Yearly Archives: 2024

Police killed 1,194 people in the United States in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence. That’s pretty much been the case over the past decade.

97 percent of those killings were the result police shootings.

Police were charged with a crime in only 9 of those 1,194 killings—roughly 1 percent. Yet 22 of the officers involved in these killing had killed someone before with an additional 8 officers having been involved in multiple shootings.

But the most striking finding in the 2022 annual report issued by Mapping Police Violence is that 101 of the victims killed by the police were unarmed—more than half of whom was Black or Hispanic.

On April 8, 2023, Yahoo News carried a report about 7 cases, which garnered national media attention, in which police killed Black people after mistakenly thinking they had a gun. They were:

• 2006 Sean Bell: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of 50 bullets fired New York City plainclothes officers the day before his wedding.
• 2010 Aiyana Mo’Say Stanley-Jones: Unarmed, shot and killed by Detroit, Michigan police. The 7-year-old was shot through her neck as she lay in bed with his grandmother. The officer involved in the shooting was ultimately cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.
• 2018 Stephon Clark: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of 20 bullets fired by Sacramento, California police the backyard of his grandmother’s home.
• 2020 Frederick Cox: Unarmed, shot and killed by High Point, North Carolina police. The 18-year-old teenager was shot multiple times in the back.
• 2022 Tyrea Pryor: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of 15 bullets by Independence, Missouri police following a raffic stop.
• 2022 Jayland Parker: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of an estimated 90 bullets fired by Akron, Ohio police, of which 46 struck Parker, during and following a car chase.
• 2022 Donovan Lewis: Unarmed, shot and killed by Columbus, Ohio police as he lay in his bed. He was shot less than a second after the officer opened the bedroom door.

These cases, and thousands more like them over the past two decades, demonstrate that police have a virtual license to kill people, especially people of color, with no accountability.

That’s police justice.

But what about a person of color—a reputed drug cartel member, no less—who kills a police officer’s K9 partner?

During a police chase in January 2019 that began in Karnes County and ended in shootout in Bexar County, Texas, Matthew Mireles shot and killed K9 Chucky after the 5-year-old Belgium Malinois had been sic on him by his handler.

Mireles was ultimately given three life sentences—one of which was for killing K9 Chucky.

That’s dog justice.

Thirty-four years ago Crosley Green, a Black man, was charged with killing Charles Flynn in Titusville, Florida. He maintained his innocence.

Not so sure about its case because investigators had written in their notes that they had doubts about Green’s involvement in Flynn’s killing, the prosecution offered him a 7-year plea deal. He refused the deal. He was then convicted by an all-white, non-unanimous jury and sentenced to death—a sentence that was later reduced to life imprisonment at the request of the State of Florida.

He still maintained his innocence.

Some three decades later a federal district court judge reversed Green’s conviction because the prosecution had failed to disclose to the defense the investigator’s notes doubting Green’s involvement in the crime.

The prosecution appealed the judge’s reversal order to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal judge then ordered Green released from the Florida prison system pending the appeal of the new trial order.

He was released from prison in April 2021.

Despite the fact that three prosecution witnesses have recanted their testimony linking Green to Flynn’s killing and eight witnesses who provided an alibi for Green at the time of Flynn’s killing. a three-judge federal panel in an exhaustive, convoluted 182-page decision issued on March 14, 2022 reversed the federal judge’s new trial order and reinstated Green’s conviction.

On February 27, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the Green case, foreclosing any other avenues for judicial relief.

After two years of freedom, Green was ordered on April 5, 2023 to return to prison to continue his life sentence.

The evidence is compelling that another innocent Black man will remain in prison for the rest of his life.

That.s Black man justice.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a justice system that finds criminal wrongdoing in just 9 of the 1,194 police-on-citizen killings in one year—especially given that more than 100 of the victims were unarmed, were people of color, and killed by White officers.

