July 15, 2020 • 47 mins
Phil and his team dig into the problem of systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Hear how biases can impact people of color every step of the way, from public schools to jury trials and the prison system.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode includes discussion of sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
If you will place your left hand on the Bible
and raise your right hand, and please repeat after me
and I do solemnly swear. The jury then titled action
find the defendant guilty of the prime It makes no sense,
(00:22):
it doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must aquit.
We all took the same of of office. We're all
bound by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution,
to bear true faith and allegiance to the same that
you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you
solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about
to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and
(00:43):
nothing but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,
this is Sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. The reason
why we have free publication vacation is because we want
to create productive citizens. We want to teach children how
(01:08):
to contribute to the communities. We also want to teach
them about how to manage conflicts. We are trying to
keep our society going. So the way that a system
provides education to its children is symbolic of what it
expects from its children. If you are a six year
(01:32):
old and this has happened, who is handcuffed at your
school for throwing a temper tantrum by a police officer
and booked that school, district, that community, Our society has
made a very clear statement about what we expect from her.
(01:55):
You wouldn't expect to hear that happening to a preschool
or because who would do that to a preschooler? Who
would do that to a child? We valued children, We
recognize what our time and energy invested in them will mean.
But that isn't nearly always the case with black children. Hi. Everyone,
(02:26):
Today we're going to talk about the ways prejudice and
even racism can factor into the American justice system. This,
of course, is a huge topic, but we've had the
pleasure of working with the Georgia Innocence Project to hear
about their cases and the ways that they see racism
and prejudice play into the legal system and society as
(02:46):
a whole. People are working every day to fight these
biases and to create a more perfect system. But like
all of the topics we cover on this show, we
aren't there yet. And I hope the stories and the
expert as you hear from today will help shed at
least some light on this particularly troublesome aspect of the
(03:06):
justice system. We spoke with an axonoree here in Georgia,
Calvin Johnson. Calvin shared his story with us, his story
of being held in prison for sixteen years for a
crime that he did not commit. My name is Calvin C. Johnson, Jr.
(03:30):
And I'm the sixty first person to be asserated in
the United States of America. That there is first person
to be asonerated in the state of Georgia the DNA technology.
I was charged with the charge of rape in Clayton
County and Puton County, Georgia. Back in these counties sit
(03:53):
side by side, and these rapes took place with a
close prosinity of each other. Similar try action. They were
positive the same guy committed bo pries. We asked Calvin
how he got involved in this case in the first place.
Why did police think he was a suspect. My dad said,
(04:14):
I opened up the can of worms and I put
myself in that position. What happened to me was not right.
It was wrong, but I wasn't a perfect individual, and
I had some runners with the law and I had
committed burglary, and that's how I got on the radar.
There's nobody thought but my own I made a mistake
as a young man and leave me. I learned from it.
(04:41):
On the day that they arrested me. I remember it
was a beautiful day. It was in the spring, and
I was coming home. I had been to work that day,
stopped by the gym, and I was living with my
parents at the time, so walking up the street and
my mom rode by and I jumped in the car
and she gave me a ride that went home, and
no sooner than I got inside the house, there was
(05:04):
a knock on the door. I got a little strange.
Even when I got on my mom's card, something felt
strange that they's just some didn't feel right. As soon
as I got in the door, it was a knock.
Doom doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. I got rushed by
police officers, throwing on the floor and cuff and it
(05:24):
took me off and threw me into a cold, dark,
damp self by myself. I had no idea what I've
been charged until the next morning, and then they told me.
They said, you're being charged with charged great, and I
was basically shocked and surprise because I'm like, hey, I
didn't ripe anybody. I figure. I said, well, they're gonna
(05:46):
realize that made a mistake. They're gonna let me go,
and I'm gonna go home just a matter of time.
At that stage in my life, I basically believe that justice.
I brought up in the middle class family and middle
class household. My father used to be uh he was
a first black state senator in Ohio, is also a lawyer.
(06:08):
My mother worked at the college. You know, I thought, hey,
you know that everything was gonna be just fine. But
it didn't happen like that. They put me in a
liveline up person picked out somebody else side and after
David to that effect. So I'm thinking, wow, okay, hey,
I'm going home now. I mean, I got all the sight. No,
(06:30):
it didn't let me go. So then they had another
person that came in. It was after they had several people,
and this last person supposedly picked me out. It seemed
some kind of strange in my opinion. They went ahead
and took me to trial in Clay County. And first
(06:51):
of all, we had a preliminary hearing. That's when they
asked questions. My lawyer asked questions, like, you know, how
was Mr Johnson identified the lady who was the victim?
She said that well, it was identified from photographs. He
asked with what kind of photographs were the color for
the black and white and she said that they were color.
(07:14):
So later on the police officer came in asked him, said, well,
did you show the victim of serious of photographs for
identification purposes? And he said yes. He said, do you
have those with you today? He can't, we see him,
and he pulled out a series of black and white photo.
I'm like wow, I'm sitting there shaking my head and saying, okay,
(07:35):
I know they're gonna let me go now, they're gonna
realize they made a mistake. But it didn't. It didn't happen.
I was wearing a full bear back then. She didn't
say anything, but mustache had a mustache here since I
was a teenager. What's going on here? This is back
(07:56):
in nineteen three. In three they want to use the
DNA technology. So the blood sapple came back old positively.
I believe that's that's the most common blood type there
is you might be a positive and guess what, they say,
you're guilty because you're all positive. But the hair samples
(08:18):
came back and they did not match me. They matched
somebody of African American ancestry, but they did not match
Calvin C. Johnson you. So I'm like, hey, I'm all
over again, Like whoa, I'm going home now that I
get all exp but they still don't let me go.
(08:40):
They indicte me, now that's coming time to go through
the jury selection. Maybe three blacks that they could selected
and give a take a little but of course all
of them were struck. So I ended up with all
white jury and the victim was white, and I'm a
(09:03):
black man. What are my odds? What are the chances?
And I tell people all the time if it had
been an all Chinese jury and it would have been
a Chinese, are all Mexican jury and the Mexican victory,
what are the odds? The odds are totally statis. Striking
(09:25):
jurors because of the color of their skin or any
protected attributes like gender or race is a huge problem
and a big example of the ways that biased and
prejudice can creep into the criminal justice system. Everyone is
entitled to a trial in front of a jury of
their peers, and it must be a fair and impartial jury.
(09:47):
The concept of peers means that you need to account
for diversity. There are now methods in place, a type
of check called the bats and challenge that can prevent
a biased right like the one Calvin had, and we'll
go more into that later in the episode. They didn't
listen to anything, goes emotional things. You go to the court,
(10:08):
get in there. I have all this evidence, told my
innocence alibi testimony because I was at home with my parents.
My employer comes and he shows my employee idea and
testify that I had a full beer. Fact at the
fact that the fact that brought out, But it didn't
make any difference because that one dramatic moment. But they say,
(10:32):
as the person that committed the crime in this courtroom today,
and they're so, can you point that person out? Of
course they turned around, that a tear coming down to
their cheek and they point that Recolt me and said
he's the one, and the jury found me guilty. I
(10:53):
was sitting to light life in the Georgia penitentiary there
a year later, I did go back to the the court
again for the foot County case, because remember I said
there were two cases, and in Booton County it was
exact similar case. I gotta understanding and brought up my
(11:13):
character and everything, and they brought up the fact that
I already was convicted and so the odds were totally
against me now, but there was so much evidence point
towards my innocence. This jury here, which you had to
make up of seven blacks and by whites, came back
with a not guilty verdict. But even though they came
(11:36):
back were not guilty verdict, I'm still in prison for
Clayton County for this case. I spoke with Molly Palmer,
a lawyer and board member for the Georgia Innocence Project.
