David Shelton (center) with son David Stinson (l) and daughter (r) Mariah Shelton

1994 MSP forensic lab report shows “[no] Negroid hairs . . . that could have originated from David Shelton;” complete report withheld from defense

Rape victim said attacker “could have been a white man,” did not identify him in live line-up that included only Black men

Prosecutor told jury they had no “scientific evidence” related to case

Shelton in letter to State AG: “My skin seems to be my only sin.”

By Diane Bukowski, VOD Editor, and Ricardo Ferrell, Field Editor

DETROIT –Where is the justice in Oakland County?  David Shelton, serving 40-60 years for rape since 1994, is hoping that Michigan State Attorney General Dana Nessel, with the Western Michigan University/Cooley Law Innocence Clinic, will be able to win justice for him using over $1 million in federal grants meant to re-examine forensic evidence.

In 1994, David Shelton, who is Black, was sent to Jackson State Prison to serve lengthy jail terms after being convicted in separate cases of raping two white women who lived in the apartment complex where he stayed with his girlfriend. Oddly, the cases were heard in one trial with two juries in front of the late Oakland County Judge Francis X. O’Brien.

Shelton was convicted by an all-white jury in the first case of three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and sentenced to 40-60 years in prison, and of rape and assault in the second case, for which he was sentenced to 1 to 4 years and 2 years. The second offense allegedly took place two weeks after the first, both in February, 1993.

But in 2017, Shelton obtained Michigan State Police forensic reports, withheld from the defense in 1994. One said that a microscopic examination of hairs found in the bed of the first victim, and on a mask allegedly worn by the assailant, “did not detect any Negroid hairs that could have originated from David Shelton.”

Police had reported the victim originally said that her rapist “could have been a white man” she met earlier in the day at the apartment complex pool. She was not able to identify her rapist in a live line-up, which included only Black men, but did so in court.

“I have been trying for almost three decades to get people to see that I was framed for this crime,” Shelton told VOD reporter Ricardo Ferrell. “The police involved knew I didn’t do it. The prosecutor definitely knew I was innocent, but that didn’t matter. In their eyes, I was an expendable Black man, who they could use to close a case. I hope and pray that the wheels of justice finally begin to roll and that the truth comes out and I’m exonerated and set free.”

Shelton is now 54. His only son David Stinson was just four years old when his father was convicted, but for the past seven years has been fighting to free him.

“Racism, politics and corruption, those are the reasons he got sent to prison and why he’s still in prison,” Stinson told VOD. “Oakland County is a powerful county and that’s likely the reason no one will give the relief to him that he deserves. This justice system is supposed to be fair to all defendants regardless of their skin color. My father was singled out, arrested, investigated, and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, and has spent the last 27 years in prison. Waking up each day knowing that he is innocent is really hard for him.”

According to trial transcripts, the Assistant Prosecutor told the jury in his opening statement on the first day of Shelton’s trial July 11, 1994, “So we don’t have any scientific evidence and you’re not going to hear anything about scientific evidence — or DNA testing, or anything like that.”

The reports, initiated by the Michigan State Police Forensic Lab on Feb. 2, 1993, were not completed until final results were obtained Sept. 16, 1993. The prosecution did not turn over the full report with the final results, according to a letter from Shelton’s first attorney Jerome Fenton dated Sept. 30, 1993, sent to his trial attorney Ben Gonek.

Judge O’Brien and the all-white jury never saw or heard testimony about the following report, dated 9-16-93, which should have raised serious doubts about Shelton’s guilt.
______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________
The forensic reports also state that no fingerprints were found on a mask prosecutors alleged at trial was worn by the rapist despite the prosecution’s allegations that Shelton’s fingerprint was found.

Royal Oak Twp. Sgt. Cecil Dawson

If true, that would show the Oakland County Prosecutors violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brady v. Maryland (373 US 83 – 1963), which says ALL exculpatory evidence (favorable to the defendant) from prosecutors or police must be turned over to the defense.

In a pro se application for leave to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court, Shelton says his trial attorney was guilty of ineffective assistance of counsel on several grounds. Gonek agreed  to stipulate to the partial report at trial, knowing it was not complete, without having the MSP forensic lab technician testify to its contents, among other alleged misdeeds.

Shelton was arrested by two Royal Oak Township police officers, Cecil Dawson and Christine Bursey, the same two corrupt cops who would go to prison for ten and 15 years for their roles in selling drugs and protecting drug houses in Royal Oak Township, in conspiracy with Mexican cartels. (See article below, with written version attached in PDF at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/SUPPLIER-TURNED-INFORMANT-BOOSTS-CASE-4-METRO-DETROIT-COPS-GET-PRISON-FOR-DRUG-ROLES.pdf.

RELATED EXCERPT: “Rodriguez [informant] certainly changed the lives of four metro Detroit officers. Former Royal Oak Township Deputy Chief Cecil Dawson, 49, of Southfield was sentenced Dec. 8 to 10 years in prison; former Highland Park officer Albert Bursey, 47, was sentenced to the same term Dec. 17. Erwin Heard, a former Highland Park officer, was sentenced in May to 15 months in federal prison. Albert Bursey’s wife, Christine Bursey, a former Royal Oak Township police officer, stood trial, was convicted and was sentenced Dec. 17 to 15 years and eight months in prison.”

Dawson was cited by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Solomon v. Royal Oak Township (656 F. Supp. 1254-1986) for running his own security agency on the side while he was the township’s Chief of Police, and getting CCW charges against a security employee dropped.

Judge Diggs Taylor noted that Dawson was one of several Royal Oak Township police employees who likely conspired to frame the plaintiff, Odis Solomon on rape charges, which led to his discharge.

Solomon served as Chief of Police under a 1978 order for superintending control over the Royal Oak Township Police Department imposed by Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Hilda Gage because of rampant corruption in the department.

The Judge upheld Solomon’s allegation that he was fired as a whistleblower, and restored his job as Chief of Police with back pay. (See ruling below story.)

The record of the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office in charging sex crimes with likely insufficient evidence, continuing past Shelton’s conviction, was examined in a Detroit Free Press article, “Oakland Fumbles Sex Charges,” on April 27, 2008.

The Free Press found that Oakland County had won only 50 percent of cases involving sex charges between 2005 and 2008, compared to a conviction rate of 80 percent in Wayne County. Oakland County’s acquittal rate was 35 percent.

“Experts say a 35 percent acquittal rate is a sign prosecutors are bringing cases that don’t hold up under a jury’s scrutiny,” the Free Press said. “‘That’s high and that should give them concern,’ said Abbe Smith, the former deputy director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University. ‘The charging decision is a critical decision. You should not prosecute every case.” (See text version of complete article below story.)

VOD spoke with Mariah Shelton (shown in photo at top), who was only two years old when her father was imprisoned.

She said, “It took me quite a while to understand that my father wasn’t going to be there for my first day of school, my prom and my graduating high school, and first day of college. I know in my heart of hearts my father is innocent. I just hope the scales of justice will balance out and that the victim steps up and tell the truth, that it wasn’t my father who assaulted her, because the evidence clearly shows it wasn’t him.”

Leslee Moore, who is Shelton’s fiancé, has stood by his side from the beginning, as a dedicated and supportive life partner.

“There’s no way my David raped that woman,” she said. “ I know him better than anyone. Believe me, if he had done this, I would not have been with him for over 13 years,” says Moore.

Shelton’s girl friend at the time of his arrest, Jacqueline White, was not called to testify at his trial, although she had testified in his favor at his preliminary exam. She denied police  reports that a Halloween mask fished out of the apartment complex’s trash was involved in the rapes. She said she threw it out because it frightened her child. The police and prosecution produced several masks of different types before settling on the one found in the trash.

The family of David Shelton has told VOD that they are extremely concerned about him because of the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus, which has hit the Michigan prisons hard. Shelton is being held at the Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula.

The facility is one of the temporary prisons that were constructed in the mid to late eighties intended to temporarily house inmates due to overcrowding issues. Kinross is a pole barn setting where approximately 1,280 inmates are confined in close quarters making the spread of COVID-19 inevitable.

Shelton submitted his case to the U-M Law School Innocence Clinic in 2012 , but was referred to the Cooley Law School Innocence Clinic instead, since it dealt with DNA evidence.

See text of complete article above at: http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Clock-ticks-on-inmates-chance-to-clear-names-Detroit-Free-Press.pdf

Shelton said his hopes rose in 2004 when he became involved, along with 140 other prisoners and a Lansing-based Innocence Project, in a successful fight to permanently extend a 2001 state statute that required law enforcement agencies to preserve evidence from cases decided prior to 2001, as long as the defendant is behind bars.  Prior to the statute, there was no requirement governing evidence preservation among Michigan’s law enforcement departments, meaning material that could be tested for DNA was lost or destroyed in numerous cases.

Exoneree Kenneth Wyniemko and Prof. Marla Mitchell-Cichon, head of WMU-Cooley Innocence Project

One of the Michigan prisoners involved was Kenneth Wyniemko, whose exoneration was featured recently in “The Innocence Files,” a Netflix series authored by the Equal Justice Initiative. But Wyniemko was the only prisoner of those 140 to win exoneration.

