Friday, May 2, 2014

2 Wow's in one day

Every year I take a break from Facebook during the month of my birthday. I find that it is a nice gift to myself, I declutter my mind of the "going's on" of other people's affairs and take the time to deal with me, who I want to become and what I am doing to be that person. As much as I enjoy the time off, I also enjoy the return, I get to see how people's lives have developed, changed, improved (or sadly, declined) over the last 30 days. As I am scrolling down my feed, seeing new babies and wedding pictures and engagement announcements, THIS stop me in my tracks:


My response to this picture?

I am not THAT defense attorney who believes anyone and everyone that has committed a crime should just run wild and free. In my opinion, those kinds of defense attorney's are just as guilty of wiping their behinds with the US Constitution as the cops and prosecutors who believe that everyone ACCUSED of a crime is guilty until proven innocent (and in some cases, they still don't want to believe it.).

HOWEVER, Juan Roberto Melendez-Colon, Ray Krone, John Thompson, Leo Jones, Paul House, Cameron Willingham, Johnny Garrett, Carlos DeLuna, Levon Jones, Glen Chapman and MANY others like them make it hard for me to see killing a human being compared to putting down a dog.

***steps off her soapbox to prep for trial***


This picture and the statement on it hurt my heart. 

As I am sure I have mentioned before, I have five brothers. All of my brothers are young black men ranging in age from 32 to 20 years old. At any point in time, despite what I know in my heart of hearts about my brothers, any one of them could be sitting in a chair, wearing an orange jumpsuit, sandwiched between two suits, looking at twelve strangers with 'please-save-my-life' in his eyes. I am not ashamed to tell you that I would be sitting in the front row, tissue in hand, tears on my face, knots in my stomach and the same message in my eyes.

What people don't understand is that the justice system is F L A W E D. Majorly flawed. People who should be locked up are not, people who should not be locked up are, mentally handicapped people are thrown in prison and expected to fend for themselves in general population, people are on death row who do not belong there and while there are plenty of people serving time for crimes they DID commit, there are SO many that are serving time for a crime with no evidence they are the person who is guilty.

Life is not Law & Order. If there was one thing I could get the general population to understand, it would be that. I was channel surfing a few days ago and I happened across an episode of Law & Order starring Viola Davis. I love her, I think she is a marvelous actor so I stopped to watch. I changed the channel within 10 seconds. 

1. She leaned on the jury box while doing her closing argument-you can not do that.

2. She told the jury what her client's sentence is going to be if they find him guilty-you can not do that.

3. She told the jurors to put themselves in her clients shoes-you can not do that.

In 10 seconds she committed at least 3 of the cardinal sins of arguing in a jury trial and THAT is what people use to measure our justice system. Guess what people? The state does not always figure out, RIGHT BEFORE the trial commences that they have indicted the wrong person. The state does not always have hoards of DNA evidence and jail house phone call recordings with the defendant confessing his sins to his girlfriend. 

Sometimes all they have is the word of one person, the shoddy police work of dirty (or lazy) detectives and a host of lemmings in their ear shouting 'YEA, KILL THE BASTARD!'

Wow.

I know I said I have 2 wow's in one day. Well, hours after I saw the above-referenced picture, a friend of mine posted this link

Wow...just....wow.

I guess we should do the only humane thing and put him down like a dog. smh

Until next time my beautiful people,

Be blessed, be careful, never consent and never confess,

~LT


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