Yet that same justice system gives a man a life sentence that kills a police dog sic on him by the police dog’s handler after the risk to public safety had passed. The officers simply wanted revenge because Mireles has shot at them.

And that same justice system re-incarcerates a Black man that police do not believe committed the crime; the prosecution offered him 7 years to plead guilty; secured a death sentence against him after he refused the deal’ the State admits the death sentence was wrong; the court vacated the death sentence after three prosecution witnesses recanted their testimony against the him; the man has eight alibi witnesses to his innocence; and the man has spent more than three decades in prison.

This 65-year-old innocent Black man was returned to prison to complete a life sentence imposed upon him for an unconstitutional (blatant prosecutorial misconduct) conviction because he did not timely follow proper court procedures to have his innocence claims reviewed.

These kinds of disparities in justice are systemic in the nation’s justice system. They occur every day in police-on-citizen killings, unconstitutional traffic stops, illegal searches and seizures, prosecutorial misconduct, unfair trials and sentencing, and judicial review of unconstitutional convictions.

That is the system in which criminal defense attorneys must fight diligently and unrelentingly to eke out a measure of fairness and justice for the clients they represent.

It is a seemingly insurmountable task that they must embrace each day they walk into a courthouse.

Hypocrisy is a self-imposed disorder that causes the individual to develop a disdain for the truth while cultivating a mean-spirited attitude toward others, especially those on the lower rungs of the social ladder.

This disorder will eventually infect hypocrites to the point that their brains are eaten up with the purest form of dumbass—one rooted in hillbilly political conservatism.

That’s what happened to Tucker Carlson—the former politically conservative talk show host on the Fox News Network and current Vladimir Putin propagandist.

During his tenure with Fox, Carlson spoke to an audience that, on average, was roughly 94 percent white.

During one of his many race-baiting shows, Carlson stirred considerable social debate when he said that mostly brown-skinned undocumented immigrants were making America “dirtier;” that they are leaving their trash and human waste strewn all along our southern border.

At the time, Fox News supported Carlson’s blatant racist assertion, as did most of his white viewing audience.

What Carlson did not report is the fact what those mostly RV living and motorcycle driving white folks have engaged for quite some time in depositing their human feces in our illustrious national parks, all the while throwing their garbage (including their Walmart and Buc-ee’s bags) all over this country’s precious tourism inviting landscape.

And when not shitting all over the place and throwing McDonald wrappers and plastic cola containers out their RVs or SUVs windows, they have engaged in illegal off-roading and other damaging behavior that endangers animal wildlife and the national parks’ diminishing natural resources.

Several years ago a Yosemite National Park official was quoted in the news media as saying: “It’s heartbreaking. There is more trash and human waste and disregard for the rules than I’ve seen in my four years living here.”

A more recent study found that Lake Haiyaha in the Rocky Mountain National Parks contaminated with human fecal E-coli bacteria, human urine and human feces.

Roughly 300 million people visit the country’s national parks each year—and roughly 80 percent of them are white American-born citizens, and a disproportionate number of them are Fox News and Tucker Carlson enthusiasts.

And that’s where hypocrisy disorder comes into play.

It is okay for white folks to take a shit in the Yosemite and Rocky Mountain National Parks but it’s a dirty crime if a brown-skinned undocumented person shits on the arid grounds just on this side of the Texas border.

These sorts of racist-driven immigration views and the trashing of our national parks by “them good ole boys” illustrate that we are getting on down the Make America Great Again road.

President Trump admires Andrew Jackson’s legacy. Five days after his inauguration in 2017, Trump, with the blessing of Steve Bannon, hung Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office in the White House. He often did photo-ops with that Jackson’s portrait in the background.

Andrew Jackson was an avowed racist who owned roughly 160 slaves at the time of his death in 1845.

The famed “Indian Fighter” spent most of his adult life killing as many Native Americans as he could while fighting the abolition of slavery in the process.

But Old Hickory, as he loved to be called, could not win a battle on his own. He had to have the help of other Native Americans to defeat the Creeks in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend during the War of 1812 and he needed the support of the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte in order to prevail against the British in the Battle of New Orleans during that same war.

Jackson was elected president through an Electoral College vote in 1828. The following year white people discovered gold on Cherokee land in northern Georgia. That discovery led to 3,000 of those Jackson-loving white folks to invade the land destroying Cherokee property.

Jackson knew how to appease his white constituency. He spearheaded the removal of the “Five Civilized Tribes”—Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminoles and Choctaws—of Native Americans on the East Coast——to the west of the Mississippi. He muscled Congress into enacting the Indian Removal Act of 1830 allowing for the voluntary relocation of these Native Americans.

That Act was ultimately abused by the federal government to forcefully remove by any means necessary the five tribes to the Indian Territory (what is now Oklahoma). Four of the tribes basically acquiesced to the removals’

The Cherokee tribe did not.

To Jackson’s pleasure, the U.S. Army in 1838 rounded up 16,000-plus Cherokee, and, without allowing them time to gather their personal belongings, forced them to march some 2200 miles across nine states in the winter, many of whom were barely clothed and shoeless. Upwards of 4000 Cherokee died during what is now known as the “Trail of Tears.”

It was, and remains, probably the worst travesty inflicted upon Native Americans by the U.S. government in this nation’s history.

Andrew Jackson, more than any other person, was the author of that travesty—and he had absolutely no remorse for the brutal toll in human suffering and loss of life he caused.

The end result of Jackson’s actions is that the government got the land and the white folks in Georgia got the gold—not to mention all the wealth and property the Cherokee were forced to leave behind. Some white Georgians even dug up the graves of Cherokee in a greedy plunder for jewelry or any other valuables buried with the dead.

Those Georgians were Jacksonians.

Finally, some 200 years after the travesty former President Barak Obama, the nation’s first African American president, signed a measure of formal apology to the Cherokee people.

Ironically, had President Jackson gotten his way, African Americans would never have escaped the bonds of slavery, much less ascending to the presidency.

Trump admiringly called the author of the Trail of Tears “an amazing figure in American history – very unique in so many ways.”

When shown Old Hickory’s portrait, President Biden ordered it removed from the White House and replaced with Benjamin Franklin.

Former President Trump admires the racist Jackson who believed in an authoritarian form of government rule while President Biden admires the enlightened Franklin who believed in a democratic form of government.

Does that say anything about our upcoming presidential election?

American prisons exist to punish and rehabilitate.

American schools exist to educate and develop.

There was a time when prisons were institutions of violence: inmate-on-inmate homicides, guard-on-inmate homicides, inmate-on-guard homicides, and too many suicides to accurately record.

There was also a time when schools were institutions of safety: located in neighborhoods safe to ride bicycles, with playgrounds for recreation, and classrooms for learning.

That was then.

This is now.

The corrupt and vitriolic American political system has turned this social dynamic on its head. Prisons, and the gang-infested yards inside them, are now safer than schools and the playgrounds that surround them.

According to Statista, there were 143 inmate homicides in American prisons in 2019 (the latest year for which statistics are available) while, according to a January 5, 2024 U.S. News report, there were 346 school shootings across America in 2023 that left 248 people either injured or killed.

In America today, where white supremacy and violence have found an acceptable niche in the body politic, a student entering a classroom has a greater fear for their safety than an inmate entering a prison chow hall.

Why?

Guns and their availability; namely, the deadliest military-style assault weapons and the most powerful ammunition manufactured are easier for a student to buy than a bottle of beer.

A convenience store clerk in Texas will ask an 18-year-old student for identification when purchasing a $10.00 six-pack of beer—identification that is necessary to carry beer.

A Texas gun store clerk, on the other hand, will not ask an 18-year-old student, regardless of how mentally unhinged they may appear, for identification when purchasing a $3,000 in military-style assault weapon and ammunition.

This is the way hardcore Texas gun owners want it. They believe mass shooting violence is a product of mental illness, not guns.

