Dear friends,
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office is now conducting an inquiry into 31 murder cases that were cleared by detectives because of concerns that the tactics they used to obtain confessions were improper and resulted in wrongful convictions. The Conviction Integrity Unit of the Bronx DA’s office is not merely speculating; when Huwe Burton was 16, he was manipulated into confessing to the murder of his mother, for which he spent 20 years in prison. Around the US, there are hundreds of cases like Burton’s, in which
the police and prosecutors moved too fast, made mistakes and ignored or withheld evidence that suggested they had the wrong person, exoneration experts say.
In Mr. Burton’s case, a judge exonerated him in his mother’s killing in 2019 after the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that investigates wrongful convictions, unearthed evidence not only that detectives used psychologically coercive techniques to get his confession, but that the prosecution had withheld evidence suggesting someone else was the killer.
Support the Innocence Project.
While the Senate was busy last week, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva reintroduced a bill to prohibit government at any level from contracting with private prison companies.
“For too long, private prisons and detention centers have benefited from lucrative government contracts and taxpayer dollars to profit off the pain and suffering of adults and children,” said Rep. Grijalva. “They created perverse profit incentives that helped facilitate a mass incarceration crisis that has disproportionately impacted immigrants and communities of color. Unfortunately, the private prison industry continues to expand its scope of operations and influence and spend millions of dollars in lobbying efforts to weasel their way into new profits streams that include providing ‘restorative’ services that are traditionally performed by community and nonprofit organizations. With positive steps taken at the federal level to end our reliance on private prisons and detention centers, Congress must take the important step to end it once and for all. Now is the time to act.”
Private prisons actually cost more to operate than those run by the federal government. Private prisons are less safe for the people employed and incarcerated in them, with significantly higher incidence of assaults on staff and detainees. Over 80% of the people detained by ICE are in private prisons.
Contact your representative to urge them to support the Justice is Not for Sale Act.
Support the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which is organizing and advocating for racial, social and economic justice.
While this next piece of good news is not brand new, it is relevant given the recent spate of deportations by ICE: NYS’s recently-passed Protect Our Courts Act (POCA) makes it illegal for law enforcement officers, including ICE, to make arrests in or near courthouses. The Immigrant Defense Project and ICE Out of the Courts Coalition organized to achieve this this triumph.
Support the work of Make the Road New York.
Over 50 million Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. There are plenty of headaches and there is legitimate concern about equitable distribution and distrust of the vaccines, so the story is complicated. Medical professionals and public health groups have now mobilized to promote public confidence in the vaccines on social media and organize advocate to actively combat anti-vax messages online.
One group, Shots Heard Round The World, has 900 vetted global volunteers — including many doctors — who it taps to post supportive messages when vaccine advocates’ posts are targeted, said co-founder Todd Wolynn. Health care workers can report anti-vaccine activity through a link on the group’s homepage, which is monitored at all hours.
Shots Heard Round the World is not a new organization; they organized to spread the word about the HPV vaccine, which is a critical public health measure to combat cervical cancer.
Check out Shots Heard’s Anti-Anti-Vaxx toolkit and help promote the life-saving power of vaccines.
Have a good day!
with love,
L