At the time, Shelton’s attorneys were trying to get the forensic evidence in his case re-tested for DNA, to strengthen the earlier biological tests on hair evidence excluding him, and to see if the actual perpetrator could be identified. That was not done. Since that time, Shelton says, Innocence Clinics have considered his case three more times, with no resolution.

But Shelton’s son David said he and his family were contacted last year by Atty. Lori Montgomery, of  State Attorney General Nessel’s Conviction Integrity Unit. The AG’s CIU and the Western Michigan University/Cooley Law Innocence Clinic received federal grants of over $1 million in 2019 which require the two agencies to assess if unreliable forensic practices led to a conviction in cases of plausible innocence.

VOD contacted the AG’s office through its spokesperson Courtney Covington, who said the AG’s office is not allowing public discussion of individual cases. But Covington did provide VOD with the following update on the project in an email.

“As of today we have received letter requests for assistance from 945 people. We sent applications out and have received 342 applications back thus far. We have sent 75 cases to the Cooley Innocence Project – our partner agency under the federal grant – for further evaluation of forensic evidence.”

Lori Montgomery (l) of AG’s office with Marla Mitchell-Cichon (center) and Daniela Mendez (r) of WMU/Cooley Law Innocence Project, a member of the national Innocence Network. 

Covington said 122 claims have been rejected because they did not meet the projects prerequisites. These include exclusion of cases from Wayne County, (which has its own CIU), or cases in federal court or outside the state.

“Most important, we cannot review legal errors or cases where the claimant has not raised an allegation of new evidence (not offered to the trial court) illustrating innocence,” Covington noted. Shelton’s case does in fact involve such an allegation.

Covington said that the AG’s CIU was announced in April 2019, but did not receive actual funding until January 2020.  She said the true impact of COVID-19 in Michigan was not felt until March 9, which has delayed DNA work. Robyn Frankel, the head of the AG’s CIU, worked up until Jan. 2020 reviewing previous Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act claims, which resulted in the AG’s authorization of payment to many claimants.

Frankel provided VOD with an overview of the CIU’s policies and procedures, and an application, at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Michigan-AG-CIU-Overview-and-Application-4.7.20-1.pdf.

Ricardo Ferrell, VOD Field Editor

Commentary by Ricardo Ferrell: The statewide Conviction Integrity Unit should be all over the Shelton case. This conviction against David Shelton should be the linchpin in revealing the level of corruption out in Oakland County. They’ve gotten away for a long time with targeting Black folks, putting them in jail and sending them off to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. What kind of system of justice sends innocent people to prison and doesn’t think twice about how that impacts families.  

VOD has extensively gone over court documents in the Shelton case and doesn’t see how the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office in their right conscience could argue for a conviction to stand that isn’t supported by any physical evidence. The DNA itself excludes David Shelton, the fingerprints on the mask, a key piece of the prosecution’s so-called evidence, didn’t match Shelton’s prints and the most shocking piece of evidence found was that of DNA (hair) in the victim’s bed that did not have any Negroid traits. So, how can an African American, namely David Shelton, stand convicted of such a crime? 

VOD reports, but when you have corrupt cops, an overzealous prosecutor’s office and a victim willing to give perjured, coached and false testimony against a Black man, you simply don’t stand a chance in the racist Oakland County. It has been this way out in Oakland for decades. Black defendants are treated as if they are automatically guilty. Never mind the notion of ‘innocent until proven guilty;’ that premise just don’t count, if your skin is Black.

Shelton’s case is also featured on a national website at  https://wronglyconvictedgroup.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/david-sheldon/.

And in son David Stinson’s Change.Org petition https://www.change.org/p/all-evidence-presented-looking-for-representation-in-wrongful-conviction-case-dna-evidence-that-we-provide-exonerates-all-black-men-from-this-crime

Related documents: 

MSP LAB REPORTS IN DAVID SHELTON CASE:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/DShelton-MSP-lab-reports-pages-1-3-compressed.pdf

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/DShelton-MSP-lab-reports-pages-4-6-compressed.pdf

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/DShelton-MSP-lab-reports-pages-7-9-compressed.pdf

SOLOMON V. ROYAL OAK TOWNSHIP:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/SOLOMON-V-ROYAL-OAK-TOWNSHIP.pdf

OAKLAND FUMBLES SEX CASE CHARGES (full article) http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/OAKLAND-FUMBLES-SEX-CASE-CHARGES.pdf

OTHER RELATED STORIES:

RUSH TO JUDGMENT? JUDICIAL BIAS RE: RACE, MENTAL ILLNESS EVIDENT IN MICHIGAN LIFER’S CONVICTIONS

STORIES BELOW RELATE TO JUVENILE LIFERS IN MICHIGAN, 200 OF WHOM HAVE NOT BEEN RE-SENTENCED DESPITE U.S. SUPREME COURT RULINGS; Oakland County’s Pros. Jessica Cooper recommended renewed LWOP sentences for 100% of that County’s juvenile lifers.