It has been reported in the past that the Sheriff and Mayor of Uvalde, Texas attributed the May 24, 2022 shooting death of 19 Robb Elementary School students and two teachers to a high incidence of mental illness in the community.

That is not only a shameful insult to the people of Uvalde but is a sophomoric assault on basic logic.

Prisons have a higher incidence of mental illness among its population than any other place in the U.S. Yet mentally ill inmates are not committing mass murder against their fellow inmates.

Was the mass shooter at the Robb Elementary School mentally ill?

Sure he was. That issue is not subject to debate.

But a reasonable argument can be made that the insurrectionists who stormed the nation’s Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 intent on hanging the Vice President of the United States were also mentally ill, not “patriots” of democracy as many right-wing politicians would have us believe.

Like it or not, violence is not a manifestation of mental illness, rather mental illness of a manifestation of violence.

And the seed of violence, and the bumper crop of death it produces, comes from the soil of gun manufacturing, especially those manufacturers that assembly-line military-style assault weapons.

Guns have, and always have had, one singular purpose: to kill life, whether human or some other species.

It is the very deadliness of guns that demand regulation of them—something that can be achieved without wholesale confiscation or unreasonable control of them.

Common sense regulations like a 21-year age limit in order to purchase a gun, identification and background check prior to purchase, of the gun, and community safety-driven restraints on the “privilege” not “right” to open or conceal carry guns.

Any right thinking person should be able to live with these basic, responsible regulations. They would have prevented the deaths of 19 innocent children and two teachers.

But gun regulations do not have a friendly audience in this country, especially in politically conservative states, because too many gun owners believe, regardless of how irrational, that an unrestrained accessibility to guns is a necessary defense against the “government is coming to take your guns” conspiracy theories.

Need proof?

News reports inform that Americans spent nearly $17 billion on guns and ammunition during the Obama presidency but gun sales immediately declined under the Trump presidency.

The conclusion is simple: a large percentage of white Americans, especially gun owners, felt racially threatened under Obama but racially secure under Trump.

These racial fears, and the social divisions they spawn, have a tragic consequence: namely, an increasing number of white gun-owning parents are not only teaching their children how to use guns but instilling them with a race driven anti-government hatred necessary to turn their guns on people of color in defense of some QAnon-inspired cause.

Gun ownership is no longer about the right to “keep and bear” a single shot musket or a flintlock pistol for either self or community protection. It is now about the right to “keep and bear” the most deadly guns available and to use them under whatever circumstances (whether legal or not) the individual deems appropriate, such as in “road rage” moments or attempts to break up social protests.

If this insanity is allowed to continue, our schools will become a breeding ground for future inmates. Violence begets violence, and children grow into adults—and if children are victims of, or exposed to, violence, they will seize violence as a reflexive response to any life situation that displeases them.

America can be a safe, gun-owning society but the nation will continue to reap a bitter harvest of violence so long as parents abuse their children and society marginalizes them based on their race, sexual preference, religious beliefs, or economic status.

The bottom line is this: mental health is being made a scapegoat for tragedies like the Uvalde school shooting when, in fact, it is the political system that allows shooters to casually purchase or access their weapons of mass destruction that is responsible for gun-related tragedies.

Where does a deranged teenager, who cannot afford a pair of jeans, get $3,000 or more to purchase assault weapons and ammunition?

And who are the gun store clerks that sell teenagers so many weapons and so much ammunition without at least alerting law enforcement about the purchase?

He hobbled around the prison. Inmates said he was a “child molester.” They said he molested his brother’s son.

I don’t know
.
All I know is that every time he passed me on the walk he would speak.

“How’ya doin’, Sinclair.”

He had a medical problem. At times he could not control his bowels. He would be walking down the walk toward the kitchen with feces falling out his pants leg.

Younger inmates laughed and ridiculed him.

“What’s wrong, old thing,” they mocked, “can’t hold your mud?”

It’s not easy being old in prison.

