In 1995, 27 year old Jerry Dewayne Williams asked a group of children if he could have a slice of their pizza. The children nodded “yes” and Williams thanked them. The pizza shop manager called the police immediately and Williams was arrested. Williams was charged with petty theft, but the state added “intimidation” to the charge, upgrading it to a felony and Williams was convicted. Jerry Dewayne Williams was sentenced to 25 years to life. For “stealing” a slice of pizza. Well…it was a pepperoni slice.…extra large. Williams’ sentence was later reduced but he still served more than 4 years. Though released and staying out of trouble, Williams (at last report) is unable to find work, since no one wants to hire a felon.
In 2010, 16 year old Kalief Browder was arrested on suspicion of stealing a backpack. He was held on $3500 bail. Although his family managed to raise the bail money, the bail was denied because Browder was then on probation. He remained in prison on Rikers Island awaiting trial for three years. Two of those years were spent in solitary confinement. The charges were then dropped because police had no evidence Browder had actually committed the crime. Two years after his release, Browder committed suicide.
Just last year, 43 year old mother of three Crystal Mason was sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting illegally in 2016. Mason was ineligible to vote as she’s previously done time for tax fraud, but she was unaware that she was ineligible. Texas law states that your voting rights are not restored until your full sentence is served. So someone released from prison might reasonably believe that, upon release, their voting rights are returned. However, the trick, here, is “full sentence”. So, if you are released after serving 40 months of a 60 month sentence (good behavior or whatever), your voting rights are not returned until the full 60 months have expired. Surprised to find her name was not on the rolls, Mason cast a provisional ballot (which, btw, was never counted). 5 years in prison. Just by way of comparison, Russ Casey, a white male (Republican) judge in the same jurisdiction as Mason, pled guilty last year to forging many signatures in seeking his own re-election. For this deliberate and conscious act of voter fraud, judge Casey received probation.
Williams, Browder and Mason are not unique within the American justice system. This is the kind of justice poor persons of color receive in America…if they’re lucky. If they’re unlucky, they are killed pre-trial like Michael Brown in Ferguson or Eric Garner in New York.
There is no shortage of examples. New York Public Defender Rebecca Kavanagh tweeted yesterday that a client of hers is serving 3.5-7 years in prison for stealing laundry detergent from a drug store.
Paul Manafort stole millions of dollars, defrauded the country (and I’m not even talking about his latest escapades with Russia), committed bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, witness tampering, perjury, obstruction of justice…. He even lied to prosecutors after cutting a plea deal. He spent decades working for the worst scum in the world and against the interests of the United States. All so he could live the high life and wear ostrich skin suits. He wouldn’t even express contrition at his sentencing. He got less than 4 years when the sentencing guidelines called for 19-24.
True enough, Williams, Browder and Mason had prior records and Paul Manafort did not. But this, too, is due to the inequities of our justice system. Paul Manafort has been committing crimes for his entire adult life. He was probably committing some kind of fraud somewhere before he reached his teen years. He’s a criminal by nature. But the system simply doesn’t care about rich white men committing crime. It’s a story as old as America; steal a loaf of bread to feed your family and you’re a thief, steal a million dollars and you’re a businessman or a politician.
It’s often lamented that the United States has a two-tiered justice system. In truth, it’s more like a 4-tiered justice system. We save our harshest punishments for poor persons of color. This is deliberate, by the way. Our laws have been written and are applied in order to preserve the system of “white superiority” that should have been banished when slavery was abolished. Equal justice under the law, for minorities and everyone else, was the intent of the 14th Amendment, but legislators at all levels have sought every path available to all but completely nullify that Constitutional Amendment.
The next level up is for poor and middle class white citizens. If you happen to be a wealthy person of color, you might graduate to this level of justice.
Then there is the level of justice reserved for rich white men like Paul Manafort. This level excuses almost any crime of any magnitude. Every once in a while, this class will require a sacrificial lamb to placate the rest of society. But, even then, you can count on serving less time than your poorer counterparts and serving it in a country club prison…with far better digs and treatment than any asylum seeking migrant will ever get.
And then there is the fourth level of our criminal justice system. Because, according to DOJ “guidelines”, a sitting president can not be indicted. Never mind that those guidelines were hastily written with dubious logic in an effort, not to immunize the president, but to justify indicting Vice President Spiro Agnew (who was actively running an extortion scheme from his Vice Presidential office). If the DOJ actually believes in those guidelines, never tested in court, and acts accordingly, that places the president of the United States firmly ABOVE the law. And that ought to frighten everyone.
Judge T.S. Ellis, who handed down Paul Manafort’s slap on the wrist, is unfit to be a federal judge. He wouldn’t know justice if it slapped him upside the head. I’m sure that a review of his past rulings would show that Ellis has been consistently lenient with white collar criminals and consistently harsh in sentencing persons of color. I’d like to call Judge Ellis a disgrace, but Trump has ruined that word as surely as Fox News ruined “fair and balanced”. And, to be fair, Judge Ellis is not alone in granting favorable treatment to rich white men. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was all too correct in her observation that “justice isn’t blind. It’s bought.”
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.--Honoré de Balzac
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim -- when he defends himself -- as a criminal.—Frederic Bastiat, "The Law"