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/01/24/in-michigan-county-prosecutors-slow-to-give-rehabilitated-juveniles-a-chance/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/10/08/mich-juvenile-lifers-63-not-re-sentenced-fed-class-action-lawsuit-cites-violation-of-due-process/

 http://voiceofdetroit.net/2016/07/26/worthy-others-want-large-portion-of-juvenile-lifers-to-die-in-prison-despite-ussc-rulings/

© Provided by Associated Press FILE – In this April 16, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, as Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, listens. The Trump administration has shelved a set of detailed documents created by the nation’s top disease investigators meant to give step-by-step advice to local leaders deciding when and how to reopen mass transit, day care centers, restaurants, bars and other public places during the still-raging pandemic. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) The AP obtained a copy from a second federal official who was not authorized to release it. The guidance was described in AP stories last week, prior to the White House decision to shelve it.

By JASON DEAREN and MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press

May 7, 2020 11 a.m.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration has shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.

The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.

DENVER, CO – MAY 6: Brandon Wilson, owner of AvidJet, disinfects a Frontier airplane with a fogger at Denver International Airport on Tuesday, May 6, 2020. ProShield, the microbiostatic agent used to disinfect the plane, will keep the aircraft clean for up to 90 days after application. Beginning this week, Frontier will require the use of masks by passengers and will implement temperature checks in the coming weeks.

It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration has been closely controlling the release of guidance and information during the pandemic spurred by a new coronavirus that scientists are still trying to understand, with the president himself leading freewheeling daily briefings until last week.

Traditionally, it’s been the CDC’s role to give the public and local officials guidance and science-based information during public health crises. During this one, however, the CDC has not had a regular, pandemic-related news briefing in nearly two months. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield has been a member of the White House coronavirus task force, but largely absent from public appearances.

The dearth of real-time, public information from the nation’s experts has struck many current and former government health officials as dangerous.

“CDC has always been the public health agency Americans turn to in a time of crisis,” said Dr. Howard Koh, a Harvard professor and former health official in the Obama administration during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009. “The standard in a crisis is to turn to them for the latest data and latest guidance and the latest press briefing. That has not occurred, and everyone sees that.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/psychiatrists-submit-warning-trumps-mental-health-deteriorating-2019-12

‘JUST MERCY’, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx in a wrenching account of a wrongfully convicted man freed by Atty. Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. Many more, like Carl Hubbard, languish in Michigan and U.S. prisons.

AP JAMES GONZALES DROVE ONLY KEY PROS. WITNESS OFF STAND, ORDERING ARREST FOR PERJURY AFTER RECANTATION  AT TRIAL

Hubbard’s 3-day bench trial in front of Judge Richard Hathaway in 1992: no gun or other forensics evidence, no eyewitness testimony presented

Police, prosecutors never investigated eyewitness statement naming a different perpetrator

Trial lawyer Ronald Giles, now a judge, swore in affidavit that recanted testimony of  pros. witness Curtiss Collins was key to  conviction

Hubbard’s latest appeal currently being reviewed for acceptance by Michigan Supreme Court

By Diane Bukowski

May 3, 2020

Carl Hubbard (MDOC photo)

DETROIT – Detroiter Carl Hubbard, now 55, has been serving a life without parole  sentence (death by incarceration) in Michigan for 28 years, convicted of the first-degree murder of Rodnell Penn on Jan. 17, 1992. His case is currently awaiting the Michigan Supreme Court’s approval of his most recent application for leave to appeal.

Hubbard’s case closely resembles that of George Clark and Kevin Harrington, co-defendants whose 2003 Inkster murder case was dismissed April 23 at the request of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, citing egregious police misconduct. (See box below.)

Attorney Wolfgang Mueller told the Detroit News about the Inkster case, “Threatening witnesses to make up a story and hiding evidence to grease the skids for a conviction cannot be tolerated by our society.”

Recorders Court Judge Richard P. Hathaway convicted Hubbard after a three-day bench trial in 1992. Assistant Wayne Co. Prosecutor James Gonzales presented no physical or forensic evidence, including the gun that killed Penn, fingerprints or gunshot residue. He presented no eyewitnesses.

His key witness, Curtiss Collins, a boyhood friend of Hubbard’s, claimed he saw Hubbard in the vicinity of the killing with the victim, then later recanted that testimony on the first day of Hubbard’s trial.

