By Mansfield Frazier
Château Hough volunteer opportunities: We’ll be bottling our first vintage the weekend of Sat 4/5 and Sun 4/6 at the NorthCoast Wine Club in Solon, starting at 10 am. Come out, help, and sample some great wines while you work. Also, we’ll be pruning the grapevines, located on E. 66th and Hough, as soon as Mother Nature allows.
Anyone interested in getting their hands dirty can give me a call at 216.469.0124.
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The Cooler Bandits
112 minute documentary
Playing at the Cleveland International Film Festival
Wed 3/26 at 2pm @ Tower City
Thu 3/27 at 4:45pm @ Akron Art Museum (with panel discussion to follow)
Fri 3/28 at 11:20am @ Tower City
If further proof is needed that America is the most punitive nation in the history of humankind, you need to look no further than the case of Frankie Porter, who, as an 18-year old thug from Akron, was involved in a series of restaurant robberies in 1991. He, along with several companions, were charged with armed robbery and kidnapping and dubbed by the media as the “Cooler-Bandits.”
Frankie was sentenced, at age 19, to 228 to 528 years in prison in spite of the fact no one was hurt and not a single shot fired during the robberies. His closest parole date is 2035, and by then he will have served 44 years. And he still could get flopped; the parole board could tell him to come see them again in another five years.
Now, contrast that sentence to the one my good friend and mentee Damian Calvert (also originally from Akron) served for a drug related murder he committed at age 18; he served 18 years for his crime and won a parole the first time he went in front of the board three years ago.
Granted, Porter was no angel even once he was behind bars (he got hold of a cell phone and coordinated a bank robbery from inside prison) but he’s been a model prisoner since that 2001 incident. What about second chances? What about basic fairness?
The director of The Cooler Bandits, John Lucas (he’s originally from Cuyahoga Falls), isn’t attempting to exculpate Porter and his cohorts (one of whom received a sentence of 16-50 years, mainly because his family could afford to hire him an attorney) for the crimes they committed, but his point is, there should be some degree of proportionality, and in this case (as well as many others) the punishment simply is far too Draconian for the crime.
America went through a period of overly harsh sentencing starting in the late ’70s (many argue they still are far too harsh) and many people who were converted from predators into essentially victims by the courts are still incarcerated, in spite of the fact sentencing reform began well over a decade ago. However, rarely are past mistakes made by the criminal justice system ever rectified. Those in control feel that if a correction takes place it means the system was wrong at some previous point … and this is an admission they are loath to make; they’d simply rather bury their mistakes.
In conjunction with Lucas’ well-crafted film an online petition drive has been launched on Change.org requesting clemency from Governor Kasich, which is probably Porter’s only shot at freedom anytime soon. Obviously what should happen is that as laws are changed by state legislators they should be made retroactive to fit cases like Porter’s. Perhaps The Cooler Bandits will help to make that a reality.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.