By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Angela Corey has become a minor legal celebrity for her tough-minded prosecution of the Trayvon Martin murder case. Her toughness has also drawn the ire of U.S. House member Corrine Brown in a racially charged case in Jacksonville. The case involves Marissa Alexander who was charged under Florida’s “10-20-life” law which mandates progressively tough penalties for violent felonies when firearms are involved.
Saying he had no choice, Judge James Daniel sentenced the mother of an 11-year-old to 20 years in prison after a jury convicted her of aggravated assault for firing a warning shot to discourage her estranged husband from choking her. In a cruel irony another judge had rejected Alexander’s invocation of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, ruling she wasn’t in fear for her safety when she returned to her house to get the car keys she had forgotten after she ran into her garage in an attempt to escape.
The prosecutor was singled out for failing to exercise discretion in the case. “There is no justification for 20 years,” Brown told Corey, “All the community was asking for was mercy and justice.”
Corey had offered Alexander a plea deal which carried a three year sentence. Alexander bet on the good sense of the jury, and crapped out. Judge Daniel seemed frustrated by the case:
“Under the state’s 10-20-life law, a conviction for aggravated assault where a firearm has been discharged carries a minimum and maximum sentence of 20 years without regarding to any extenuating or mitigating circumstances that may be present, such as those in this case.”
Rep. Brown was not so diplomatic saying, “She was overcharged by the prosecutor. Period. She never should have been charged.” Brown, the Jacksonville congresswoman, told reporters that the case was a product of “institutional racism.” Corey said the case deserved to be prosecuted because Alexander fired in the direction of a room where two children were standing.
Mandatory minimum sentences ignore mitigating factors and punish under a “bright-line” test. They are the darling of the “law and order” crowd who see the world in stark shades of black and white and who eschew any discretion for “lily-livered” judges who have the disturbing habit of mixing compassion and justice in sentencing decisions.
Proponents of the 1999 “10-20-life” law point to the fact that violent gun crime rates have dropped 30 percent statewide since the law was enacted. Is 20 years fair for a woman trying to defend herself? Should the prosecutor have heeded Rep. Brown’s suggestion and backed off the charges altogether? Can a law be just in the face of a result that flies in the face of “natural justice”?
Source: CNN
`Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
SouthernBelle, OK, here I am back in front of the keyboard again.
I read and thought about the three articles because I thought the program you were referring to, the first 48, was some kind of reality show where they featured young criminals who were in prison or something. I didn’t realize that it was a show where the police worked on a murder investigation. It’s kind of confusing to me, what it actually is, and how your responses to watching it have come about.
So I started the research wrong, not understanding the questions. Your questions were about (a) why they only showed young African American suspects and (b) why, in my opinion, you hadn’t realized that until you had watched the show for years.
Both answers totally escape me. I don’t know.
Here’s what I WAS thinking was happening. I was thinking that they were making entertainment out of some stories of young African American men who had been convicted of some crimes, and so they were choosing their episodes and making them all young African American villains, never choosing an episode having to do with a white villain. Let me answer that question first because that’s the only one I studied.
First of all, there would be nothing we could do about it even if they were deliberately doing that to sell the idea that all criminals are young African American men. That’s their TV show. People can decide not to watch it, and so forth, but we have no real effect on what they try to show. It would be like telling Fox News which stories to cover or how to present their take on the news.
But secondly, these three articles represented very carefully done scientific studies (social science) of how people regard Black faces and white faces, in the context of crime and punishment (law and order). The first study was the one that impressed me the most. They designed a study in which the subjects taking the tests and filling out questionnaires were “primed” with flashes that showed them the faces of African American individuals and Caucasian individuals. Those primed with “seeing” [too quickly to even realize they had seen them! Just FLASHES] African American faces then identified crime-related pictures and words MUCH FASTER than neutral pictures and words. In other words, after seeing the Black faces, the study subjects identified guns, knives, handcuffs, prison bars, drug paraphernalia, etc. very quickly, while taking a bit longer to identify things like pens, coffee cups and umbrellas. What a clever study design!
In another study, death sentences were calibrated with lots of other information and it was established with mathematical certainty that the more “stereotypically Black” the defendant looked, the more likely he was to be sentenced to death for his crimes — a difference of more than 30 percentage points if the victim was white! No small matter!
Then there was an article on careful tests taken by judges — about a hundred judges, maybe more, from three different geographical locations in the U.S., and all cooperated (except one decided that he did not want his data to be included so they agreed to exclude it). The judges were regarding the African American defendants as deserving of greater punishment than the white defendants, and whereas the differences were not as great as “death versus no death sentence,” it was still a significant issue.
The whole thing added up to the fact that African Americans were being thought of as criminals throughout our justice system, and beyond.