James Gonzales (r), currently Kym Worthy’s Chief of Special Operations.

In a glaring action ignored by courts through 28 years of Hubbard’s pro se appeals, Gonzales effectively drove his own key witness off the stand, ordering him immediately arrested by Detroit police on charges of perjury after his sworn recantation. A police report by Sgt. Ronald Gale attests that Gonzales ordered him to carry out the arrest.

Collins said that police and prosecutors threatened to charge him with Penn’s murder and other consequences to obtain his testimony, after holding him on the infamous 9th floor of DPD headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, home to the alleged “Ring of Snitches,” for two days until he reverted to Gonzales version of events.

Gonzales currently serves as Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s Chief of Special Operations, while Judge Hathaway went on to become a Chief Assistant to Worthy in 2005, before briefly stepping down to run for Wayne County Treasurer. He won that position, but stepped down as Treasurer after three months.

The players instrumental in convicting Hubbard in 1992 thus remain in powerful positions in the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, giving that office reason to ignore any “dirty deeds” they committed in the past when responding to Hubbard’s appeals. Their prominence may have influenced the recent opinion rendered by Third Judicial Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Talon on Hubbard’s third motion for relief from judgment, rendered Oct. 2, 2019. (See http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Hubbard-Talon-answer-10-2-19.pdf]

(L to R): AP Richard Hathaway, Pros. Kym Worthy, retiring AP Augustus Huttings and Judge Timothy Kenny, currently chief judge of the Third Judicial Circuit Court.

Hubbard had filed that motion after numerous earlier appeals were rejected without any statement of fact by state appeals courts, only  declarations that he did not meet the standards for appeal.

Regarding the arrest of Curtiss Collins after he recanted his testimony during Hubbard’s trial in 1992,  Talon claimed, “…. neither the police nor the prosecutor intimidated the witness after his actual recanting . . .because the witness was forced to face perjury charges or testify against a man accused of murder. There was no intimidation, only a tough choice that Collins had brought about by his own actions.”

Collins, however, insists to this day that prosecutors and police  forced him to testify falsely. On October 31, 2017, he filed a sworn affidavit to that effect. In the affidavit, he says that he spent two days after his arrest for perjury in lock-up at DPD’s former headquarters at 1300 Beaubien.

That affidavit is backed up by numerous others from individuals who swore they did not see Collins at the scene of the murder, including two proprietors who swore he was not in their store with Penn on that day.  Collins had said he was in the store when he saw Hubbard with the victim. (See Collins’ affidavit at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Curtiss-Collins-affidavit.pdf).

“I returned on the third day of Carl Hubbard’s trial after spending two days at the 1300 Precinct where I was threatened by Homicide officers Sergeant [Joann] Kinney and Sergeant [Ronald] Gale with being charged with the murder of Mr. Penn if I didn’t say that I saw Carl Hubbard at the murder scene of Mr. Penn. This is why I testified in the manner I did on the third day of Carl Hubbard’s trial, because of the fear I had of Sergeant Kinney and Gale’s threats of charging and prosecuting me for a crime that I had no knowledge of.”

He said he spent 10 months in prison from 2014-15, afterwards realizing how hard it was for Hubbard. He also learned that Gonzales, Kinney and Gale were no longer in their respective positions and could not directly retaliate against him.

He swore that “my statements that I provided on Jan. 23, 1992 to Sgt. Kinney and Sgt. Gale, on Feb. 4, 1992 at Carl Hubbard’s preliminary examination, and on Sept. 2, 1992 at Carl Hubbard’s trial were false. Whereas today I recant those statements which were coerced from me by threats from AP Gonzales, Sgt. Kinney and Sgt. Gale.”

Below is VOD’s interview with Curtiss Collins last year.

Hubbard’s attorney at trial, Ronald Giles, who is now a 36th District Court Judge, signed an affidavit stating firmly as below (excerpt–see full document at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Atty-Ronald-Giles-letter-and-aff-Hubbard-habeas.pdf)

Judge Ronald Giles

Over the years, Hubbard has submitted dozens of affidavits attesting to his innocence including a key affidavit from Askia Hill, an eyewitness to the murder.

Hill’s full affidavit is at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Askia-Hill-affidavit-from-CH-habeas-

Hill swore that he saw the killing of Rodnell Penn and named the perpetrator as Mark Goings. Affidavits from others in the community stated that it was known that Goings wanted to retaliate against Penn for killing his brother.

Hill’s affidavit clearly goes to the issue of Hubbard’s actual innocence. In part, it read:

Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court approved additional language regarding “actual innocence” to be added to Michigan Court Rules, at MCR 6.502. That language states that the court may waive newly discovered evidence provisions of the rule “if it concludes that there is a significant possibility that the defendant is innocence of the crime.”

