped kill a voter ID bill because of amendments supported by the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus. The Black Caucus measures would have encouraged voter registration and voter turnout, early voting, extended voting days and same-day registration.

“Nobody wants photo Voter ID more than I do,” Bryant said in 2010. “However, I am not willing to back down from my Republican conservative principles and accept early voting and other provisions that compromise fair elections.” Bryant also opposes voting rights for convicted felons, including nonviolent felons convicted of writing bad checks — a crime disproportionately committed by blacks.

Further, Bryant opposed federal aid that would have brought relief to unemployed Mississippians, in a state where black unemployment reached three times the white rate during the recession. And he was one of the state’s first politicians to capitalize on the undocumented immigration issue as a way to rile up older white voters who are afraid of people of color outnumbering them and taking over.

As state auditor, Bryant claimed that so-called illegal immigrant children were responsible for the rising cost of public education, without providing any proof of his assertion. So, he fabricated the numbers. This, in the blackest state in the Union, with a 40 percent black population and a rising 2.7 percent Latino population.

The civil rights community is blaming the newly-minted executive of the Magnolia State for fanning the flames of racial hatred in the state. Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnsonaccused Bryant of being the main agitator of racial hostility by enabling Tea Party racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. “It’s un-American,” Johnson said. “We’re going to stand up against it.”

Mississippi’s new governor opposes the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters, characterizing it as President Johnson’s revenge against Southern states. “It changed in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson didn’t get the votes of the South. You know, we voted for Barry Goldwater,” Bryant said.

“So Lyndon Johnson got mad and he passed the Voting Rights Act that said all those states that voted less than 50 percent in the past presidential election in 1964 now must go under the control of the Justice Department. Johnson said ‘You didn’t vote for me, South, so I’ll show you something,’ so some states, including Arizona and some counties in Virginia, since 1964 have been under the Department of Justice.”

The Department of Justice determines whether state redistricting plans meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. When it comes to voting rights, Bryant said, “I’m about tired of having the Obama justice department tell me what to do.” The state Senate rejected Bryant’s redistricting plan to eliminate a new black-majority district. The senators were concerned his plan would violate the law.

Most of all, Governor Bryant might be reluctant to pardon the Scott sisters because he is a member of the pro-secessionist, pro-slavery Sons of Confederate Veterans, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center is “a Southern heritage group that has been largely dominated by racial extremists since 2002.” As lieutenant governor, Bryant was listed as a member in a SCV newsletter.

And according to the website of the Mississippi Division of the SCV, ”As we all know our fellowSCV compatriot and member, Phil Bryant, is now the governor-elect of our great state. During his tenure as Lieutenant Governor he has not forgotten his Confederate heritage and has supported the SCV. I am requesting that we return the favor and support him.”

Last year, the SCV held a march to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War which, according to the group, did not involve slavery. Regarding the Civil War, the SCV website said “the South was right!” and claimed “there is no difference between the invasion of France by Hitler and the invasion of the Southern states by Lincoln.”

Now, the decision of whether pardon the Scott sisters is in this man’s hands. Will a governor who is a member of a neo-confederate group, opposes voting rights for blacks and ex-felons and uses Latino immigrants to stoke white racial fears pardon the Scott sisters? Time will tell.

David A. Love
The Grio

Republished with permission.

Former Tucson School Superintendant Tom Horne

Arizona passed a law in 2010 that bans schools from teaching ethnic studies. Believing such classes promoted “ethnic chauvinism,” former state schools superintendent and the law’s sponsor Tom Horne sought to ban any class that are “designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.” His primary target: the Tucson Unified School District, which offers classes in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies. Insisting that the Mexican-American program taught Latino students “that they are oppressed by white people,” Horne equated the program to the Jim Crow era. “It’s just like the old South, and it’s long past time that we prohibited it,” he said.

Under the law, the state can withhold 10 percent of funding for any school district that refuses to change its courses. Last Friday, the current state schools superintendent John Huppenthal followed through, holding back $15 million a year from Tucson district. Eleven teachers and two students filed suit to prevent the law from taking effect, but on Tuesday, U.S. Circuit Court Judge A. Wallace Tashima refused to grant the injunction but ruled that the students could challenge the law on First Amendment grounds. Thus, the Tuscon district’s school board suspended the Mexican-American studies department:

School Board member Adelita Grijalva

The Governing Board of the Tucson Unified School District voted late Tuesday to suspend immediately the Mexican-American studies department, marking a turning point in a yearlong controversy over a new state law banning certain ethnic studies.

“The district shall revise its social studies core curriculum to increase its coverage of Mexican-American history and culture, including a balanced presentation of diverse viewpoints on controversial issues. The end result shall be a single common social studies core sequence through which all high school students are exposed to diverse viewpoints,” the governing board said in a statement.

