Jamil Joyner - Political Commentary

The following is a commentary written by Obadele Williams that provides historical relavent references which gives political perspective on why such an intentional travesty of justice is allowed through the judicial system and why we can not afford to stand idly by and allow it to continue. Feel free to go to our blog and post your feedback.

By reserving the penalty of death for black defendants, or for the poor, or for those convicted of killing white persons, we perpetrate the ugly legacy of slavery-- teaching our children that some lives are inherently less precious than others. -Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, former President, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1989

When people of color are killed in the inner city, when homeless people are killed, when the "nobodies" are killed, district attorneys do not seek to avenge their deaths. Black, Hispanic, or poor families who have a loved one murdered not only don't expect the district attorney's office to pursue the death penalty--which, of course, is both costly and time consuming--but are surprised when the case is prosecuted at all. -Sister Helen Prejean

If the racial disparities documented in the study of capital cases in Philadelphia were unique, they might be dismissed as simply a local problem requiring a local solution. But such racial patterns have appeared in study after study all over the country and over an extensive period of time.

Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.
Ida B. Wells

The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land.
Paul Robeson

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think the best word to accurately describe the impact that the white nation is having upon Black people is terror. The Black community is being terrorized by whites at all levels of human involvement. .

Again, Lynch law reigns supreme in these United States of America. Jamil Joyner is the victim of malpractice in law. It was 70 years ago that the Scottsboro Boys were sentenced for supposedly raping a white female on a train hobowing from the south. Nine black men in the prime of their youth were unjustly imprisoned for a crime they did not commit. Will Jamil experience the same fate without our coming to his defense? This travesty against justice isn’t new. It joins the hundreds of lynchings without sanctuary that African-Americans have fallen victim to since we were brutally and horrifically maimed by white mobs from slavery down to the 21^st century.

Must we call their names: the Scottsboro Boys, Angelo Herndon, Angela Davis, Dessie X Woods, The RNA 11, Geronimo Pratt, Jamil El-Amin, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mutulu Shakur and even in New Orleans at the turn of the century, Robert Charles. Jamil is being railroaded not from a mob in the streets of New Orleans, but by a lynch mob in the courtroom and the legal system. Was not Martin Luther King, Jr. correct when he said, “ Injustice is a threat to justice everywhere.” Will Jamil Joyner’s life be wantonly sacrificed in the name of the political remaking of New Orleans?

The Joyner case must be a Trial of Conscience. The New Orleans justice system is operating in the same manner as the apartheid system operated in the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and the murder of Steve Biko. HAS AMERICA REVERTED TO A RENEWED STATE OF APARTHEID WHERE BLACK LIFE IS MEANINGLESS? What say you Attorney General Holder? If America has moved to a Post-racial society as Barack Obama has been quoted as saying, why is Jamil Joyner being subjected to this crime of injustice?

Robert Charles (1865–1900) was an African American living in New Orleans whose armed resistance to arrest and shooting of police officers sparked a major race riot; see the Robert Charles Riots.

No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931. Over the course of the next two decades, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives and produced heroes.

Herndon campaigned to organize Blacks to become politically active. He travelled from Kentucky to Georgia. In July, 1932, Herndon organized a hunger march and demonstration at the courthouse in Atlanta. On July 11, Herndon checked on his mail at the Post Office and was arrested by two Atlanta detectives. A few days later his hotel room was searched and Communist Party publications were found. Herndon was charged under a Reconstruction era law of insurrection in the state of Georgia.

He was held close to six months in jail and was released on Christmas Eve after his bail of $7,000 was paid by the International Labor Defense organization His freedom was short lived as an all white jury found Herndon guilty. He was sentenced to 18–20 years in prison.

In August 1971, the FBI and the Jackson Police Department, without warning, attacked the RNA government residence with arms, tear gas, and a tank. One Jackson police officer, William Skinner, was killed, one patrolmen and an FBI agent were wounded but there were no RNA casualties. Eleven Republic of New Africa government officials, including President Imari Obadele and three women, were arrested and tried for murder. Of the RNA 11, eight were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment based on the weak and conflicting testimony of witnesses.

On 16 January 1970 along with Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette he was charged with murdering guard John V. Mills in retaliation for the shooting deaths of three black inmates by officer O.G. Miller from his guard tower; both the shooting and the retaliation took place inside Soledad Prison. Miller, however, was not convicted of any crime, a grand jury ruling his actions to be justifiable homicide in response to a fight that had broken out.[1] Incarcerated in the maximum security cellblock at Soledad Prison, Jackson and the other two inmates became known as the "Soledad Brothers".

In the 1970s, she was a target of COINTELPRO, tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California.

Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt (born September 13, 1947), also known as Geronimo ji-Jaga, is a former high ranking member of the Black Panther Party. He was targeted by the FBI program COINTELPRO, which aimed to "neutralize Pratt as an effective BPP functionary." Pratt was tried and convicted of the kidnap and murder of Caroline Olsen in 1972, and spent 27 years in prison, eight of which were in solitary confinement.

Sentenced to death for the December 9, 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He has been described as "perhaps the best known Death-Row prisoner in the world", and his sentence is one of the most debated today.

Before his arrest he was a member of the Black Panther Party, an activist, part-time cab driver, journalist, radio personality, news commentator and broadcaster.

Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon.

In the 1980s, he was arrested on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) charges of bank robbery and aiding his sister, Assata Shakur, in her escape from prison on November 2, 1979. While at large, on July 23, 1982 he became the 380th person added by the FBI to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was arrested February 11, 1986 in California and was subsequently found guilty of taking part in the armored-truck robbery and the prison escape.

Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was a Black Power leader in the 1960s. As a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and an honorary Black Panther, Brown garnered enough attention and influence to earn a 44,000-page government file. He has been repeatedly harassed, arrested, and jailed over the last 35 years. In the 1970s, Brown changed his name, converted to Islam, and started a mosque and a large Muslim community in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood.

The case, therefore, smacked of vengeful racism -- not only toward Al-Amin, but also the Black and Muslim communities he represents.

· Both officers described their assailant as 5-foot-8-inches, with gray eyes. Al-Amin is 6-feet-5-inches with brown eyes.

· A man fitting the description of the shooter confessed, but the confession was thrown out.

· The officers said that they shot the killer. When Al-Amin was found, he had no recent bullet wound.

The FBI agent who arrested Al-Amin openly bragged in court that he kicked and spit on Al-Amin, saying, "This is what we do to cop killers."