Additionally, MCR 770.1 has always stated  as follows, “770.1 Granting new trial to defendant. The judge of a court in which the trial of an offense is held may grant a new trial to the defendant, for any cause for which by law a new trial may be granted, or when it appears to the court that justice has not been done, and on the terms or conditions as the court directs.”

Judge Talon says in his ruling that he did not find affidavits from Hill and others “believable,” but legal experts say that a judge does not have the right to decide what is believable, that such evidence must go to the jury, if they are the finders of fact.

In his extremely well executed pro se 2013 habeas petition, Hubbard cited key cases from the U.S. and Michigan Supreme Courts, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that speak definitively to the issue of “actual innocence.” They include Schlup v. Delo 513 U.S. 298 (1995), and Souter v. Jones 395 F 3rd 577 (6th Circ. 2005).  (See part I of Hubbard’s petition at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Carl-Hubbard-habeas-petition-2013-pages-deleted-compressed.pdf.)

Hubbard’s case closely resembles that of George Clark and Kevin Harrington, co-defendants whose 2003 Inkster murder case was dismissed April 23 at the request of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

That office’s Conviction Integrity Unit said egregious police misconduct, including coercion of the only original eyewitness by Inkster police, was involved. That witness later recanted and was replaced by a witness who identified the real killer. Although the CIU would not identify the officer responsible, the Sixth Circuit Court did so in their ruling on Clark’s appeal, as Officer Anthony Abdallah.

According to that ruling, Abdallah threatened to take away the children of the purported eyewitness if she didn’t testify falsely against Harrington and Clark.

Sgt. JoAnn Kinney surfaced after her retirement from the DPD as a Wayne County Prosecutor’s investigator. She gained fame for claims that former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick assaulted her and another officer when they went to his sister’s house to serve a subpoena on him for the prosecutor.

Ironically, DPD Sgt. Kinney used the same tactic herself in the 1995 case of Thoanchelle Taylor.

Judge Kathleen MacDonald

In an article titled, “Detroit Police Inquiry Expands,” which cites Kinney, Detroit Free Press reporters Norman Sinclair and Ronald Hansen wrote, “In another murder case in which the city ultimately paid a five-figure settlement in 1995, a Wayne County Circuit Court judge harshly criticized Detroit police for locking up a mother of two children as a witness and illegally holding her until her 12-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son implicated her in the death.

“Judge Kathleen McDonald said she was outraged that police charged Thoanchelle Taylor with murder without ‘scintilla of evidence,’ as the judge put it. “If I have ever seen a case where the police have manufactured the facts, this is one. I have never had facts as egregious as this case.

“Veteran Homicide Sgt. Joann Kinney testified that she had Taylor locked up as a witness for days without charges against her and said there was no standard procedure as to how long witnesses could be held without being arrested. Kinney also admitted threatening to take Taylor’s children away if she did not cooperate. . .”

Kinney was also involved in eliciting a confession from a 12-year-old girl to a charge of murder of a child she was babysitting, by promising she could go home if she confessed. The confession was thrown out by the juvenile court judge in 1992. (See article below.)

JoAnn Kinney testified later in a federal civil lawsuit, Moore v. City of Detroit, 07-11787,  that the City of Detroit had a policy and practice of detaining witnesses. (Docket No. 20, Exh. D, Dep. of Joann Kinney, pp. 40-50). See http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/People-v-Moore-.pdf. Of course, that policy had been thoroughly exposed when the U.S. Department of Justice put the DPD under a consent agreement, with regard to its use of force and practice of witness round-ups in 2003.

For his part, DPD Sgt. Ronald Gale was cited by the Michigan Supreme Court in a case very similar to Hubbard’s, People v. Jenkins, 450 Mich. 249 (1995). In Jenkins, Justices James H. Brickley, Charles L. Levin and Michael F. Cavanagh reversed the 1995 conviction of Steven Jenkins for the murder of Demowens Harris in 1989 and remanded it for a new trial. The full opinion is at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/People-v-Jenkins.pdf.

Sgt. Ronald D. Gale passed in 2014; family photo from obituary.

In that case, Gale elicited a written statement from witness Reginald Pennington indicating that he had seen defendant Steven Jenkins riding toward the murder victim and that gunfire took place immediately after Jenkins left Pennington’s line of sight. At trial, however, Pennington denied the content of the statement, despite having signed it. The prosecutor then had Gale read the statement into the record word for word.

