Bob Herbert column in NYT today - Darryl Hunt case - BIG RACISM

[MikeG]

Darryl Hunt heard the door to his prison cell open. He looked up and saw a captain of the guard. "You need to pack your stuff," the captain said. "You're being released in a few minutes."

It was Christmas Eve. After 19 years, two murder convictions, a number of attempts on his life and some of the deepest disappointments he could ever have imagined, Mr. Hunt, once a free-spirited youngster and now a soft-spoken, deeply religious man, was finally being allowed to walk out of prison. DNA had come to his rescue

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/opinion/02HERB.html

This case should be on cable TV, not Kobi, Laci or MJ.

[Clark4VotingRights]

1. Sadly typical of our racist criminal "justice" (cough) system.

And all the more reason why the death penalty is a disgrace.
It's friggen modern day lynching.

Remember Charles Stuart, the boston man who murdered
his pregnant wife and blamed it on a black assailant?
So the cops violated the civil rights of tons of blacks
and arrested them a perp. And he probably would have fried
had not Stuart's brother fingered Chuck as the shooter.

Sadly typical of our racist criminal justice system.

[Vitruvius]

5. Follow-up article today: "Getting Away With ..." Murder

By BOB HERBERT

Two days before Christmas — after nearly two decades of bungling and outrageous misbehavior — the police finally arrested the right man for the rape and murder of a woman in 1984. But even after a DNA match and a credible confession showed conclusively that the wrong man had been locked up for the better part of 19 years, law enforcement authorities remained reluctant to let him go.

I suppose times have changed. Half a century ago, Darryl Hunt might have been lynched. Instead, he was left to rot in a cell, wrongfully incarcerated, for half his life. <SNIP> With pressure growing, a new generation of investigators ran a broad check of the DNA. Lo and behold, the check led them to a man named Willard Brown whose DNA matched that of semen taken from Ms. Sykes. On Dec. 23 Mr. Brown was arrested and charged with kidnapping, rape, armed robbery and murder.

On Feb. 2, 1985, less than six months after the attack on Ms. Sykes, another woman was abducted, raped and, like Ms. Sykes, repeatedly stabbed. The abduction occurred just a couple of blocks from the spot where Ms. Sykes was attacked. The second woman survived and identified Willard Brown as her attacker. But for reasons that are not at all clear, he was never prosecuted.

Mr. Brown has confessed to the rape and murder of Ms. Sykes. He said he acted alone and, according to court papers, he expressed remorse for the crime and for the many years Mr. Hunt spent in prison. But prosecutors were still reluctant to do the right thing by Mr. Hunt. They continued to search for a way to link him to the crime.

There are many terrible things about this case. The awful attacks on at least two women. The years lost to Mr. Hunt in prison. And the fact that the relentlessly bad behavior of the law enforcement authorities — the use of unreliable witnesses, the illegal withholding of exculpatory material, the refusal to acknowledge clear evidence of innocence — is so ordinary. This sort of thing goes on all the time.

MORE at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/opinion/05HERB.html

[salin]

2. kick

[Vitruvius]

3. And another kick

:kick:

And be sure to look for the followup article TOMORROW (Monday).

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. Dad-gum

The only thing that would make this story more unbelievable is if the rapist was actually a white guy. :grr: