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Racial Discrimination and Disparity in the United States Justice System
Racial injustice in justice system
Racial Discrimination and Disparity in the United States Justice System
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George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was a boy who, at the age of 14, was convicted and then executed in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial for the murders of two young white girls in March 1944 – Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8 – in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed by electric chair in June 1944, thus becoming the youngest American with an exact birth date confirmed to be both sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century. [3] A re-examination of Stinney's case began in 2004, and several individuals and the Northeastern University School of Law sought a judicial review. Stinney's murder conviction was vacated in 2014, seventy years after he was executed, with a South Carolina court ruling that he had not received a fair trial, and was thus
In the case of the Brian Baldwin execution in Alabama in the year of 1999, Baldwin was wrongfully condemned to the electric chair for the alleged rape and murder of Naomi Rolin (CITE). In the end it was proven that Baldwin, a black teenager, was wrongly convicted in this case, clearly based on a bias and racist jury, judge, and court system. It was discovered that he was compelled to confess due to the abuse he endured during his interrogation, as the local police in his county beat him and tortured him with electric shocks from a cattle-prod (Rose, 1999). It should also be noted that there was no evidence tying Baldwin to the murder and that there were discrepancies between his confession and the facts of the case; such as, incorrect material facts in respect to how Rolon died and the nature of the murder weapon. This is the result of racism and insufficient police work and this is only one of many examples.
In Live Oak, Florida, the year of 1952, an African American woman named Ruby McCollum was arrested and convicted for killing a white doctor named C. Leroy Adams. During this point in time, racism was even more alive than it is today. It was said that McCollum was lucky to have even gotten a trial at all instead of just being lynched. Her trial is very interesting to me because she stood up against people that wanted to see her be put in prison for the rest of her life. To be specific, none of the jury were female, and all of them were white, some of whom were patients of Dr. Adams.
George Floyd's murder and Derek Chauvin’s trial(2020) Following the death of African American man George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the hands of white police officer Derek Chauvin, there were large-scale protests against racism and police brutality. Chauvin faces charges of third-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter, and second-degree unintentional murder. The trial sparked discussions about racial inequality in the criminal justice system and law enforcement on a global scale. In the end, Chauvin was found guilty on all charges, which is a rare example of police accountability for a black person's death.
Injustice is seen a lot in this world whether it is racial, healthcare, gender inequality, or even economic injustice but today we will be focusing on the Scottsboro boys and the trial of Powell vs Alabama. In the 1930’s, nine young African American teenagers as young as 13 years old were falsely accused of rape and eight were sentenced to prison over a crime they did not commit. Although they were eventually released after years, not because of insufficient evidence but because they served a significant amount of time in prison as minors and kept having to retrial, it still does not distract from the fact it took 82 years to clear their names over a crime they did not commit and subsequently ruined their reputation and lives while they were
Being an adolescent, who is in fact african american writing this essay, of course the first case which caught my attention was the 2012 Trayvon Martin case. Note, Trayvon was not killed by a member of law enforcement, rather, he was killed by a vigilante. But although Trayvon was not killed by a member of law enforcement this stirred up attention across america especially in the african american community concerning the law and members of its enforcement (judges, lawyers, police officers etc.) Following Trayvon’s death, deaths of other african americans by police officers started receiving national attention. Deaths of victims such as Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and others were being talked about nationwide following the death of Trayvon.
Just like Kalief, 97% of the African Americans who are currently sitting in prison never saw a trial (Averick, 2016). The criminal justice system stopped being about who guilty or innocent, but rather on the amount of money greedy white-privileged men can earn based on the number of people in a prison. Kalief Browder endured physical and emotional pain, for a crime later shown he didn’t commit. Browder was released after the charges were dropped, but two years after, he died by suicide (Averick, 2016). The life of Kalief Browder and his family will forever be scarred because of a system who sees people as dollar signs.
In our society today, we can see how a majority of the protection of the law is biased towards Whites rather than Blacks. This can be seen through the recent Trayvon Martin shooting that occurred in 2012. Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old African-American male who was walking back from a convenience store in Sanford, Florida, where he purchased a pack of Skittles candy and an iced tea. Zimmerman, a white police officer, shot Martin dead on the basis that Martin was carrying a weapon. The shot from the office killed Martin and Zimmerman justified his actions by claiming it was an act of self-defense.
“A person is innocent until proved guilty in a court of law” In the play Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, an 18-year-old is on trial for the murder of his father. After many pieces of evidence, the three that are in doubt are the old man hearing “I’m going to kill you!” as well as the weapon of choice and how it was replicated, and finally the woman’s testimony. In my opinion, the boy could have been proven guilty, based on these the boy is not guilty.
The exctuaray pain of a death of a child is a mother 's worst nightmare. They feel it is the only way to raise attention. In the city of Ferguson, Michael Brown was an unarmed black teen and was shot by police; this was the beginning of a wave of uprisings against police brutality nationwide. Michael Brown’s death proved how race played a role in the police system. The alteration was a interracial conflict.
Extreme racism and Jim Crow Laws in the Southern United States in the 1940s led to prejudice and tension between blacks and whites. This tension prompted the Judicial System to demonstrate bias in the favor of whites. The trial and execution of George Stinney supports this idea of a biased court system. In 1944, law enforcement in Alcolu, South Carolina convicted Stinney, 14, for the murder of two young white girls, Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 8 (Chapell). After the initial arrest, Stinney supposedly confessed, but no written or oral proof actually existed..
It became clear that tragedy was not unique to my family. There are thousands of other Black American families that deal with the pain of having a loved one in our criminal justice system, mostly for nonviolent crimes. From this academic pursuit, I developed a lens of consciousness that allows me to see the manifestations of racism in our legal
In Alabama nine African American were on a train ride and when the train stopped and they got off, two white women dressed in boy's clothes also exited the train. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were the names of the women and they ended up testifying against the boys and made up a story on how they were raped by the boys. When the trial was started the boys were provided with volunteer lawyers at the last minute. The final verdict was not only unjust but truly sad, “Nine black youths charged with the rape of two white women… Despite testimony by doctors who had examined the women that no rape had occurred, the all-white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old, were sentenced to death.”
Trayvon Martin’s murder has created a new chapter in history, because the judge declared his murderer not guilty (“Who We Are”) As a result, protests have surfaced from California to New York. Other incidents like Trayvon Martin’s have also come to light. Some people believe that the police’s actions were justifiable. I believe, however, that the punishment should fit the crime.
A poor innocent African-American boy was shot to death, because his image brought him up to look like a robber, according to a white cop. The white cop did what anyone apparently is expected to do, and shoot what was somehow “threatening” him. Is the cop in jail? No, they let him go because it was meant to be an act of “self defence”. The fact that he murdered an innocent boy for completely no good reason, has been totally ignored. "