She's familiar with Calvin's case and can speak to the
ways she sees biased and racism play out from a
(11:57):
legal perspective throughout the justice system, and in Calvin's case
in particular. My name is Molly Palmer. I am an
attorney in Atlanta, and I serve on the board of
directors for the Georgia Innocence Project. I asked Molly what
inspired her to start working on wrongful conviction cases. I
(12:22):
was really shocked at the fact that wrongful convictions happen
and the prevalence with which they happen. I was a young,
impressionable law student, and you go to law school thinking
you're gonna be part of what they call a justice system.
I ended up going into what's essentially, at the time
(12:42):
a small, cramped basement office with a bare bones staff
and hardly any resources, and we were tasked with identifying
and communicating with potentially wrongfully impress and men and women
in this the criminal justice system here in Georgia and
(13:04):
in Alabama. At the time, we covered both states. I
think it was pretty harrowing to realize how many potentially
wrongfully imprisoned men and women are behind bars. The estimates
are are somewhere between three percent and five of all
(13:25):
people who are incarcerated are wrongfully imprisoned. I think the
system operates from a history of structural racism. But we
see these racial disparities in the system, but they're all
(13:47):
a product of this legacy of racial injustice that essentially
started with slavery and this idea of a racial hierarchy.
There was a belief that black people essentially were inferior
and they've benefited from slavery. Even after the formal abolition
of slavery, this thought persisted into convict leasing and this
(14:12):
idea of African Americans being presumed, they being presumed to
be criminals. And so what we see now in our
current legal system is that the idea of the burden
of proof or the presumption of innocence applies totally differently
(14:34):
based on race. We see that people of color, in
particular African American men, are presumed guilty. They're presumed to
be criminals from the time their children. We see disproportionate stops, frisks, arrests,
(14:55):
We see in sentencing that these men are sentenced too
far longer in prison than are their white counterparts convicted
of the same crimes. And I think the way that
we over incarcerate disproportionately affects communities of color as well.
There's a huge collateral effect to communities, and that can
be discounted either and when it comes down to exonerations.
(15:22):
Roughly cent of the US population is black, Roughly forty
of the prison population is black, and almost sixty percent
of all d nasarrees are black. I think that Calvin
Johnson's case is a great example, and what we saw
(15:46):
in his case is something that we see far too often. Essentially,
it's a case of eye witness misidentification, something that we
see I think in about sevent of DNA honorations, but
of those involved cross racial identification, and Calvin's case is
(16:09):
a prime example of this. We looked at eyewitness testimony
and the problems with cross racial identification in the last episode,
and Molly is right, it is one of the most
common attributes in wrongful conviction cases everywhere. Calvin was considered
(16:30):
the suspects, the prime suspect, and I think what we
saw in his case was devaluation of human life. It
was a rush to judgment, and we see that with
individuals of color on a level that we don't see
with white people in America. There's a quickness with which
he was identified and the finger was pointed at him,
(16:53):
and he was going to go down for these primes.
Despite a patchwork of partial identification shans similar to Calvin's
case in Louisiana, thirty of their axonorees had trials of
less than one day, so we see an incredible swiftness
in convicting young men of color. The brevity of that
(17:18):
kind of procedure shows just how careless we are. And
I think what it shows is that a lot of
these men, when you really think about it, it's not
as simple as they're targeted because they're black. They're they're
targeted because we don't care who the actual perpetrator is
(17:39):
because he's black. We as a society have not moved
away from this idea that inherently, if you're African American,
you're dangerous, and so a suspect standing before a jury
or a judge who's African American almost satisfies it is
(18:00):
inherent bias and allows us to render a verdict. I
(18:22):
asked Calvin about the impacts of his conviction on him
and on his community. It was it was hard because
it broke my family's heart. Broke my mother's heart. A
couple of months after that happened, she just she had
a stroke. It was too much strain on her because
she couldn't believe it. Part of my family, my naturally
(18:43):
file appeals and so forth. And there I am sitting
down to one of the hardest working camps in the
state of Georgia. I call it institutionalize labor. You call
it what you want, but it's all of this is
a formal institutionalize labor. It was a dangerous place to speak.
Nobody at this camp had less than twenty years and
(19:05):
we should work all around schwamp waters. And this is
in South Georgia. You can't even eat your food. That's
cover your food before you can put it in your mouth.
I'm seeing moccasons. I'm saying rattle snakes. There was a
violent society that I was forced into. I had to
make an adjustment. I had to be tough, the hard
(19:29):
in my heart that it changed my attitude and I
wasn't probably the nicest person in the world that during
those years, because they had a lot of frustration inside
of me. I mean, there was nobody who I could
really talk to about my emotions. So years go by,
years go by. I remember, you know, they wanted me
to get into this program called this sexual offender program.
(19:54):
Being involved in the sexual offender program might be okay
for somebody who's the sexual but in order to complete
this program, they want you to sign and the mission
of guilt. Now, I just came to a conclusion that
Rabb died. I just rebber die in prison and then
just to walk out, I would not have a life
at all. My name is Ebony Howard and a senior
(20:20):
supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. I work
in Alabama focusing on issues related to criminal justice reform,
specifically juvenile justice. Our work tends to focus on the
impact of the justice systems on black and brown people
(20:41):
and other people of color. Ebony Howard is also the
voice you heard at the beginning of the episode. She
and the organization she worked for, the Southern Poverty Law Center,
raise awareness about prejudice and hate crimes across the country.
Ebony's work has a strong emphasis in juvenile law, so
I wanted to speak with her about the ways the
(21:02):
legal system is set up to interact with some children
more than others. The justice system as it operates is
a continuation of a system of slavery using black bodies
towards capitalism. Even after you have the Civil War, you
still have a backlash to it. And then you continue
(21:25):
on and black people go from being enslaved to sharecroppers,
and then you have the Civil rights movement, and so
they are definitely gains there. But if you see enslavement
is still happening in some form or the other, because
even once civil rights are established and black people can
(21:46):
vote and women can vote miraculously, you have a prison
system that is overwhelmingly filled with black people and also
brown people, and you see that black and brown people
are getting sentence at different rates. How is it possible
that black people and white people can engage in the
(22:06):
same conduct, but yet black people get longer sentences. It
is because that same value system that says that black
people are other black people are inferior, carries through because
it is woven throughout our history. It is woven into
the American fabric. People say, well, black people engage in
(22:30):
more crime than white people, Latin X people engage in
more crime. The answer is that black and Latin X
people are targeted far more than white people. We see
that over and over again. We see that with stop
and frisk, we see that with the charging practices of
(22:52):
district attorneys. The reality is that you can't say that
black people are more violent because the data bears out
that people are being charged for the same acts but
getting different In US, it is and the same thing
with our education systems. Why is it that when you
(23:12):
look at the presence of police officers, and mostly white
schools are integrated schools. You see that the officer just
kind of stays tucked in the back and you don't
really see him or her. But in mostly black schools,
the officers are there to police students themselves, not protect them,
but to police them. That is because when the establishment
(23:35):
looks at black children, when the establishment looks at black adolescence,
they don't see children, they don't see teenagers, they see criminals.
And so we train throughout this education system for incarceration.
I asked to have any to explain this idea called
(23:57):
the school to prison pipeline and what it means to
be exposed to the justice system at a young age.