And it’s worse if you happen to be a child molester.

But old man Guidry provided me with a story. The following essay is based on a Saturday morning conversation I overheard while waiting to get a haircut.

I rushed back to the dorm and quickly scribbled it down.

I had learned how to record things in my brain – until I could get to pen and paper.

Robert Guidry reminds me of the old Naked City intro – “there’s eight million stories in the Naked City.”

“Framed like Roger Rabbit” is just one of those prison stories.

Prison is filled with a thousand daily mundane conversations – embellished life stories; spirited and angry denunciations of the “justice system”; and lazy talk needed to just “pass the time.”
It was an early Saturday morning – August rain drawn from the perpetual moisture of the Gulf of Mexico had been falling all morning. A group of inmates were sitting on iron benches outside the prison’s barbershop waiting their turn at a haircut. One was a handicap old Cajun named Robert Guidry – a man who passed his time at the C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center in conversation with whoever would listen to him.
“It’s a good drink,” the Cajun tells an obese African-American guard sitting nearby to keep an eye on the inmates. “It goes down smooth.”
“Sure does, goes down smooth,” the guard nods in agreement, indicating a fondness for alcohol. “It’s not a cognac, but it’s as smooth as cognac.”
The conversation lulled, drifting momentarily into collective silence. I didn’t catch the name of the drink. It became one of life’s million little insignificant mysteries. The inmates turned their attention, as though signaled by brain implants, to two inmates struggling to remove old paint from the doors leading into the laundry. It was time to “clean up” for the annual American Correctional Association’s accreditation inspection. I always had a special contempt for the accreditation process. The ACA is a sham organization (a collection of “broke dick” old wardens and former prison officials parading as “prison experts”) whose “prison accreditation” process is as phony as the organization.
“Sinclair, a friend of mine was telling me you was on death row for a long time,” the Cajun said, trying to stir up a conversation with me.
“Yes,” I replied, masking impatience at having my thoughts invaded by a foreign voice. “I spent six years there.”
“I don’t know how you done it,” the Cajun said. “That would have done me in right there. The Judge gave me twenty years, the max, and I caught a stroke right after that. Death row would have killed me as shore as shitin’.”
The Cajun tugged at a loose thread on the leg is his state-issued jeans.
“I like to fiddle with things,” he said, by way of explanation.
The stroke explained his handicap – a slow, hop-along gait and a perceptible slurred speech blended with a natural Acadian accent.
“I got my ‘rap-sheet’ the other day,” he said, “and it shows my parole date and my release date on the same day in 2009. Does that mean I will get out on that day? One of the inmate lawyers told me that it does – that I’ll go home that day. You know, I’m under Act 1209 where you gotta do 85 percent of your time.”
The Cajun had told me enough to indicate there had been a clerical error in the computation of his master prison record (commonly called a “rap sheet”). Under Louisiana’s restrictive “goodtime” statute, inmates convicted of violent offenses had to serve eighty-five percent of their sentence before mandatory release; there was no way Guidry’s parole eligibility and goodtime release dates could have been on the same date.
“You will be released on the date your rap sheet indicates,” I said, not wanting to encourage further conversation, or perhaps induce a second stroke in the old inmate by telling him the truth – that he was going to have to serve 85 percent of that 20 years, far past his expected 2009 release.
“Are you gonna keep runnin’ after them women when you get out of here, Mr. Guidry?” a young African-American inmate asked, drawing the Cajun’s attention in another direction.
The Cajun was visibly pleased with the macho nature of the question.
“Only the Lord knows that,” the Cajun replied. “He will decide that – but if I do mess with women, it won’t be with white women. I’m gonna leave them white women alone.”
