Reverse Trick (I Mean )Criminology

I just found out or at least figured that I have concluded how the criminal justice system works. On the surface, it is supposed to represent liberty and justice for all and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and all that jazz, but the overt reality is that it does neither.

Around the country, there have been a slew of cases, especially here in Georgia where men wrongly convicted of crimes were released after serving many years in prison.

Robert Clark was released from prison after being locked up since 1981 for a rape that DNA proved that he did not commit. In addition, DNA was used to find the real assailant that matched the DNA that was collected from the rape victim as well as two other rapes that were committed later. He was convicted and sentenced to life plus 20 years after a woman identified him as the man who carjacked and raped her at gunpoint from outside an Atlanta Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. He was the fifth in Georgia to be freed through post-conviction DNA testing. Then there is Willie O. "Pete" Williams, who, was convicted of the 1985 rape of a woman in an apartment complex parking lot. The woman identified Williams as her attacker after which, he spent nearly half his life in a South Georgia prison before DNA evidence was also used to find the real criminal. Add to this, Calvin Johnson Jr., who was released from a Georgia prison 16 years after he was sentenced to life for a rape he did not commit.

Juxtapose this with what happened to James Fowler, a former Alabama State trooper who just recently surrendered for a killing he allegedly committed in 1965. It occurred during a civil rights protest in Marion in which Fowler shot and killed Jimmie Lee Jackson (pictured above). This killing lead to the Selma – to – Montgomery voting rights march. This means that Mr. Fowler was allowed to run around free for 42 years without penalty.

So how does it work? Well if you happen to be of African descent in America, you are thrown in prison on GP and will likely spend 15 to 30 years in prison for a crime one may have not been guilty of committing. If you are white, you are allowed to walk free for decades, even when there is substantial evidence to convict you. This means that fairness and equal protection under the law is not applicable to African Americans until after they serve time for crimes they don commit or worse, that people who commit crimes on them are not subjugated to the same penalty as afforded by the law.

For example in 2003, Billy Ray Johnson a “mentally challenged” 44 year-old was tricked in going to a party in Linden, Texas, beaten unconscious and left in a puddle of blood to die on the side of the road. The individuals (white) who committed this crime were given suspended sentences by the judged and only served 30 and 60-day terms in jail – not prison. Johnson on the other hand suffered permanent brain damage.

All I am saying is brother’s watch out. We still live in a time where the word of a single person or white woman for lack of a better example, can land you in prison even without evidence or if the person wears glasses. And if you are the victim of a crime, and your attackers are a member of the privileged historical order of American culture, they you may suffer without seeing the perpetrator brought to justice. Like I said, it is not criminology, it is more like tricknology.