> June 21, 2000
> U.S. JUSTICE SYSTEM
>
> The poor and blacks on death row
>
> . Although black people represent only 12% of the U.S. population,
> they constitute 50% of its prison population . The U.S. government invests
> more in prisons than in universities
>
> BY LILLIAM RIERA (Granma International staff writer)
>
> IN the United States, the country which portrays itself as champion of human
> rights in the world, it would appear to be easier to incarcerate young
> people than to educate them and provide them with employment that could give
> them with healthy lives, affirmed Monica Moorehead, leader of Workers' World
> and that party's presidential candidate, speaking in Havana.
>
> Together with eminent figures from the civil rights movement in the United
> States, Moorehead took part in an international roundtable screened on Cuban
> television on June 19, which focused on the racism and injustice existing
> within the U.S. judicial system, particularly in the application of the
> death penalty.
>
> The Workers' World leader confirmed that prison construction in that nation
> is a lucrative business. The penitentiary industry brings in more than $1.1
> billion USD, by utilizing a cheap labor force which pays from 23 cents to
> one dollar per hour for slave labor, she noted.
>
> Wall Street firms, among them American Express, and telephone companies are
> heavily involved in this business, in which the U.S. government has invested
> more than in education since 1996.
>
> The African American activist observed that, despite a reduction in the
> number of crimes committed by young people, their rate of detention has
> increased. There has also been huge growth recorded by the female population
> in correctional facilities as a consequence of the use of drugs, in itself a
> result of the system.
>
> She added that many of those women are raped with impunity in those prisons,
> as was recently exposed by a group in a New York penitentiary. Single women
> even have babies there, which constitutes a crime against humanity. To cap
> it off, rehabilitation programs have been virtually eliminated.
>
> MORE THAN HALF THE FEMALE PRISON POPULATION IS BLACK
>
> In another roundtable on June 20, Cuban journalist Arleen Rodríguez explored
> this issue. She explained that over half of the 84,000 women prisoners in
> the United States in 1998 were black, "a figure that currently stands at
> 100,000, according to a publication specializing in that sector of the
> population."
>
> In contrast, she quoted the example of the blonde white wife of a U.S.
> military attaché in Colombia who was exposed as a drug trafficker and is
> currently on bail, as opposed to her Colombian chauffeur, who has been
> arrested.
>
> Analyzing what happened to the black movement which was such a strong force
> in the '60s and '70s, Rodríguez concluded: "It is in the prisons. It is
> dead." She then recalled how, in response to a question in the United
> Nations on the death penalty, a U.S. ambassador stated that if they didn't
> kill prisoners the jails would always be full.
>
> MUMIA ABU JAMAL: THE VISIBLE FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE
>
> That is the reason that they want to silence Mumia Abu Jamal, a journalist
> and member of the African American movement in Philadelphia, who has been on
> death row for 18 years, unjustly accused of killing a white police officer.
> As Moorehead noted, his constant protest constitutes the face of the battle
> against injustice and police violence in the United States.
>
> In an exceptional and spontaneous moment during the roundtable, Cubans were
> able to listen to a message sent by Mumia from his cell, in which he once
> more exposed the situation of two million prisoners in his country, and he
> expressed his solidarity with the island-wide struggle being waged for Elián
> González' return.
>
> Mumia Abu Jamal spoke of the conditions facing imprisoned blacks and
> Hispanics, including Cubans, the so-called "Marielitos" (Cubans who left
> from Mariel port in 1980), detained without a trial for an indefinite
> period, because the judges are never going to know that they are prisoners.
> That is U.S. "justice," which continues to be dominated by political
> ambition and anti-communism.
>
> Exactly 47 years ago, two other children, one the same age as Elián, were
> orphaned; they and their parents were the victims of a rigged and brutal
> system. On June 19, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to their deaths on
> the electric chair.
>
> Leonard Weinglass, the senior attorney on Mumia's defense team, referred to
> three factors that make for unjust defense proceedings in a country which
> has 25% of the world prison population: race, class and politics.
>
> NO MILLIONAIRES ARE SENTENCED TO
> DEATH IN THE UNITED STATES
>
> The attorney emphasized that no millionaires or upper-middle-class persons
> are sentenced to death in the United States.
>
> The 3600 prisoners on death row are the poorest of the poor, those with the
> worst education and medical attention. More than 90% of them have been
> victims of sexual and physical abuse, in addition to being dependent on
> public defenders because they lack the means to pay their defense, he
> stated.
>
> Weinglass recalled that, of the 18,000 executions in the United States in
> the 200 years of the republic's history, only 38 were white persons accused
> of killing people of color. In the prison housing Mumia Abu Jamal, there are
> 126 persons on death row and only 13 are white. In the U.S. justice system,
> the life of a white person is worth more than that of a black person.
>
> It was observed that the United States has the highest prison population in
> the world, with 519 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. As Cuban journalist
> Lázaro Barredo noted during the June 20 roundtable, 50% of the two million
> in jail are black, even though blacks represent only 12% of the population.
>
> Lennox Hinds, professor of law at Rutgers University and an eminent
> attorney, exposed the discriminatory nature of justice applied in the United
> States and insisted that in order to understand it, one has to go back to
> the genesis of that nation, which was marked by racism and violence against
> the indigenous population, now marginalized, with the lowest social indices.