Now you’ll get people on this blog and other blogs who will say, “That’s because more of the criminals are Black.”
Well are they? Only if you do not correct for the fact that the system is locking them up more, arresting them more, profiling them more, and executing more of them.
So what we are being fed on a daily basis is this picture of the white crime victim and the Black criminal. We are being fed this on a daily basis in a hundred ways, a thousand ways, countless ways.
So when we see a guy like Zimmerman kill a guy like Trayvon Martin, we are hearing that it was Martin who was the criminal.
Think of it: People are calling the unarmed boy who was gunned down by an armed man a “thug” for trying to defend his own life which was obviously in danger. That is where our televisions, our newspapers, our entertainment, our blogs, and our fear has put us.
So give yourself this break, SouthernBelle. You say you didn’t notice it until now. That’s perfectly OK, you know why? Because in that study of the judges, ONCE the judges KNEW that the questionnaire was about their unconscious racial beliefs and prejudices, they — guess what — they were able to self-correct and not keep doing the prejudiced stuff any more! Think of THAT! Within a few minutes or hours at the most, when they understood the purpose of the study, they were able to address the criminal proceedings differently, and those big numbers showing their sentencing and convicting conduct going out of control by large numbers began to show less error and started to be more impartial and equal!
That is what we can get from each other.
We can begin to examine our own beliefs, challenge them, understand them, let our minds work on things we hear and see and speak with each other about, we can find out so much about how we think, we can think more, better, deeper.
A couple of times I have wondered about you, about what has really taken place, what it means. I honestly do not know. I’m doing my best to respond adequately to you and I hope you are hearing me in the way I am trying to speak.
Best regards,
Malisha
Malisha,
It doesn’t matter because:
1) There won’t be a trial, so no real prosecution – Just a delay for emotions to subside and then a plea bargain.
2) ZOMG THERE WAS UNBELIEVABLY SERIOUS INJURY HAVE YOU EVEN SEEN THE PHOTOS OF ZIMMERMAN’S HEAD SO MARTIN IS GUILTY
SouthernBelle, I have to go upstairs and study before I write to you. I am reading three studies, one of which I have read before. The three are:
“Seeing Black: Race, Crime and Visual Processing,” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt (Stanford), Valerie J. Purdie (Yale), Phillip Atiba Goff (Penn State) and Paul G. Davies (UCLA). Published in the American Psychological Association Journal in 2004. (I’ve read this before)
Another is “Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes,” Eberhardt, Purdie, Davies and Sheri Lynn Johnson (Cornell), published in the Cornell Law School Legal Studies Research Papers Series of the Law Library, in 2006.
The third is “Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?” by Jeffrey J. Rachlinski (Professor of Law, Cornell), Sheri Lynn Johnson (ditto), Andrew J. Wistrich (Magistrate Judge in California) and Chris Guthrie (Professor of Law, Vanderbilt). Notre Dame Law Review, 2009.
Believe it or not, these three studies have something to do with the questions you asked me and I did not know how to answer them — at all — complete ignorance — so I had to do a little reading.
But I’ll confess to start with that I never saw the TV program itself, and if what I find doesn’t apply, I’ll hae to go back and get an education by watching the TV! (At least I can have popcorn while I do that, right?)
Malisha
After all my denials about being a racist it doesn’t sit well with me that I could watch that program all these yrs. and just now realize it’s geared towards African American teens committing murder. I honestly never thought of it that way before. You have made me think about things A LOT the last few weeks. Maybe this means I am prejudiced and didn’t know it. If that makes any sense.. My friend says I have a disease he refers to as, ‘social racism .’ Sad thing is, I know what he means and he might be right. I never saw the Z. case through someone else’s eyes until I read your comments. Thanks for that.
It just struck me: the headline on Professor Turley’s article on this thread says: “TRAYVON MARTIN PROSECUTOR.”
She is not. She is “GEORGE ZIMMERMAN PROSECUTOR.”
Some people have kind of gotten that mixed up. For instance, they don’t want Trayvon Martin memorialized until there’s a trial to find out whether he’s guilty or not.
Shano, thanks for the heads up!
Good to see this taking off properly!
http://jacksonville.com/10-20-life/2012-05-25/story/march-scheduled-marissa-alexander
A march is scheduled to protest the overcharging of Marissa Alexander by this prosecutor.
Belle, thanks for the clarification. Be well, I’ll write back to you tonight.
Breathe deep!
Malisha
Yes, I’m corny. But I Love You Woman. Thank you. Now I can get some sleep.
SouthernBelle,
I’m confused, but I’ll read your comment closer this evening and try to understand it better.
Meanwhile, are you saying that right now you just came home from the hospital? In that case, get well soon and I’ll post to you this evening.