The State Supreme Court said, “Shortly after the shooting, Reginald Pennington gave police a signed statement that immediately before the incident he had seen Jenkins riding in a gold Sunbird toward the crime scene, and that gunfire erupted immediately after the vehicle left Pennington’s line of sight.[6] Called as a prosecution witness, Pennington offered little useful information. He testified rather that he was sitting on his porch a block away from the crime scene when he heard shots and saw a crowd gather.”

The court continued, “Over defense objections, the prosecutor questioned Sergeant Gale, the police officer who took Pennington’s statement. The prosecutor had Gale read much of Pennington’s statement. Gale quoted Pennington as saying:

102 Leicester Ct. Google photo

“At about 6 P.M., I’m sitting on the porch of 102 Leicester. A gold Sunbird rode past the house, and as soon as it got out of my eyesight, I heard the shooting. One of my friends came around there where I was at and told me that Steve [Jenkins] had shot [the victim] Demowens in the head. Steve [Jenkins] is the one that drives the gold Sunbird.” [Emphasis added.]

The Court added that Gale was also permitted to read word for word from an attached  memorandum, “I saw the driver of the car and the passenger. I didn’t see who was in the back seat of the car.” He recognized in the car “Steven Jenkins and this guy named Spanky.” Jenkins was “[i]n the front passenger side.” Spanky “was the driver of the car.” He heard “[a]bout 11” shots fired. Gale also asked Pennington whether he had ever seen Jenkins with a gun before, and Pennington responded, “Yes, a .45 automatic, nickelplated.” “Every time [Jenkins] gets out of the car to go in that building, he has the gun in his hand.”

Carl Hubbard, convicted in 1992, is one of many prisoners from Detroit who were caught up in the rabid practices of the Detroit Police Department during the 1990’s, which included unbridled witness round-ups and detention, killings by police (Detroit had the highest number of any city in 1999), and unchecked tens of thousands of frame-ups. 

Those practices began many decades ago when the “Big Four” DPD cars roamed the city, singling out young Blacks for arrest, to the 1967 rebellion, when dozens of poor, largely Black people were murdered by police and the National Guard, to STRESS (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets), whose undercover cops slaughtered Black men at random, and continuing to the present day.

Many believed Mayor Coleman Young’s election put an end to such practices, but they continued unabated through the decades following to the present day. In this system, police are the descendants of the slave-catchers of previous centuries, and agents of mass incarceration in the present. They do not serve the people, but the wealthy white supremacist class.

Related stories:

JUDGE TO REVIEW CASE OF CARL HUBBARD, IN PRISON SINCE 1992; INNOCENCE BACKED BY DOZENS

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/02/28/ramon-ward-family-celebrate-release-after-27-yrs-on-false-conviction-when-will-100s-more-be-freed/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/04/05/mi-supreme-ct-grants-rehearing-to-thelonious-searcy-hitman-confessed-judge-ap-lied-to-jury/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/04/05/mi-supreme-ct-grants-rehearing-to-thelonious-searcy-hitman-confessed-judge-ap-lied-to-jury/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/02/11/rush-to-judgment-judicial-bias-re-race-mental-illness-evident-in-michigan-lifers-convictions/

NINETY INGHAM COUNTY, MI LIFERS MAY GET SECOND CHANCE; PROS. CAROL SIEMON OPPOSES LWOP

R.A.P.P. Free Our Elders Rally in Albany, N.Y.

New York’s Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) leads the way

Prisons are death camps for lifers; end Life Without Parole

Ricardo Ferrell

By Ricardo Ferrell 

VOD Field Editor

Our country is experiencing one of the worse pandemics in its history, and the death toll is rapidly rising daily. We must address the growing problem of aging people in prisons across America who are slowly deteriorating and dying due to poor health, inadequate medical attention and not being granted well-deserved releases. In Michigan there are hundreds of elderly individuals that have served 35, 40, 45, & 50 + years but still remain in prison despite statistical data. indicating they will likely never reoffend if granted parole.

In states like New York, efforts calling for the release of aging prisoners are getting the attention of many, including State Legislators, the New York Parole Board, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The New York-based organization RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison) founded in 2013 by Jose Saldana has been relentlessly advocating for the release of aging prisoners for several years.

Saldana, who served 38 years behind bars and was granted parole in 2018, hit the ground running, focusing his attention on reaching back to help similarly situated people left behind. RAPP’s efforts include a push to eliminate Life Without Parole (LWOP), which is virtually a death sentence. Many who receive these sort of sentences never see the light of day again on the other side of the fence. Those who are given LWOP, even though not an actual death sentence are still treated as if they have been handed down the death penalty.

The same rings true in other states besides New York, who actually have the death penalty. The death penalty has long been abolished in Michigan since 1847. However, a life sentence basically equates to death by incarceration. Meaning, the Michigan Parole Board’s practice of the ‘Life Means Life’ policy, even if its a parolable life sentence, places all lifers in the same category.