I have met children in high school who were arrested
and maced and booked for getting into a fiet school.
(24:19):
Years later, I encountered that same kid at like age
seventeen in an adult jail. I see the pipeline. I
see how it moves, and I see how the way
that this system is run, the way that the values
that it's based on directly impact black people. I wish
(24:45):
people knew what it means for people to be involved
in the justice system. So the collateral consequences of being arrested,
even if your case doesn't go anywhere, if it's dismissed,
if it's a fluke, if you are arrested and fingerprinted,
(25:09):
the state has your identity, they have access to you.
Every time a criminal act occurs and they're looking for
whoever did it, you are in the pool of people
that they will go to first. Apparently we have decided
(25:29):
that the way we want our justice system to work
is that we don't just lock people up. We have
to punish them. So the punishment isn't just being locked up.
The punishment is whatever comes with being locked up. So
you'll hear people say often listen, they get what they get.
(25:50):
That is the consequences of breaking the law. You see,
let me be clear about what the actual consequences are
in an out of them a prison. Right now, Somebody
is being raped. Somebody is sick because they have diabetes
or some kind of chronic illness, and they are not
(26:12):
getting the care that they need. They are dying. There
is a seventeen year old in a jail seeing foul,
horrible things that will forever change his or hers brain.
(26:32):
When you talk about they get what they deserve. The
punishment is having your liberty taken away from you, the
unseen punishment that people don't allow themselves to imagine. It's
just absolute torture. If people were to allow themselves to
imagine it, like to play it out in their head
(26:55):
like a movie, they wouldn't be able to live with it.
And I feel like that if more people did, they
would understand how something drastically has to change with the
way that we run this justice system. In Alabama. There
(27:16):
are a couple of ways that kids can be tried
as adults. One of them is called transfer. It is
when a child under the age of seventeen can be
charged with anything, and if the prosecutor makes a motion,
then the juvenile court judge can consider that motion and
then transfer that child to the adult court. In making
(27:41):
the decision about whether or not a child should be
transferred to the adult court, the judge has to consider
a set of factors, but one thing that's listed there
is the child's demeanor. So when you talk about something
like demeanor, you've opened the door for all kinds biases
(28:05):
to live out their lives. So he's there because he's
accused of doing something wrong. Perhaps he doesn't want to
make eye contact because he's scared, and the way that
his fear manifests itself is to look down, and the
way that his fear manifests itself is not to speak up.
(28:27):
And he's wearing the clothes that he's wearing because that's
what everybody in his neighborhood wears. He comes from a
cultural context that the judges and policymakers who are in
positions of power don't understand and fear, and so he's
in this situation where you're expecting a fourteen year old
(28:48):
to translate for you who he is when you're the
adult in the room, like you are the one charged
with ensuring that you don't do harm to this person,
little pete, who are supposed to be thinking about how
to best serve not just kids, but people who are
involved in the justice system, people who are involved in
(29:10):
social services systems. Those people who are running those systems
cannot get out of the ingrained racist biases to see
people for people. I wanted to hear more about the
effects of the justice system on youth and what happens
(29:31):
when young people are put in the system. Early on,
I spoke with Ashley Wilcot, a juvenile court judge into
Cab County, Georgia, about the ways she sees racism in
her work with youth. I'm a child welfare law specialist.
I've practiced juvenile courts for many, many years. I now
(29:51):
serve as a judge into Cab County Juvenile Court. I
do a lot of consulting and speaking nationwide a lot
about the education behind our child welfare system. A lot
don't understand it, aren't familiar with it, and so my
goal is really often to educate about it. So I
(30:12):
just want to share a few statistics to set the stage.
So as you all probably have heard or no, the
United States has the world's highest incarceration rate in the world. Right,
nobody is probably surprised to hear that there's clear racial
impact as a result of that. Approximately of Americans incarcerated
(30:34):
are non white. Average American I think it's one in
twenty chance of ending up incarcerated. That's the average American.
If you break it down into race, Latino was one
in six rate of incarceration or chance of going to jail,
African American was one in three, and then the white
(30:57):
average was one in twenty three. Those numbers apply equally
to youth who are tried as adults. The big news
is juvenile incarceration rates have been declining, and from my
perspective with criminal justice reform, that's a good thing. So,
for instance, between two thousand and ten, the juvenile incarceration
(31:23):
rate dropped by forty so that's significant. But if you
compare that to school discipline policies and what you see
happening in the schools, that's going the other direction. So
for instance, since two thousand, the number of schools suspensions
has increased by about ten percent, So you're seeing in
(31:44):
schools that the discipline policies are increasing what happens to
these kids and increases how these kids then touched the
criminal justice system as a result of what's happened in
school as of twenty fifteen, and this was five years ago,
and it's still true today, and it's it's staggering to
(32:06):
me that this is true in our society, but it is.
Black students are three times more likely to be suspended
or expelled than white students, especially when you take that
into account with the fact that studies have shown kids
who are suspended are more likely to either be held
back a grade or to drop out of school. And
(32:29):
when those things start happening, kids they need to have
purpose and be busy, start getting into more trouble, even
if it's you know, just school pranks or something they
think isn't that bad. They get arrested, they go to
juvenile detention. It starts that process of ending up in
the pipeline to prison. You Know, the thing that I
(32:53):
really see that bothers me is I'll just give an example,
there's been a lot of shoplifting. I've seen a lot
of shoplifting cases um in the last i don't know,
year to two years. I really feel like when they
get arrested, the way they've been treated at them all
as a herb of kids is different if they're African
American versus even if they are Asian or Caucasian. Right Like,
(33:17):
there's this whole approach to me that feels very very
different in terms of these are bad kids and we
have to arrest them, versus it's bad behavior that kids
are engaging in. The Thing that infuriates me the most,
not the most, but pretty high up there is when
(33:40):
you see these little kids who have been through all
kinds of trauma act out in the school environment, and
then you see them get tasered, or you see them
actually getting arrested with the handcuffs, or you see them
thrown to the ground and they're half my size. They've
been through things you could never probably imagine, and as
(34:01):
a result, we need to respond in a trauma informed
way so that the response that they get can help
them de escalate instead of escalating and ending up in
the system. M m M. Here's Calvin Johnson explaining how
(34:35):
he finally found a path towards exoneration. I got to
the point where I felt like I was just about snap,
like I was about almost lose my mind, like a
rubber band being stretched. And then later I heard about
DNA technology. I said, DNA what some guys have gotten
out based on DNA technology. There was a guy he
(34:58):
ushould come into the prison, his name Jim Honor. He
was a prisoner legal counseling project, and I told him
my situation. I said, you don't have to believe a
word I said. He said, let me just skeeve my
transcript and you read it. He said, man, this is
the worst case of injustice that I witnessed in my
(35:19):
entire time of the legal profession. They didn't have a
lot of preserve evidence at that time, and they were
actually going to destroy the evidence, and somebody, for whatever
reason changed in mind and he kept the evidence. So
he found an extraordinary motion for a new trial based
on newly discovered evidence, which means that DNA technology didn't exist,
(35:42):
and now this is a new technology that could possibly
prove that I'm innocent, and if that's possible, I should
be given a new trial. And then it defunded the project.
So I spent time writing letters and writing letters to
different people in different organizations seeking help. A friend that
I grew up with when I was a child wrote
(36:05):
me about the inn this is project in New York
City and they looked at it and they said, wow,
this is unique. Here. We got one jury that gives
one verdict, another jury that gives another verdict is like
putting two rats indications on that experiment. Evidence was tested
and they almost used all the evidence up and it
(36:26):
came back where it was inclusive. Basically, they would telling
me, is is that Mr Johnson, you got a choice again, Well,
we just wait till technology gets better five teen years
from now and reach us was left because there's such
a small amount, it's probably gonna be used up, he said.
