How can black Americans come to grips with their history of bitter racial oppression and our present need for self-possession, which your story, suggests might be the way out of our current dilemma?

Hurri-quotes 2

"We do not realize how miraculous, and how precious every one of us are. If we only had a clue."

Habeas Corpus and AEDPA

"The writ of habeas corpus is the one jewel in the crown of thorns that is the UC criminal justice system.."

Amen to that view of habeas corpus. But it's under attack because of the general belief that inmates are "abusing" this writ. In fact, for the first time ever, the U.S. government put time limitations on the right to file habeas petitions in the 1996 AEDPA law. These revisions have forced inmates who often have no legal training, minimal literacy, little legal help except that available from overworked inmate law clerks to figure out how to file these highly technical writs in just one year. As someone who knows how much - that is, how little - law one can learn in just a year, I have deep doubts about the ability of most inmates to have access to our system's "jewel" so long as AEDPA is on our books.

Relocation of Parolees

I can imagine that after serving a sentence in prison, all that a person would want to do is return to the communities they'd known. And yet that may be exactly the life they need to avoid in order to avoid reoffending.

what to do about wrongful convictions in the first place

What sorts of reforms would help? I wonder if more money is the solution? What if defendants got a budget equal to the prosecution's budget? I would assume that city and federal prosecutors offices have much larger budgets than the public defenders offices. Is that fair? Why should a mere indictment -- on one-sided untested evidence -- impose a financial burden on defendants?

Innocence

Innocence has a lot of purchase in the current political debates here in the U.S. these days, especially with regard to the death penalty and DNA. In fact, our governor, Mitt Romney, has been championing the idea of the "scientific death penalty," whereby capital punishment is only available for defendants who have had a positive DNA match or other corroborating scientific "proof that leaves "no doubt" of guilt. Can a prosecution ever actually meet that burden of proof?

Also, Judge Jed Rakoff, brother of Harvard's Vice Dean Todd Rakoff, expressed his doubts about the death penalty: he says it abrogates the right of prisoners to exonerate themselves and is thus unconstitutional. He was, needless to say, reversed by the 2nd Circuit. See Judge Rakoff's opinion in U.S. v. Quinones. I can't help but think that Hurricane's story of wrongful incarceration and later release after his successful habeas corpus petition is an important lesson about the importance of future exoneration.

Hurri-quote

"The writ of habeus corpus is the one jewel in the crown of thorns that is the UC criminal justice system."

life as narrative

in law school the conversation is always about the concepts, or the subject, or a topic. Instead, Kevin tells us his life-story, and is letting it stand for itself. There is something courageous, and refreshing. As I think about it, Nesson does a lot more of that sort of communication than others. I guess it fits with his notion of the trial as story-telling -- its class as story-telling.

forgiveness

interesting concept arising from Kazembe's comments -- that restoration in criminal justice requires forgiveness. If the convict is innocent, he will have to learn to forgive the system . If he is guilty, restoration requires that the victim or at least the community forgive him.

hurricane's history with the law

From wikipedia, here's the path the led Hurricane into and out of prison:

Around 2:30 a.m. June 17, 1966, two black males entered the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and started shooting. The bartender, Jim Oliver and one male customer, Bob Nauyoks, were killed instantly. A badly-wounded female customer Hazel Tanis, died almost a month later, having been shot in the throat, stomach, intestine, spleen and left lung. Her arm was shattered by shotgun pellets. A third customer, Willie Marins survived the attack, despite being shot in the head and losing sight in one eye. Because Carter's car matched the description of the suspects', Carter and a companion, John Artis, were brought to the scene thirty minutes after the incident and questioned extensively before being released. There was little physical evidence, police didn't take fingerprints at the crime scene, didn't conduct a paraffin test on Carter and Artis, and no eyewitness identified them as the killers.
[edit]

Convictions and appeals
However, several months later, two petty criminals named Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley – who had been near the Lafayette to commit a burglary that same night – identified the two black males that they claimed to have seen carrying weapons outside the bar as Carter and Artis. This, plus the identification of Carter's car by Patrica Valentine, who lived above the bar and the presence in Carter's car of ammunition of the same calibers, but different brands, than that used in the murders, convinced an all-white jury that Carter and Artis were the killers. Both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
During his time in prison, Carter wrote his autobiography "The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to #45472" which was published in 1974. He maintained his innocence, and over the next nine years won increasing public support for a retrial or pardon. Bob Dylan wrote and performed a song, called "Hurricane" (1975), which expressed the view that Carter was innocent. Meanwhile, Carter's supporters persuaded Bello and Bradley to recant the stories they had told at the 1967 trial, though this didn't result in a retrial.
In 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court granted Carter and Artis a new trial, after it was discovered that a police tape recording of witnesses was not made known to the defense before the first trial. It was a technical point. The ruling was ironic, because during the first trial, the prosecution had tried to present testimony about the interviews, but was blocked by the defense. Although Bello's credibility was questionable, the court informed the jury that if they did not believe his testimony, the defendants should be aquitted. The state objected and was overuled. Bello repeated his 1967 trial testimony, and that, plus the ammunition and identification of Carter's car, produced yet another conviction, this time from a jury including two African-American jurors. Carter and Artis were again sentenced to life in prison.
Carter and his supporters continued to appeal on various grounds. In 1982, the Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed his convictions in a 4-3 decision. Three years later, Carter's attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal court, an often unsuccessful legal petition requesting federal review of the constitutionality of state court decisions. The effort paid off; in 1985, United States District Court judge H. Lee Sarokin ruled that Carter and Artis had not received a fair trial, saying that the prosecution had been "based on racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure." He chided the State of New Jersey for having withheld evidence regarding Bello's problematic polygraph testing and related issues, and set aside their convictions. New Jersey prosecutors unsuccessfully appealed Sarokin's ruling all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
Although they could have tried the two a third time, Passaic County prosecutors chose not to. Witnesses had disappeared or died, the cost would have been extremely high, and even a conviction would have produced little result. Artis, for one, had already been paroled, and would not have been returned to prison even had he been re-convicted. In 1988, New Jersey prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the original indictments brought against Carter and Artis in 1966, effectively dropping all charges.

Kevin's Call-in Show

One of Wallen's many interesting projects in Jamaica is a new call-in show in the prisons. He has a 1-hour time block on a local radio show that allows people to call in and talk to the inmates - friends and relatives who can't make it to visitation hours can call in and say hello, etc. He also broadcasts artistic works from inmates, including a segment he calls "An Inmate's Diary," during which he has actors read written impressions prepared by the inmates.

Nesson and Wallen both believe this is the first show of its kind. Wallen says that it has been wildly popular, and that he'll need more time on air soon. Why couldn't we develop the same kinds of programs here?

"Act V"

A 2002 episode of the radio show "This American Life" follows a group of prison inmates, doing hard time for violent felonies, as they put on a production of "Hamlet." The episode is called "Act V." Months of rehearsals are edited to an hour, and we get to watch their creative process unfold. The performance itself is deeply moving...These are people who, like Hamlet, have spent some time thinking about what it means to murder someone. And then, having seen them engage in this labor of love, having seen it culminate, triumphantly, the denouement is that we learn their crimes: horrible, unspeakable. Sickeningly at odds with the sympathy we've come to feel.

It seems impossible to comprehend this. This is why people who have been convicted of terrible crimes are called "monsters" and "animals." To understand them as humans causes too much cognitive dissonance -- it's painful. How can we obey the moral imperative to condemn their crimes and at the same time see them as people? How can we see them as people and still keep them in a cage? I think this is one of the challenges Nesson issues when he asks us to see the Necker cube as something other than a cube.

Courtney Kazembe

You can learn more about Courtney Kazembe here.

Kevin Wallen

For more on Kevin Wallen, visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eon/jamaica/KevinWallenBio.htm.

A little about Jamaica

From the Wikipedia entry on Jamaica:

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, 240 kilometers in length and as much as 80 kilometers in width situated in the Caribbean Sea. It is 630 kilometers from the Central American mainland, 150 kilometers from Cuba on the north, and 180 kilometers from the island of Hispaniola, on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are situated, on the east. Its indigenous Arawakan-speaking Taíno inhabitants named the island Xaymaca, meaning either the "land of springs," or the "Land of wood and water."

On Jah Cure's claim to innocence

Recently, Governor Schwarnegger cited Tookie's claim to innocence as a reason for not granting Tookie clemency. Why? Tookie was undermining acceptability of the "law lord"'s verdict by proclaiming innocence. Tookie's case was example of the law lord trying to protect its authority.

Courtney says that Jah Cure has come to "accept" his circumstances. No doubt, the parole board will consider his "acceptance" - the fact that he has "taken responsibility for his life" - as a factor in favor of granting him parole.

Assume for a moment that we think Jah Cure is guilty. If so, wouldn't his assertion of innocence undermine our faith in the fact that he has really "accepted"?

To some extent, then, the parole board's view of whether or not he has "accepted," whether or not he has "taken responsiblity" will depends on correspondence b/t their view of truth and Jah Cure's view of truth. Doesn't the parole board's question of whether he has "accepted" just beg the question of whether or not he was guilty?

Again, the law lord asserts his/her power.

Warming up for the event tonight

Just in case you haven't heard, tonight's event with Hurricane Carter will be at 7:30 in the Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School, and will be webcast here.


As a preview of what might be in store for us, here is what a classmate of ours wrote about Hurricane's combative visit to our class this morning (slightly edited):

"For those of you that don't know, Hurricane Carter et al will be speaking tonight about restorative justice in Jamaica, and based on his classroom performance this morning, it should be an interesting show (dressed in a slick pin-striped suit and black velvet fedora, he [argued] that if we're not all victims, then none of us are'; he then aggressively called out one student from the crowd for making what he thought were particularly inane comments to him during break; etc.). "

Note: the student in question objected that Hurricane had taken her comments out of context, Hurricane appeared to agree but was undeterred. Things should get interesting tonight. See you there...

Love's gonna bust me out

I'm in.

Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter: Hate put me in prison. Love's gonna bust me out.

Reporter: Mr. Carter, now that you're free, are you still going to be "The Hurricane"

Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter: Oh, I'll always be the "Hurricane", and a hurricane is beautiful.

Success!

I'm in.

test post

I'm here. -ctr

Many have heard the song "Hurricane" by Dylan; the Roots also wrote a song about his story (unfortuantely, I can't post the mp3 here).

Hurricane is coming

The gears are in motion - we are now prepared to blog during "Hurricane" Carter's visit to HLS.