One of the enduring problems (if “problems” is indeed a strong enough word) of our so-called system of criminal justice is its glaring lack of parity. If our bodies of laws are to command and maintain the respect of the citizenry, they have to be fair in terms of treating all of said citizens equally. But in America that’s little more than a sick joke.
Parity has never been the case anywhere in this country, and this uneven and unfair meting out of justice is one of the reasons our rates of crime don’t reduce to the levels of other industrialized nations. How are folks supposed to respect laws (and a system) that don’t respect them?
Cases in point: Two sisters, Joanna Barnes, 25, and Jennifer Barnes, 23, attempted to kill their 56-year-old mother this past Thanksgiving by strangling her with USB cords.
According to published reports from Joanna’s sentencing, “On early Thanksgiving morning, the defendant and her sister woke up their mother. Jennifer and Joanna dropped a cord around their mother’s neck and began choking her with it,” the prosecutor said. “Joanna also grabbed a towel. Jennifer grabbed a pillow and (both defendants) pressed down on their mother’s face. After a struggle, the victim managed to flee the living room and get safely inside her bedroom.”
Now that’s some wicked shit, trying to kill your own mother, and on Thanksgiving no less. Both of the sisters were given identical sentences of seven years in prison.
Now, contrast that to the case of three young males that were convicted of robbing and pistol-whipping a priest in Little Italy. They received sentences ranging from 19 to 22 years behind bars.
The difference? The sisters were white and the males were black.
Now I’m not arguing that the black males should have received a lighter sentence (nor am I arguing that the sisters should have received longer sentences). But I am arguing that attempted murder is a far more serious crime than armed robbery, and further, that if our system of justice were just there would not be this wide disparity in the sentences.
Allow me to explain how prosecutors managed to do this sleight of hand, this bit of legal legerdemain: The sisters, who obviously were attempting to kill their mother, were allowed to plead to the reduced crime of felonious assault, while the black dudes, who were just as intent on robbery and not murder, had their crime enhanced by the addition of a charge of abduction, which carried a far stiffer sentence. Yeah, if they moved the priest one inch while robbing him they could be charged with kidnapping — and they were.
The point is, any system of justice that can be so manipulated (beyond all reason, logic and fairness), that can be twisted by prosecutors into contortions by something that shouldn’t be considered at all in a court of law (like race) is, in truth, no system of justice at all.
All of the aforementioned flaws are well known by the practitioners in the legal field, from Supreme Court justices, to law professors, to the bar associations. And it’s tolerated by then all. Why?
Because it only happens to “the other guy.” We remain shackled to our ugly racist past, where it was the order of the day for the agents of the government to treat persons of color as if they were less than full citizens. This is classic institutionalized racism.
We like to pretend that we’re past all of that, but in courtrooms all over America, cases are adjudicated in ways that prove beyond a shadow of any doubt that we’re not. Instances of unequally applied justice — when it comes to persons of color — such as these makes a mockery of our Constitution and liars of all of those who claim to uphold the Bill of Rights and equal protection under the law. Shame on us as a nation for tolerating this kind of legal inequality in this, 2016.
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