But there's one other option. He says, there's a guy
(36:46):
in California named Dr Blake, one of the best ristic
scientists in the country and maybe in the world, and said,
we can't send it to him, but the choice of yours.
I said, send it the thought to play, and it
came in November of nineteen showing that it was impossible
that I could have committed the crime based on DNA technology.
(37:08):
Now all of a sudden, they want to do their
own tests State of Georgia, so they want to send
it to the GBI lab, but do their own tests.
They do their own tests and guess what the results
come back? The saying I mean from the very beginning,
I told him that that with God's my witness, you know,
one day the truth will come out. And in nineteen
ninety nine, jif the truth came out, I walked out
of the President Freeman and beginning to do life. Started
(37:31):
my life all over. Guess what I got out and
had to pay bills. I asked Calvin if he believed
that racism and bias impacted this case and helped cause
his wrongful conviction. I do I do believe that race
(37:54):
had a percent to do with with me being arrested.
District attorney, he was very powerful in this position in
Clayton County at the time, and it's like they could
care less about me as an individual. It's sad to say,
but I think because I was black, I would look
down as being less less of a human being, and
(38:15):
so they didn't care. But like a palm on a
on a chess set being pushed around, and I said,
how can people just take and devalue my life, play
with my life like this? But he knew that in
Clayton County he could get a conviction. Clayton County was
predominantly white. The victim of white He knew there was
(38:36):
no doubt no matter what evidence I had, what showed
that that I didn't commit to cry, that he could
get a conviction anyway. From there, it was just an
uphill battle. Having a culturally diverse jury is so important
because then you have different people male, female, different backgrounds.
(38:59):
I think the trial are a lot fairer, I know,
And the perfect example is the fact that here I am,
I get found guilty in one kind of by all
white Jerry, I get found not guilty in another county
by jury makeup for seven blacks by whites, and that
that's not proof. I don't know what else could be
any more proof than that. Our government it's basically designed
(39:24):
the system over the years to degrade and humanized black brace.
That's sad because they've done it with films and movies
that deale it with laws two strikes and three strikes
you out. And now they got people incarcerated for marijuana
with with a nickel bag. Now they got life sentences.
(39:49):
As I said earlier, I stayed the institutionalized slavery, modern
day slavery. They got privatization, private prisons. Now that's a
big profit making open sensation. Guess what, you need people inside.
So what happens You arrest people, You come up with
laws to increased the amount of people being placed in prison,
(40:10):
and it's a free labor force. The twenty But things
have they really changed that much. It's still going on.
I mean this has been progressed, been some progress, yes,
but prejudice still exists. Racial injustice still as if you know,
we all believe the same blood, we're all human beings
and we just need to make it fair, and we
(40:32):
need to make it a justice system, not just us.
I asked Molly Palmer from the Georgia Innocence Project if
there were ways her organization encourages people to take action
against racial bias and all sorts of prejudice in the
justice system. You know, we have to be vigilant in
(40:53):
terms of knowing who are elected officials are. We have
to elect those people that that have a demonstrated record
of caring about these issues. And I think we have
to continue as jurors, as citizens to realize how important
our role is in the community and in the legal system.
And if you get called for jury duty, I hope
(41:16):
that people walk in there, no matter who is sitting
at defense table, understanding the importance of reasonable doubt and
what it means to prove somebody guilty beyond all reasonable doubt,
and to take that job so seriously and examine yourself,
examine those feelings when you see who's sitting there and
your first question is do they look guilty? That's the
(41:41):
instinct and if you say yes, why, I think we
can start by being incredibly critical of ourselves and realize
that nobody is perfect and all of us have experienced
some type of racism directed toward us where we've felt
it and didn't want to admit it. We're not in
(42:05):
post racial America. It's and we see horrible, harrowing things
every day that highlight the violence and the inherent suspected
criminality that we see in terms of people of color,
and we can't move past that until we critically examine ourselves.
(42:28):
I wanted to just touch again on how vitally important
jury selection is in the criminal trial process. It's important
to have an unbiased and even a diverse jury. Calvin's
case is not the only one where racism and racial
biased have played a role in jury selection. He's not
even the only one. In Georgia, a man named Johnny
(42:52):
Lee Gates from Columbus, Georgia, was recently released from jail
after a trial all the way back from nineteen seventy seven,
where he sat judged by an all white jury. The
prosecutor in his case systematically struck every single black juror
(43:12):
from the pool. In nine six, the United States Supreme
Court decided the case of bats And versus Kentucky. The
bats In case held that jurors could not be struck
simply because of their race. This ruling came after both
Johnny Lee Gates and Calvin Johnson's trials, but it is
(43:34):
something all new lawyers now learn about in law school.
It's so important to have a diverse jury with all
kinds of backgrounds and life experiences to weigh in on
these important matters of life and liberty. Whenever I have
a trial, I keep an eye out for any biases
that could come into play on either side for jury selection,
(43:56):
and all lawyers should use bats and challenge is to
call into question strikes made by on the other side
when necessary. To speak to the school to prison pipeline,
I just want to say that the legal system is
like fly paper. Once you're in it, it's very hard
to get out of it, no matter how hard you try.
(44:19):
Recentivism or people returning to the justice system over and
over again is very common. Complicated and difficult probation and
parole requirements make it hard to stay out of the system.
All of these things have a huge impact on families
and communities. We need a system that treats everyone fairly
(44:42):
and doesn't over involve one group or another for any reason,
including the color of their skin. I hope you take
Molly's advice to heart and look at who your local
elected officials are. They are the ones who can most
directly change the way our system works. Next time on Sworn,
(45:05):
you know you're manipulated by people. That's even my parents.
You know, my parents never believed I was actually innocent
of the crime. People ask me you forgive them. Of
course I do. When you're manipulated by a power and
a justice system that is supposed to be the last
of the line, is supposed to be the true sense
of justice, the true sense of what's going on, at
(45:27):
least as closest we can get it. I can forgive
anybody that has been manipulated. I can't forgive those that
did the manipulated. Sworn is a production of Tenderfoot TV
and I Heart Radio. Our lead producer is Christina Dana.
Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV,
(45:51):
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams for I Heart Radio, and
myself Philip Holloway. Additional production by Trevor Young, May Sin Lindsay,
Mike Rooney, Jamie Albright and Halle Beatall original music and
sound designed by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song
is Blood in the Water by Layup. Show art and
(46:12):
design is by Trevor Eisler, editing by Christina Dana, mixing
and mastering by Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks
to the team at I Heart Radio from u T
a or In Rosenbaund and Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and
Matthew Papa from the Nord Group, back Media and Marketing,
(46:34):
and Station sixteen. I'd also like to extend a very
personal and special thanks to all of our contributors and
guests who have helped to make all of these episodes possible.
You can find Sworn on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Sworn podcast and follow me your host, Philip Holloway on
Twitter at phil Holloway e s Q. Our website is
(46:58):
Sworn podcast dot m and you can check out other
Tenderfoot TV podcasts at www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If
you have questions or comments, you can email us at
Sworn at tenderfoot dot tv or leave us a voicemail
at four zero four for one zero zero four f one.
(47:21):
As always, thanks for listening. I'm walking around I see
an armadala I'm gonna jump out my books because I've
never seen a armadala before in my life. It is risk.