Sorry. Not in the hospital, but I have specialist in St. Louis I have to see because of the last go around with my friend.
I want your opinion as to why, after watching that show, ‘The First 48’ for all these yrs. that I just now noticed that it is always an African American teen criminal that is committing these serious crimes..? The show never features a white teen that’s involved in any episodes, so why ? What the hell does it say about me that after watching it all these years that I never noticed this fact before?
As far as the hospital, my friend sat on me, smothered me, I was shipped out to St.Louis cause the little hospitals around here weren’t equipped to save me. I have to use oxygen now, not the drug Oxy. That’s what I meant by that. I’m sorry if I confused you.
Probably should have waited until I got some rest, it’s a four hr. drive to c my Drs. They always give me something to help the pain for the long ride. but I felt this overwhelming NEED to talk to you and didn’t take my tablet. To be honest, I feel ashamed of myself for NOT noticing. that the show is geared toward slamming the African American teens. If they’ve ever showed a little white punk on there I’ve never seen it. If I’m not making any sense to everyone ,I apologize. .Got to get some rest, but I just had to get this out to Latisha.first. Too important to me to wait.
belle
I meant oxygen, not Oxy.
malisha
Hey Girl. Been to St. Louis to Barnes Hosp. to c my Drs.Last time I was smothered, hand over mouth and sitting on me. In the hospital 4 months. couldn’t talk for month, could only shake head yes or no. On home oxygen now. But much, much better. Don’t have to use oxy. all the time… But that’s not what I;m on here. I have a question for you. I have watched the first 48 for yrs. just dawned on me last night that I had only African American teen t twenty on there. Why is that even the case? And what does that say about me? The fact that I just realized that they were all African Americans? Am I so tainted that I expect them to be African Americans. It’s like they ignored the white teens completely. I think they should be sued or something. And I want your honest opinion about my not realizing, after all this time.
thanks, southernbelle
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/20-0
Published on Sunday, May 20, 2012
by The Baltimore Sun
Tough on Crime, Tough on Justice
by Leonard Pitts Jr.
So the people got sick of it, all those criminals being coddled by all those bleeding heart liberal judges with all their soft-headed concern for rights and rehabilitation. And a wave swept this country in the Reagan years, a wave ridden by pundits and politicians seeking power, a wave that said, no mercy, no more. From now on, judges would be severely limited in the sentences they could hand down for certain crimes, required to impose certain punishments whether or not they thought those punishments fit the circumstances at hand. From now on, there was a new mantra in American justice. From now on, we would be “tough on crime.”
We got tough on Jerry Dewayne Williams, a small-time criminal who stole a slice of pizza from a group of children. He got 25 years.
We got tough on Duane Silva, a guy with an IQ of 71 who stole a VCR and a coin collection. He got 30 to life.
We got tough on Dixie Shanahan, who shot and killed the husband who had beaten her for three days straight, punching her in the face, pounding her in the stomach, dragging her by the hair, because she refused to have an abortion. She got 50 years.
We got tough on Jeff Berryhill, who got drunk one night, kicked in an apartment door and punched a guy who was inside with Berryhill’s girlfriend. He got 25 years.
Now, we have gotten tough on Marissa Alexander. She is the Jacksonville, Fla., woman who said her husband flew into a violent rage and tried to strangle her when he found text messages to her first husband on her phone. She said she fled to her car, but in her haste, forgot her keys. She took a pistol from the garage and returned to the house for them. When her husband came after her again, she fired — into the ceiling. The warning shot made him back off. No one was hurt.
Like Ms. Shanahan before her, Ms. Alexander was offered a plea bargain. Like Ms. Shanahan, she declined, reasoning that no one would convict her under the circumstances. Like Ms. Shanahan, she was wrong.
Earlier this month, Ms. Alexander got 20 years for aggravated assault. And like Ms. Shanahan, like Messrs. Berryhill, Williams, Silva and lord only knows how many others, she received that outlandish sentence not because the judge had a heart like Simon Legree’s, but because he was constrained by so-called “mandatory-minimum” sentencing guidelines that tie judges’ hands, allow them no leeway for consideration, compassion, context or common sense. In other words, they prohibit judges from judging.
Charles Smith, the judge who sent Ms. Shanahan away, put it best. He said the sentence he was required to impose “may be legal, but it is wrong.” Amen.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” In a nation where we execute people based on no evidence save eyewitness testimony, it is hard to imagine what meaning that prohibition still holds. But assuming it means anything, surely it means you can’t draw a 20-year sentence for shooting a ceiling.
Except that Ms. Alexander just did.
In restricting judges from judging, we have instituted a one-size-fits-all version of justice that bears little resemblance to the real thing. It proceeds from the same misguided thinking that produced the absurd “zero tolerance” school drug policies that routinely get children suspended for bringing aspirin and Midol to class. In both cases, there is this silly idea that by requiring robotic adherence to inflexible rules we will produce desirable results.
By now, it should be obvious how wrongheaded and costly that reasoning was — and how urgently we need to roll back the wave that swept over us in the Reagan years. It is understandable that the nation wanted to get tough on crime.
But we have been rather hard on justice, too.
© 2012 The Baltimore Sun
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004. He is the author of the novel, Before I Forget. His column runs every Sunday and Wednesday in the Miami Herald. Forward From This Moment, a collection of his columns, was released in 2009.
Leander, thanks. I’ll check into it next week; right now I am too busy for little faces, but I do appreciate your efforts to educate me.
No, some seem to interfere with the Wordpad code, or whatever you call it technically, and thus cannot be used.
Interestingly the word “last” with the last emoticon under “frown, sad” on Wikipedia completely disappears, while item no. 8 get’s an extra colon. I didn’t add that one myself.
If you use icons as images from the web, you need the basic html image tag, that links to the original image. But that will be our next lecture experiment 😉
3. 🙁
8. ::<
not sure why the last dissappeared and the the 8. has an added extra colon.
I have to test again. But it seems not all codes work.
Gene H has tried to teach me but I lost that website he sent me a while back…)
Malisha, when you once wanted a green smiley sweating or something, I checked for you but didn’t find anything I liked, or none of the smilies seemed to really fit exactly what you wanted.
But strictly this blog has the automatic conversion of Smilies turned on. This means when I use my old favorite one the very simple “wink”: a semicolon followed by a round bracket, it automatically turns into an icon. Thus I can only show it to you with spaces, if I leave them out it’s automatically converted into an image.
With space between semicolon & bracket ; ) without: 😉
Let me test if WordPress automatically converts all random emoticons from Wikipedia’s list of emoticons. Please note I have no preview option here, so I cannot test.
For this exercise I use the 3rd, 8th and the last option under frowning, sad:
3. 🙁
8. ::<
I am actually curious what happens, I never used many of them beyond my favorite wink.
I’m not good at putting up links and stuff like that — technology impaired.
If you google “Ryan Young” and “Safeway” you will find the stories AND petitions to sign.
I bet this petition action is going to help Mr. Young and his wife; that’s the sense I am getting of this right now.
SouthernBelle, I am so sorry about what happened to you. Some very abusive men actually become angrier when their wives are pregnant. I think it’s because mothering is per se powerful — it is the most powerful act that can be done.
Recently a man named Ryan Young was working at the meat counter in a Safeway Store in California. He saw a man beating up his pregnant girlfriend, and ZOOM, he intervened and stopped the attack. Safeway suspended him WITHOUT PAY for having “violated policy” by intervening when they say he should have simply called security. There was no TIME to call Security, of course.
So now there’s a big flap over this. The guy has no income and his own wife is five months pregnant. I called the local Safeway and told them I am never shopping there again until they correct this, hire the guy back, and give him his back pay, and apologize. The fools — he saved them from a big lawsuit, imagine if she had been injured and lost the baby because of a beating she got in their store while people stood around putting stuff on the shelves and ignored her!
Oh well, here I go again. I guess so many years of seeing this kind of thing — it doesn’t seem to change. Of course, now we hear about it more because we have the Internet.
You have been a good experience for me, Belle.
As have you to me. You are obviously the smart one here. Can we get an internet petition and get his job back? We have to at least try but you should be the leader of it. For obvious reasons. Why wouldn’t anyone sign it, it’s the right thing to do. Being punished for doing the right thing happens way to often. If you can do something, myself and everyone here will help.
malisha
Thank you. You’re a fighter and a believer. Some people were intended by God to speak for others. Do you ever feel a hand on your shoulder. hhmm Man, I wish I could have had you a few years back, There is no way for me to explain the feeling of being horribly abused, I hid from my family on many occassons, anyway, I was thrown a life saver, it’s called a kind word and a helping hand. What you do is priceless. And guess what…f you’re old man. You obviously instilled a good ethical foundation under your child. That’s not easy when you have an idiot around. The worst for me was being pregnant, being kicked repeatedly in my abdomen, miscarrying, then finding that the damage done to me would leave me childless. I have to get off of here for now. YOU GO GIRL
Thanks, TS, I’ll try to remember that. Except, of course, that sometimes a person is a person is a dead person…
As usual things get implicated as racism. When speaking I have no color, sex, religion in my head. I guess I just don’t realize that certain words are considered racial. That’s because it’s not something I actually consider. A person is a person, is a person……