“Whadda mean you ain’t gonna mess with white women, Mr. Guidry,” the young inmate smiles, enjoying the drift of the conversation. “You white, ain’t ya’?”
The Cajun’s head began to unconsciously bob back and forth.
“Nope, I ain’t messin’ with no white women – they ain’t nuthin’ but trouble. All they good for is to mess a man’s life up – all they want is the money.”
The Cajun rubbed his forefinger and thumb together to emphasize the point.
“When you gettin’ out, Mr. Guidry?” the young inmate asks.
The head-bobbing stops. Life’s surged in the Cajun’s eyes.
“2009,” he responded quickly. “Just around the corner. I’ll be there before you know it.”
I looked at the old Cajun who was probably in his late 60s and in failing health. Unless Mother Theresa had a hand on his shoulder, he wouldn’t make it to 2009 – and if he did, he probably would not be able to “mess” with women.
“What’s bad about it all,” the Cajun told the young inmate, “is that I’m here for something I didn’t do – I ain’t had nothin’ to do with it. I didn’t know nothin’ about it.”
“C’mon, Mr. Guidry, you mean you ain’t done nothin’?” the young inmate asked, clearly doubting the Cajun’s protestations of innocence.
The Cajun exhaled, leaning forward and half-rising from the bench.
“Oh, God,” I thought — another stroke, an investigation, no haircut.
“Told ya’,” the beet-red faced Cajun said. “I ain’t done nothin’ – don’t you understand English. They got innocent people in prison all over – you hear ‘bout it on t.v. all the time. I’m one of them people. That DNA stuff would prove it, too.”
The young inmate raised his hand, slowly lowering it to signal to the Cajun to calm down.
“Did you tell your lawyer all that?” he asked.
“What, my lawyer?” the Cajun stammered. “He’s the one who set me up. He got me to sign all dem papers.”
“Hold it, hold it, Mr. Guidry,” the young inmate interrupted, obvious disbelief in his voice. “You didn’t read the papers before you pleaded guilty?”
The Cajun’s entire body began to slowly rock back and forth as his hands rubbed his thighs. A loud clap of thunder – and an increased downpour of rain did not diminish his excitement.
“I didn’t know what I was doin’,” the Cajun stated emphatically. “I didn’t understand what I was readin’ – my first time in trouble with the law. I didn’t know nothin’ – and I was drunk, too.”
“C’mon, Mr. Guidry,” the young inmate asked incredulously. “You tellin’ me that you was still drunk all them months later! Why didn’t you appeal to the Judge?”
The Cajun had grown testy, impatient – a second stroke was percolating.
“The Judge don’t want to hear nothin’ I gotta say,” he said, impatience giving way to anger, “and I done went to the higher courts and they don’t want to hear nothin’ either. If I was a Rockerfella’, they’d hear what I gotta say – and, believe me, I got plenty to say.”
“Whata ‘bout yore lawyer? You shore he won’t help?”
The Cajun stood up, took a deep breath of wet air, and sat back down. The pounding rain pelted the nearby concrete walkway with a vengeance, matching the beat of the Cajun’s heart.
“The lawyer framed me for $300,” the Cajun said. “He gets $300 a case, so what’da you think – he gonna give back that $300. It’s all about that green stuff – just ask any man with money.”
“Well, the judge should – “
“The Judge, the Judge,” the Cajun spat, drowning out the rain. “He’s in it with the lawyer – they both get $300.”
The young inmate was deeply skeptical.
“C’mon, Mr. Guidry,” he said. “Three hundred dollars! I could understand it if it was three thousand, but $300? C’mon.”
The Cajun stared incredulously at the young African-American, as though looking at an alien. He struggled to find words for his thoughts.
“Goddamnit, don’t you understand nothin’,” he stammered. “It’s the money. I was framed like Roger Rabbit.”
“You’re next, Mr. Guidry,” the guard said, breaking up the conversation he had been monitoring.
The old Cajun got up and hobbled into the barbershop. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. A profound sadness engulfed me as the Cajun’s words reverberated in my brain. It was one of those million dark moments when I questioned whether I would ever be free of prison madness. Hope ultimately replaced sadness before day’s end, but the old Cajun still hobbled about in my thoughts.