It's running across in front of me, looking like a
giant rap with an army helmet on and something. I'm like,
what the heck is this
This episode includes discussion of sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
If you will place your left hand on the Bible
and raise your right hand, and please repeat after me
and I do solemnly swear. The jury then titled action
find the defendant guilty of the prime It makes no sense,
(00:22):
it doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must aquit.
We all took the same of of office. We're all
bound by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution,
to bear true faith and allegiance to the same that
you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you
solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about
to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and
(00:43):
nothing but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,
this is Sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. The reason
why we have free publication vacation is because we want
to create productive citizens. We want to teach children how
(01:08):
to contribute to the communities. We also want to teach
them about how to manage conflicts. We are trying to
keep our society going. So the way that a system
provides education to its children is symbolic of what it
expects from its children. If you are a six year
(01:32):
old and this has happened, who is handcuffed at your
school for throwing a temper tantrum by a police officer
and booked that school, district, that community, Our society has
made a very clear statement about what we expect from her.
(01:55):
You wouldn't expect to hear that happening to a preschool
or because who would do that to a preschooler? Who
would do that to a child? We valued children, We
recognize what our time and energy invested in them will mean.
But that isn't nearly always the case with black children. Hi. Everyone,
(02:26):
Today we're going to talk about the ways prejudice and
even racism can factor into the American justice system. This,
of course, is a huge topic, but we've had the
pleasure of working with the Georgia Innocence Project to hear
about their cases and the ways that they see racism
and prejudice play into the legal system and society as
(02:46):
a whole. People are working every day to fight these
biases and to create a more perfect system. But like
all of the topics we cover on this show, we
aren't there yet. And I hope the stories and the
expert as you hear from today will help shed at
least some light on this particularly troublesome aspect of the
(03:06):
justice system. We spoke with an axonoree here in Georgia,
Calvin Johnson. Calvin shared his story with us, his story
of being held in prison for sixteen years for a
crime that he did not commit. My name is Calvin C. Johnson, Jr.
(03:30):
And I'm the sixty first person to be asserated in
the United States of America. That there is first person
to be asonerated in the state of Georgia the DNA technology.
I was charged with the charge of rape in Clayton
County and Puton County, Georgia. Back in these counties sit
(03:53):
side by side, and these rapes took place with a
close prosinity of each other. Similar try action. They were
positive the same guy committed bo pries. We asked Calvin
how he got involved in this case in the first place.
Why did police think he was a suspect. My dad said,
(04:14):
I opened up the can of worms and I put
myself in that position. What happened to me was not right.
It was wrong, but I wasn't a perfect individual, and
I had some runners with the law and I had
committed burglary, and that's how I got on the radar.
There's nobody thought but my own I made a mistake
as a young man and leave me. I learned from it.
(04:41):
On the day that they arrested me. I remember it
was a beautiful day. It was in the spring, and
I was coming home. I had been to work that day,
stopped by the gym, and I was living with my
parents at the time, so walking up the street and
my mom rode by and I jumped in the car
and she gave me a ride that went home, and
no sooner than I got inside the house, there was
(05:04):
a knock on the door. I got a little strange.
Even when I got on my mom's card, something felt
strange that they's just some didn't feel right. As soon
as I got in the door, it was a knock.
Doom doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. I got rushed by
police officers, throwing on the floor and cuff and it
(05:24):
took me off and threw me into a cold, dark,
damp self by myself. I had no idea what I've
been charged until the next morning, and then they told me.
They said, you're being charged with charged great, and I
was basically shocked and surprise because I'm like, hey, I
didn't ripe anybody. I figure. I said, well, they're gonna
(05:46):
realize that made a mistake. They're gonna let me go,
and I'm gonna go home just a matter of time.
At that stage in my life, I basically believe that justice.
I brought up in the middle class family and middle
class household. My father used to be uh he was
a first black state senator in Ohio, is also a lawyer.
(06:08):
My mother worked at the college. You know, I thought, hey,
you know that everything was gonna be just fine. But
it didn't happen like that. They put me in a
liveline up person picked out somebody else side and after
David to that effect. So I'm thinking, wow, okay, hey,
I'm going home now. I mean, I got all the sight. No,
(06:30):
it didn't let me go. So then they had another
person that came in. It was after they had several people,
and this last person supposedly picked me out. It seemed
some kind of strange in my opinion. They went ahead
and took me to trial in Clay County. And first
(06:51):
of all, we had a preliminary hearing. That's when they
asked questions. My lawyer asked questions, like, you know, how
was Mr Johnson identified the lady who was the victim?
She said that well, it was identified from photographs. He
asked with what kind of photographs were the color for
the black and white and she said that they were color.
(07:14):
So later on the police officer came in asked him, said, well,
did you show the victim of serious of photographs for
identification purposes? And he said yes. He said, do you
have those with you today? He can't, we see him,
and he pulled out a series of black and white photo.
I'm like wow, I'm sitting there shaking my head and saying, okay,
(07:35):
I know they're gonna let me go now, they're gonna
realize they made a mistake. But it didn't. It didn't happen.
I was wearing a full bear back then. She didn't
say anything, but mustache had a mustache here since I
was a teenager. What's going on here? This is back
(07:56):
in nineteen three. In three they want to use the
DNA technology. So the blood sapple came back old positively.
I believe that's that's the most common blood type there
is you might be a positive and guess what, they say,
you're guilty because you're all positive. But the hair samples
(08:18):
came back and they did not match me. They matched
somebody of African American ancestry, but they did not match
Calvin C. Johnson you. So I'm like, hey, I'm all
over again, Like whoa, I'm going home now that I
get all exp but they still don't let me go.
(08:40):
They indicte me, now that's coming time to go through
the jury selection. Maybe three blacks that they could selected
and give a take a little but of course all
of them were struck. So I ended up with all
white jury and the victim was white, and I'm a
(09:03):
black man. What are my odds? What are the chances?
And I tell people all the time if it had
been an all Chinese jury and it would have been
a Chinese, are all Mexican jury and the Mexican victory,
what are the odds? The odds are totally statis. Striking
(09:25):
jurors because of the color of their skin or any
protected attributes like gender or race is a huge problem
and a big example of the ways that biased and
prejudice can creep into the criminal justice system. Everyone is
entitled to a trial in front of a jury of
their peers, and it must be a fair and impartial jury.
(09:47):
The concept of peers means that you need to account
for diversity. There are now methods in place, a type
of check called the bats and challenge that can prevent
a biased right like the one Calvin had, and we'll
go more into that later in the episode. They didn't
listen to anything, goes emotional things. You go to the court,
(10:08):
get in there. I have all this evidence, told my
innocence alibi testimony because I was at home with my parents.
My employer comes and he shows my employee idea and
testify that I had a full beer. Fact at the
fact that the fact that brought out, But it didn't
make any difference because that one dramatic moment. But they say,
(10:32):
as the person that committed the crime in this courtroom today,
and they're so, can you point that person out? Of
course they turned around, that a tear coming down to
their cheek and they point that Recolt me and said
he's the one, and the jury found me guilty. I
(10:53):
was sitting to light life in the Georgia penitentiary there
a year later, I did go back to the the court
again for the foot County case, because remember I said
there were two cases, and in Booton County it was
exact similar case. I gotta understanding and brought up my
(11:13):
character and everything, and they brought up the fact that
I already was convicted and so the odds were totally
against me now, but there was so much evidence point
towards my innocence. This jury here, which you had to
make up of seven blacks and by whites, came back
with a not guilty verdict. But even though they came
(11:36):
back were not guilty verdict, I'm still in prison for
Clayton County for this case. I spoke with Molly Palmer,
a lawyer and board member for the Georgia Innocence Project.
She's familiar with Calvin's case and can speak to the
ways she sees biased and racism play out from a
(11:57):
legal perspective throughout the justice system, and in Calvin's case
in particular. My name is Molly Palmer. I am an
attorney in Atlanta, and I serve on the board of
directors for the Georgia Innocence Project. I asked Molly what
inspired her to start working on wrongful conviction cases. I
(12:22):
was really shocked at the fact that wrongful convictions happen
and the prevalence with which they happen. I was a young,
impressionable law student, and you go to law school thinking
you're gonna be part of what they call a justice system.
I ended up going into what's essentially, at the time
(12:42):
a small, cramped basement office with a bare bones staff
and hardly any resources, and we were tasked with identifying
and communicating with potentially wrongfully impress and men and women
in this the criminal justice system here in Georgia and
(13:04):
in Alabama. At the time, we covered both states. I
think it was pretty harrowing to realize how many potentially
wrongfully imprisoned men and women are behind bars. The estimates
are are somewhere between three percent and five of all
(13:25):
people who are incarcerated are wrongfully imprisoned. I think the
system operates from a history of structural racism. But we
see these racial disparities in the system, but they're all
(13:47):
a product of this legacy of racial injustice that essentially
started with slavery and this idea of a racial hierarchy.
There was a belief that black people essentially were inferior
and they've benefited from slavery. Even after the formal abolition
of slavery, this thought persisted into convict leasing and this
(14:12):
idea of African Americans being presumed, they being presumed to
be criminals. And so what we see now in our
current legal system is that the idea of the burden
of proof or the presumption of innocence applies totally differently
(14:34):
based on race. We see that people of color, in
particular African American men, are presumed guilty. They're presumed to
be criminals from the time their children. We see disproportionate stops, frisks, arrests,
(14:55):
We see in sentencing that these men are sentenced too
far longer in prison than are their white counterparts convicted
of the same crimes. And I think the way that
we over incarcerate disproportionately affects communities of color as well.
There's a huge collateral effect to communities, and that can
be discounted either and when it comes down to exonerations.
(15:22):
Roughly cent of the US population is black, Roughly forty
of the prison population is black, and almost sixty percent
of all d nasarrees are black. I think that Calvin
Johnson's case is a great example, and what we saw
(15:46):
in his case is something that we see far too often. Essentially,
it's a case of eye witness misidentification, something that we
see I think in about sevent of DNA honorations, but
of those involved cross racial identification, and Calvin's case is
(16:09):
a prime example of this. We looked at eyewitness testimony
and the problems with cross racial identification in the last episode,
and Molly is right, it is one of the most
common attributes in wrongful conviction cases everywhere. Calvin was considered
(16:30):
the suspects, the prime suspect, and I think what we
saw in his case was devaluation of human life. It
was a rush to judgment, and we see that with
individuals of color on a level that we don't see
with white people in America. There's a quickness with which
he was identified and the finger was pointed at him,
(16:53):
and he was going to go down for these primes.
Despite a patchwork of partial identification shans similar to Calvin's
case in Louisiana, thirty of their axonorees had trials of
less than one day, so we see an incredible swiftness
in convicting young men of color. The brevity of that
(17:18):
kind of procedure shows just how careless we are. And
I think what it shows is that a lot of
these men, when you really think about it, it's not
as simple as they're targeted because they're black. They're they're
targeted because we don't care who the actual perpetrator is
(17:39):
because he's black. We as a society have not moved
away from this idea that inherently, if you're African American,
you're dangerous, and so a suspect standing before a jury
or a judge who's African American almost satisfies it is
(18:00):
inherent bias and allows us to render a verdict. I
(18:22):
asked Calvin about the impacts of his conviction on him
and on his community. It was it was hard because
it broke my family's heart. Broke my mother's heart. A
couple of months after that happened, she just she had
a stroke. It was too much strain on her because
she couldn't believe it. Part of my family, my naturally
(18:43):
file appeals and so forth. And there I am sitting
down to one of the hardest working camps in the
state of Georgia. I call it institutionalize labor. You call
it what you want, but it's all of this is
a formal institutionalize labor. It was a dangerous place to speak.
Nobody at this camp had less than twenty years and
(19:05):
we should work all around schwamp waters. And this is
in South Georgia. You can't even eat your food. That's
cover your food before you can put it in your mouth.
I'm seeing moccasons. I'm saying rattle snakes. There was a
violent society that I was forced into. I had to
make an adjustment. I had to be tough, the hard
(19:29):
in my heart that it changed my attitude and I
wasn't probably the nicest person in the world that during
those years, because they had a lot of frustration inside
of me. I mean, there was nobody who I could
really talk to about my emotions. So years go by,
years go by. I remember, you know, they wanted me
to get into this program called this sexual offender program.
(19:54):
Being involved in the sexual offender program might be okay
for somebody who's the sexual but in order to complete
this program, they want you to sign and the mission
of guilt. Now, I just came to a conclusion that
Rabb died. I just rebber die in prison and then
just to walk out, I would not have a life
at all. My name is Ebony Howard and a senior
(20:20):
supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. I work
in Alabama focusing on issues related to criminal justice reform,
specifically juvenile justice. Our work tends to focus on the
impact of the justice systems on black and brown people
(20:41):
and other people of color. Ebony Howard is also the
voice you heard at the beginning of the episode. She
and the organization she worked for, the Southern Poverty Law Center,
raise awareness about prejudice and hate crimes across the country.
Ebony's work has a strong emphasis in juvenile law, so
I wanted to speak with her about the ways the
(21:02):
legal system is set up to interact with some children
more than others. The justice system as it operates is
a continuation of a system of slavery using black bodies
towards capitalism. Even after you have the Civil War, you
still have a backlash to it. And then you continue
(21:25):
on and black people go from being enslaved to sharecroppers,
and then you have the Civil rights movement, and so
they are definitely gains there. But if you see enslavement
is still happening in some form or the other, because
even once civil rights are established and black people can
(21:46):
vote and women can vote miraculously, you have a prison
system that is overwhelmingly filled with black people and also
brown people, and you see that black and brown people
are getting sentence at different rates. How is it possible
that black people and white people can engage in the
(22:06):
same conduct, but yet black people get longer sentences. It
is because that same value system that says that black
people are other black people are inferior, carries through because
it is woven throughout our history. It is woven into
the American fabric. People say, well, black people engage in
(22:30):
more crime than white people, Latin X people engage in
more crime. The answer is that black and Latin X
people are targeted far more than white people. We see
that over and over again. We see that with stop
and frisk, we see that with the charging practices of
(22:52):
district attorneys. The reality is that you can't say that
black people are more violent because the data bears out
that people are being charged for the same acts but
getting different In US, it is and the same thing
with our education systems. Why is it that when you
(23:12):
look at the presence of police officers, and mostly white
schools are integrated schools. You see that the officer just
kind of stays tucked in the back and you don't
really see him or her. But in mostly black schools,
the officers are there to police students themselves, not protect them,
but to police them. That is because when the establishment
(23:35):
looks at black children, when the establishment looks at black adolescence,
they don't see children, they don't see teenagers, they see criminals.
And so we train throughout this education system for incarceration.
I asked to have any to explain this idea called
(23:57):
the school to prison pipeline and what it means to
be exposed to the justice system at a young age.
I have met children in high school who were arrested
and maced and booked for getting into a fiet school.