>
> The case of Native American leader Leonard Peltier, who has spent 25 years
> behind bars, is one example of governmental action to repress such
> movements.
>
> Hinds noted that the death penalty is applied in 38 U.S. states, in
> violation of the international agreement on human rights. Even two children,
> one black and one Native American, has been executed. Nevertheless, no white
> man has been executed for raping a black woman.
>
> Legislation continues to be applied in a racist manner and the police force
> is an instrument of minority repression, he stated.
>
> Gloria La Riva, a trade union leader in the state of California, commented
> on the paradox of the richest state in the nation containing so much poverty
> and unemployment. According to official figures, 112,000 Latinos are
> identified as gang members, which is doubtless related to the large
> percentage of these minorities in prison, for crimes they committed in order
> to survive.
>
> La Riva noted that mounting a defense in California, for example, costs an
> average of $400,000 USD, which is clearly an inaccessible price for the
> great majority of the population.
>
> Mumia is a typical case within the U.S. judicial system. The inefficiency of
> his state-appointed attorney and police threats against witnesses, to
> convince them to lie, constitute a perfect combination, matched by a
> prosecuting attorney who is now a prominent figure in the Democratic Party,
> and a judge forced to retire after the damage was already done.
>
> Weinglass is convinced of Mumia Abu Jamal's innocence and states that, after
> 18 years, the case has been put before a federal court, and that they expect
> a response by the end of the year. One further complication is that there
> were changes in the law in 1996, which makes everything more difficult.
>
> Pam Africa knew Mumia in Philadelphia, during a time when the police
> murdered African Americans and Hispanics and never spent one day in prison.
> Meanwhile, Rosemary Mealy, his friend and a New York lawyer, recalled how
> Mumia, not yet 16, held a leading position in the Black Panther Party, which
> fought against police brutality in the community.
>
> When he became a journalist, Mealy recounted, Mumia Abu Jamal utilized the
> media to expose to the world what was going on. For that reason, the FBI
> identified him as a threat and was involved in achieving his arrest.
>
> Mumia stated that at the time he was given the death sentence he felt
> intense anger and the sensation that the injustice done was penetrating to
> the depths of his soul. Anger, injustice, outrage, fear, confused feelings
> that came from everywhere, but he hung on to the hope that they could not
> last, that he would turn them around.
>
> Abu Jamal's case was a political one from the outset, and could not have
> been any other way. He accuses the system. With a masters' degree from the
> University of California, his three books and hundreds of articles have
> denounced the corruption, abuse and crimes committed in jails against
> minority prisoners.
>
> Mealy noted that although the Justice Department initiated an investigation
> into police brutality three years ago, there have been attempts to avoid
> trials, and police officers involved in such acts are not appearing before
> the courts. She confirmed that many murderers of African Americans in New
> York remain at liberty.
>
> GARY GRAHAM'S LIFE DEPENDS ON THE GOVERNOR OF DEATH
>
> Jeff Mackler, leader of the mobilizations to free Mumia Abu Jamal, voiced
> his grave concern over the imminent execution of another African American,
> Gary Graham, better known as Shaka Sankofa, a prisoner in Texas for 20
> years, whose execution is scheduled for Thursday, June 22.
>
> Gloria Rubac, who is fighting for the life of the young black arrested at
> age 17 for killing a white man, emphasized that the governor of that state,
> George W. Bush, the current Republican presidential candidate, boasts the
> record of having approved the largest number of executions, 131, in the five
> years of his term in office, for which reason he is known as the governor of
> death.
>
> Some 400,000 Texans live in extreme poverty, in 1,500 precarious shantytowns
> lacking safe drinking water and sewer systems, according to an AP news story
> datelined June 19. The shantytowns, it adds, are slums without paved streets
> located in abandoned and deserted fields close to the Mexican border, and
> house the most abject poverty existing in the United States. Although Bush
> has visited the lower Río Grande area on various occasions, he has never set
> foot in a shantytown.
>
> Exploring the issue, Lázaro Barredo mentioned a Colombia University study
> which reveals that two out of every three executions are suspended as a
> consequence of grave errors committed by lawyers, prosecuting judges or
> police officers.
>
> He stated that all the death sentences in three states have had to be
> annulled for this reason, citing the case of Illinois, whose governor-who
> has visited Cuba-ordered a halt to the executions and later confirmed that
> the persons involved merely merited light sentences.
>
> Rubac noted that in spite of a lack of evidence against Sankofa, the
> detective in charge of the case decided not to investigate further because
> he was convinced of his guilt.
>
> An independent investigation pointed to Sankofa's innocence, but his
> defenders have sought out fresh evidence and plan to present an plea of
> habeas corpus, because since the new 1996 legislation, no court has been
> able to hear the six new witnesses, she noted.
>
> Together with Mumia's, this case has won international support, and both are
> having major repercussions in the United States itself, despite attempts to
> silence them. Magazines such as Newsweek are covering the issue of the death
> penalty in that nation, while an editorial in The New York Times has called
> for a new trial for Sankofa.
>
> Marches and demonstrations have taken place in various states, including New
> York and California, and another is scheduled for San Francisco. Meanwhile,
> well-known performers, members of Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus
> and religious groups have joined their voices to the just demand.
>
>
>
>