“The district shall study and bring to the board new measures designed to narrow the achievement gaps for traditionally underserved and economically disadvantaged students,” the board said.

Opponents of the law noted that Huppenthal’s own audit of the program actually praised the classes and found “no observable evidence” that the classes violated the law. Nonetheless, an administrative law judge insisted that the program’s curriculum was teaching Latino history “in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner,” thus spurring Huppenthal’s decision to withhold funds.

School Board member Adelita Grijalva argued that the law was unconstitutional and reflected the “anti-immigrant political climate in the Arizona statehouse.” “This is not a militarized group that want to overthrow the government,” she said, urging the board to preserve the program and appeal the decision. “This is a group that wants their children to understand about about their culture and their role in our American history and our lives.” The final vote was 4 to 1, with Grijalva offering the sole objection.

Tanya Somanader
Think Progress 

The call coincides with a recent call to action by supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal to condemn solitary confinement as a means of torture.  Mumia has been transferred to solitary since leaving Death Row.  Read more from the Human Rights Coalition, here.  The call also comes amidst growing awareness of the relationship between Wall Street, prisons, prison labor, and paid lobbyists pushing policies that create more prisoners.

“We are calling for February 20th, 2012 to be a ‘National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners.’

“In the Bay Area we will ‘Occupy San Quentin,’ to stand in solidarity with the people confined within its walls and to demand the end of the incarceration as a means of containing those dispossessed by unjust social policies.

Reasons

• Prisons have become a central institution in American society, integral to our politics, economy and our culture.

• Between 1976 and 2000, the United States built on average a new prison each week and the number of imprisoned Americans increased tenfold.

• Prison has made the threat of torture part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States, especially the 7.3 million people—who are disproportionately people of color—currently incarcerated or under correctional supervision.

• Imprisonment itself is a form of torture. The typical American prison, juvenile hall and detainment camp is designed to maximize degradation, brutalization, and dehumanization.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased 7 times. Currently African Americans make up 12 % of the population in the U.S. but 53% of the nation’s prison population. There are more African Americans under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

The prison system is the most visible example of policies of punitive containment of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. Prior to incarceration, 2/3 of all prisoners lived in conditions of economic hardship. While the perpetrators of white-collar crime largely go free.

In addition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that in 2008 alone there was a loss in economic input associated with people released from prison equal to $57 billion to $65 billion.

We call on Occupies across the country to support:

1. Abolishing unjust sentences, such as the Death Penalty, Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Three Strikes, Juvenile Life Without Parole, and the practice of trying children as adults.
2.  Standing in solidarity with movements initiated by prisoners and taking action to support prisoner demands, including the Georgia Prison Strike and the Pelican Bay/California Prisoners Hunger Strikes.
3. Freeing political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart, Bradley Manning and Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, a Black Panther Party member incarcerated since 1969.
4. Demanding an end to the repression of activists, specifically the targeting of African Americans and those with histories of incarceration, such as Khali in Occupy Oakland who could now face a life sentence, on trumped-up charges, and many others being falsely charged after only exercising their First Amendment rights.
5. Demanding an end to the brutality of the current system, including the torture of those who have lived for many years in Secured Housing Units (SHUs) or in solitary confinement.
6. Demanding that our tax money spent on isolating, harming and killing prisoners, instead be invested in improving the quality of life for all and be spent on education, housing, health care, mental health care and other human services which contribute to the public good.

Bay Area

On February 20th, 2012 we will organize in front of San Quentin, where male death-row prisoners are housed, where Stanley Tookie Williams was immorally executed by the State of California in 2005, and where Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on death row, is currently imprisoned.

At this demonstration, through prisoners’ writings and other artistic and political expressions, we will express the voices of the people who have been inside the walls. The organizers of this action will reach out to the community for support and participation. We will contact social service organizations, faith institutions, labor organizations, schools, prisoners, former prisoners and their family members.

National and International Outreach

We will reach out to Occupies across the country to have similar demonstrations outside of prisons, jails, juvenile halls and detainment facilities or other actions as such groups deem appropriate.  We will also reach out to Occupies outside of the United States and will seek to attract international attention and support.”

Endorsers Include:

• Angela Davis
• California Coalition for Women Prisoners
• Campaign to End the Death Penalty
• Jack Bryson
• Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
• Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu Jamal
• Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu Jamal
• National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
• Occupied Oakland Tribune
• Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression
• Prison Activist Resource Center
• Prison Watch Network
• San Francisco Bay View Newspaper
• Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network

“Social justice is more than an ethical imperative, it is a foundation for national stability and global prosperity. Equal opportunity, solidarity and respect for human rights — these are essential to unlocking the full productive potential of nations and peoples..”  -Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Bruce Reilly
Unprison