(24:19):
Years later, I encountered that same kid at like age
seventeen in an adult jail. I see the pipeline. I
see how it moves, and I see how the way
that this system is run, the way that the values
that it's based on directly impact black people. I wish
(24:45):
people knew what it means for people to be involved
in the justice system. So the collateral consequences of being arrested,
even if your case doesn't go anywhere, if it's dismissed,
if it's a fluke, if you are arrested and fingerprinted,
(25:09):
the state has your identity, they have access to you.
Every time a criminal act occurs and they're looking for
whoever did it, you are in the pool of people
that they will go to first. Apparently we have decided
(25:29):
that the way we want our justice system to work
is that we don't just lock people up. We have
to punish them. So the punishment isn't just being locked up.
The punishment is whatever comes with being locked up. So
you'll hear people say often listen, they get what they get.
(25:50):
That is the consequences of breaking the law. You see,
let me be clear about what the actual consequences are
in an out of them a prison. Right now, Somebody
is being raped. Somebody is sick because they have diabetes
or some kind of chronic illness, and they are not
(26:12):
getting the care that they need. They are dying. There
is a seventeen year old in a jail seeing foul,
horrible things that will forever change his or hers brain.
(26:32):
When you talk about they get what they deserve. The
punishment is having your liberty taken away from you, the
unseen punishment that people don't allow themselves to imagine. It's
just absolute torture. If people were to allow themselves to
imagine it, like to play it out in their head
(26:55):
like a movie, they wouldn't be able to live with it.
And I feel like that if more people did, they
would understand how something drastically has to change with the
way that we run this justice system. In Alabama. There
(27:16):
are a couple of ways that kids can be tried
as adults. One of them is called transfer. It is
when a child under the age of seventeen can be
charged with anything, and if the prosecutor makes a motion,
then the juvenile court judge can consider that motion and
then transfer that child to the adult court. In making
(27:41):
the decision about whether or not a child should be
transferred to the adult court, the judge has to consider
a set of factors, but one thing that's listed there
is the child's demeanor. So when you talk about something
like demeanor, you've opened the door for all kinds biases
(28:05):
to live out their lives. So he's there because he's
accused of doing something wrong. Perhaps he doesn't want to
make eye contact because he's scared, and the way that
his fear manifests itself is to look down, and the
way that his fear manifests itself is not to speak up.
(28:27):
And he's wearing the clothes that he's wearing because that's
what everybody in his neighborhood wears. He comes from a
cultural context that the judges and policymakers who are in
positions of power don't understand and fear, and so he's
in this situation where you're expecting a fourteen year old
(28:48):
to translate for you who he is when you're the
adult in the room, like you are the one charged
with ensuring that you don't do harm to this person,
little pete, who are supposed to be thinking about how
to best serve not just kids, but people who are
involved in the justice system, people who are involved in
(29:10):
social services systems. Those people who are running those systems
cannot get out of the ingrained racist biases to see
people for people. I wanted to hear more about the
effects of the justice system on youth and what happens
(29:31):
when young people are put in the system. Early on,
I spoke with Ashley Wilcot, a juvenile court judge into
Cab County, Georgia, about the ways she sees racism in
her work with youth. I'm a child welfare law specialist.
I've practiced juvenile courts for many, many years. I now
(29:51):
serve as a judge into Cab County Juvenile Court. I
do a lot of consulting and speaking nationwide a lot
about the education behind our child welfare system. A lot
don't understand it, aren't familiar with it, and so my
goal is really often to educate about it. So I
(30:12):
just want to share a few statistics to set the stage.
So as you all probably have heard or no, the
United States has the world's highest incarceration rate in the world. Right,
nobody is probably surprised to hear that there's clear racial
impact as a result of that. Approximately of Americans incarcerated
(30:34):
are non white. Average American I think it's one in
twenty chance of ending up incarcerated. That's the average American.
If you break it down into race, Latino was one
in six rate of incarceration or chance of going to jail,
African American was one in three, and then the white
(30:57):
average was one in twenty three. Those numbers apply equally
to youth who are tried as adults. The big news
is juvenile incarceration rates have been declining, and from my
perspective with criminal justice reform, that's a good thing. So,
for instance, between two thousand and ten, the juvenile incarceration
(31:23):
rate dropped by forty so that's significant. But if you
compare that to school discipline policies and what you see
happening in the schools, that's going the other direction. So
for instance, since two thousand, the number of schools suspensions
has increased by about ten percent, So you're seeing in
(31:44):
schools that the discipline policies are increasing what happens to
these kids and increases how these kids then touched the
criminal justice system as a result of what's happened in
school as of twenty fifteen, and this was five years ago,
and it's still true today, and it's it's staggering to
(32:06):
me that this is true in our society, but it is.
Black students are three times more likely to be suspended
or expelled than white students, especially when you take that
into account with the fact that studies have shown kids
who are suspended are more likely to either be held
back a grade or to drop out of school. And
(32:29):
when those things start happening, kids they need to have
purpose and be busy, start getting into more trouble, even
if it's you know, just school pranks or something they
think isn't that bad. They get arrested, they go to
juvenile detention. It starts that process of ending up in
the pipeline to prison. You Know, the thing that I
(32:53):
really see that bothers me is I'll just give an example,
there's been a lot of shoplifting. I've seen a lot
of shoplifting cases um in the last i don't know,
year to two years. I really feel like when they
get arrested, the way they've been treated at them all
as a herb of kids is different if they're African
American versus even if they are Asian or Caucasian. Right Like,
(33:17):
there's this whole approach to me that feels very very
different in terms of these are bad kids and we
have to arrest them, versus it's bad behavior that kids
are engaging in. The Thing that infuriates me the most,
not the most, but pretty high up there is when
(33:40):
you see these little kids who have been through all
kinds of trauma act out in the school environment, and
then you see them get tasered, or you see them
actually getting arrested with the handcuffs, or you see them
thrown to the ground and they're half my size. They've
been through things you could never probably imagine, and as
(34:01):
a result, we need to respond in a trauma informed
way so that the response that they get can help
them de escalate instead of escalating and ending up in
the system. M m M. Here's Calvin Johnson explaining how
(34:35):
he finally found a path towards exoneration. I got to
the point where I felt like I was just about snap,
like I was about almost lose my mind, like a
rubber band being stretched. And then later I heard about
DNA technology. I said, DNA what some guys have gotten
out based on DNA technology. There was a guy he
(34:58):
ushould come into the prison, his name Jim Honor. He
was a prisoner legal counseling project, and I told him
my situation. I said, you don't have to believe a
word I said. He said, let me just skeeve my
transcript and you read it. He said, man, this is
the worst case of injustice that I witnessed in my
(35:19):
entire time of the legal profession. They didn't have a
lot of preserve evidence at that time, and they were
actually going to destroy the evidence, and somebody, for whatever
reason changed in mind and he kept the evidence. So
he found an extraordinary motion for a new trial based
on newly discovered evidence, which means that DNA technology didn't exist,
(35:42):
and now this is a new technology that could possibly
prove that I'm innocent, and if that's possible, I should
be given a new trial. And then it defunded the project.
So I spent time writing letters and writing letters to
different people in different organizations seeking help. A friend that
I grew up with when I was a child wrote
(36:05):
me about the inn this is project in New York
City and they looked at it and they said, wow,
this is unique. Here. We got one jury that gives
one verdict, another jury that gives another verdict is like
putting two rats indications on that experiment. Evidence was tested
and they almost used all the evidence up and it
(36:26):
came back where it was inclusive. Basically, they would telling
me, is is that Mr Johnson, you got a choice again, Well,
we just wait till technology gets better five teen years
from now and reach us was left because there's such
a small amount, it's probably gonna be used up, he said.
But there's one other option. He says, there's a guy
(36:46):
in California named Dr Blake, one of the best ristic
scientists in the country and maybe in the world, and said,
we can't send it to him, but the choice of yours.
I said, send it the thought to play, and it
came in November of nineteen showing that it was impossible
that I could have committed the crime based on DNA technology.
(37:08):
Now all of a sudden, they want to do their
own tests State of Georgia, so they want to send
it to the GBI lab, but do their own tests.
They do their own tests and guess what the results
come back? The saying I mean from the very beginning,
I told him that that with God's my witness, you know,
one day the truth will come out. And in nineteen
ninety nine, jif the truth came out, I walked out
of the President Freeman and beginning to do life. Started
(37:31):
my life all over. Guess what I got out and
had to pay bills. I asked Calvin if he believed
that racism and bias impacted this case and helped cause
his wrongful conviction. I do I do believe that race
(37:54):
had a percent to do with with me being arrested.
District attorney, he was very powerful in this position in
Clayton County at the time, and it's like they could
care less about me as an individual. It's sad to say,
but I think because I was black, I would look
down as being less less of a human being, and
(38:15):
so they didn't care. But like a palm on a
on a chess set being pushed around, and I said,
how can people just take and devalue my life, play
with my life like this? But he knew that in
Clayton County he could get a conviction. Clayton County was
predominantly white. The victim of white He knew there was
(38:36):
no doubt no matter what evidence I had, what showed
that that I didn't commit to cry, that he could
get a conviction anyway. From there, it was just an
uphill battle. Having a culturally diverse jury is so important
because then you have different people male, female, different backgrounds.
(38:59):
I think the trial are a lot fairer, I know,
And the perfect example is the fact that here I am,
I get found guilty in one kind of by all
white Jerry, I get found not guilty in another county
by jury makeup for seven blacks by whites, and that
that's not proof. I don't know what else could be
any more proof than that. Our government it's basically designed
(39:24):
the system over the years to degrade and humanized black brace.
That's sad because they've done it with films and movies
that deale it with laws two strikes and three strikes
you out. And now they got people incarcerated for marijuana
with with a nickel bag. Now they got life sentences.
(39:49):
As I said earlier, I stayed the institutionalized slavery, modern
day slavery. They got privatization, private prisons. Now that's a
big profit making open sensation. Guess what, you need people inside.
So what happens You arrest people, You come up with
laws to increased the amount of people being placed in prison,
(40:10):
and it's a free labor force. The twenty But things
have they really changed that much. It's still going on.
I mean this has been progressed, been some progress, yes,
but prejudice still exists. Racial injustice still as if you know,
we all believe the same blood, we're all human beings
and we just need to make it fair, and we
(40:32):
need to make it a justice system, not just us.
I asked Molly Palmer from the Georgia Innocence Project if
there were ways her organization encourages people to take action
against racial bias and all sorts of prejudice in the
justice system. You know, we have to be vigilant in
(40:53):
terms of knowing who are elected officials are. We have
to elect those people that that have a demonstrated record
of caring about these issues. And I think we have
to continue as jurors, as citizens to realize how important
our role is in the community and in the legal system.
And if you get called for jury duty, I hope
(41:16):
that people walk in there, no matter who is sitting
at defense table, understanding the importance of reasonable doubt and
what it means to prove somebody guilty beyond all reasonable doubt,
and to take that job so seriously and examine yourself,
examine those feelings when you see who's sitting there and
your first question is do they look guilty? That's the
(41:41):
instinct and if you say yes, why, I think we
can start by being incredibly critical of ourselves and realize
that nobody is perfect and all of us have experienced
some type of racism directed toward us where we've felt
it and didn't want to admit it. We're not in
(42:05):
post racial America. It's and we see horrible, harrowing things
every day that highlight the violence and the inherent suspected
criminality that we see in terms of people of color,
and we can't move past that until we critically examine ourselves.
(42:28):
I wanted to just touch again on how vitally important
jury selection is in the criminal trial process. It's important
to have an unbiased and even a diverse jury. Calvin's
case is not the only one where racism and racial
biased have played a role in jury selection. He's not
even the only one. In Georgia, a man named Johnny
(42:52):
Lee Gates from Columbus, Georgia, was recently released from jail
after a trial all the way back from nineteen seventy seven,
where he sat judged by an all white jury. The
prosecutor in his case systematically struck every single black juror
(43:12):
from the pool. In nine six, the United States Supreme
Court decided the case of bats And versus Kentucky. The
bats In case held that jurors could not be struck
simply because of their race. This ruling came after both
Johnny Lee Gates and Calvin Johnson's trials, but it is
(43:34):
something all new lawyers now learn about in law school.
It's so important to have a diverse jury with all
kinds of backgrounds and life experiences to weigh in on
these important matters of life and liberty. Whenever I have
a trial, I keep an eye out for any biases
that could come into play on either side for jury selection,
(43:56):
and all lawyers should use bats and challenge is to
call into question strikes made by on the other side
when necessary. To speak to the school to prison pipeline,
I just want to say that the legal system is
like fly paper. Once you're in it, it's very hard
to get out of it, no matter how hard you try.
(44:19):
Recentivism or people returning to the justice system over and
over again is very common. Complicated and difficult probation and
parole requirements make it hard to stay out of the system.
All of these things have a huge impact on families
and communities. We need a system that treats everyone fairly
(44:42):
and doesn't over involve one group or another for any reason,
including the color of their skin. I hope you take
Molly's advice to heart and look at who your local
elected officials are. They are the ones who can most
directly change the way our system works. Next time on Sworn,
(45:05):
you know you're manipulated by people. That's even my parents.
You know, my parents never believed I was actually innocent
of the crime. People ask me you forgive them. Of
course I do. When you're manipulated by a power and
a justice system that is supposed to be the last
of the line, is supposed to be the true sense
of justice, the true sense of what's going on, at
(45:27):
least as closest we can get it. I can forgive
anybody that has been manipulated. I can't forgive those that
did the manipulated. Sworn is a production of Tenderfoot TV
and I Heart Radio. Our lead producer is Christina Dana.
Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV,
(45:51):
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams for I Heart Radio, and
myself Philip Holloway. Additional production by Trevor Young, May Sin Lindsay,
Mike Rooney, Jamie Albright and Halle Beatall original music and
sound designed by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song
is Blood in the Water by Layup. Show art and
(46:12):
design is by Trevor Eisler, editing by Christina Dana, mixing
and mastering by Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks
to the team at I Heart Radio from u T
a or In Rosenbaund and Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and
Matthew Papa from the Nord Group, back Media and Marketing,
(46:34):
and Station sixteen. I'd also like to extend a very
personal and special thanks to all of our contributors and
guests who have helped to make all of these episodes possible.
You can find Sworn on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Sworn podcast and follow me your host, Philip Holloway on
Twitter at phil Holloway e s Q. Our website is
(46:58):
Sworn podcast dot m and you can check out other
Tenderfoot TV podcasts at www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If
you have questions or comments, you can email us at
Sworn at tenderfoot dot tv or leave us a voicemail
at four zero four for one zero zero four f one.
(47:21):
As always, thanks for listening. I'm walking around I see
an armadala I'm gonna jump out my books because I've
never seen a armadala before in my life. It is risk.
It's running across in front of me, looking like a
giant rap with an army helmet on and something. I'm like,
what the heck is this
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