Vermont and Pennsylvania have introduced legislation, that if passed, would abolish Life Without Parole (LWOP) in their states. Criminal Justice Reform advocates like Larry Krasner, Robert Kraft, Michael Rubin, and Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter, all came together and called for the release of Robert Williams a/k/a Rapper Meek Mill.

Meek Mill is now auctioning his beloved Rolls Royce Phantom to provide aid in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, along with other celebrities like Kevin Hart (below).

JUST IN: @MeekMill is going ALL IN! Meek is donating his 2019 Rolls-Royce Phantom and you can bid now! Visit https://t.co/K1pgbCkwkM to learn more and help raise tens of millions of dollars to feed those in need. #ALLInChallenge pic.twitter.com/ubaVR1mKws

— Fanatics (@Fanatics) April 14, 2020

In 2017, Pennsylvania State Senator Sharif Street introduced Senate Bill 942 aimed to end life without parole sentences in his state. In an article written by Ray Downs on March 26, 2018, Street is quoted as saying, “Not all victims of crime want people to die behind bars.” There are similar sentiments by 80% of crime survivors in Michigan, who believe offenders should have their time reduced, if they were to participate in, and complete mandatory programming, i.e., counseling, vocational, academic, and other requirements which are rehabilitative and helps towards offender success.

Members of RAPP rally against prison death camps.

Michigan needs major reforms to its parole board in how it paroles eligible elderly prisoners, so as to reflect fairness and provide meaningful opportunities for release of the growing aging population in its prisons. The large percentage of aging prisoners is needlessly costing taxpayers millions and millions of dollars annually. Most of the aging prisoners have serious health issues, e.g., cancer, liver damage, heart disease, diabetes, thyroiditis, high blood pressure, and a number of other chronic care illnesses.

What penological interest could there be to continuously hold elderly, sick, infirmed, and dying people in prison, who don’t pose a risk, threat, nor danger to public safety? In fact, the draconian practice of holding reformed, rehabilitated, and redeemed people in our prisons beyond the need is asinine and spells poor logic on the part of corrections officials.

The Michigan Legislature should introduce measures that could bring forth the reforms needed of the current parole process, which is broken and ineffective. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer should step in and enact an Executive Order to release aging people in Michigan’s prisons, especially those suffering from the noted health conditions mentioned above. Doing so, could easily free up monies to help “fix the damn roads,” one of Whitmer’s campaign slogans in 2018.

It would also allocate a portion of the wasteful spending in the corrections budget of $2.2 billion towards repairing the rest of the crumbling infrastructure around the state, cleaning up the water systems of PFAS and other life threatening contaminants.

Less than 1% of the group of aging prisoners recidivates. They almost never commit the same crime that landed them in prison decades ago because they have now aged out of crime. Sadly, the majority of lifers in Michigan and across the U.S., are people of color, who’s life expectancy is less than their counterparts. Let’s seriously look at how Michigan can revamp, reform, and rewrite its parole policies and procedures to be more in line with other states that have done so, resulting in the release of aging people from their prison systems.

Since 2009, Michigan has safely paroled some 428 lifers; none have reoffended by committing the same or similar crimea. This aging group of people who are now in their 60s, 70s & 80s, if released, would likely be more concerned with improving their health rather than rushing to indulge in criminality, wouldn’t you think?

Michigan’s vicious sentencing policies have affected 200 juvenile lifers still serving unconstitutional sentences. Below, one, William Garrison, died this week after his re-sentencing. He was awaiting parole in May, after being incarcerated since the age of 16. The prison he was in, Macomb Correctional Facility, has the third highest number of COVID-19 cases in the state and houses many juvenile lifers in its Re-Entry Program.

Michigan Juvenile Lifer Who Died Of Coronavirus In Prison Was Weeks Away From Parole (excerpt)

Angie Jackson, Detroit Free Press

April 18, 2020

William Garrison, in photo taken by sister in 2009 during a visit.

William Garrison was due to come home from prison in early May. After nearly 44 years incarcerated, he would be free from a life sentence handed to him as a juvenile.

His sister Yolanda Peterson had prepared a room for him to stay in her Harper Woods home and planned for his parole agent to come see the place. She was brainstorming how, given the coronavirus pandemic, she might help her brother celebrate his 61st birthday at the end of May.

Plans for the future fell apart Monday, when Peterson got word that her brother, [who had tuberculosis as a baby and had a lung removed] had died unexpectedly in prison.

Garrison’s bunkmate found him gasping for air that evening in their two-man cell at Macomb Correctional Facility, according to Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz. Staff performed CPR. Garrison was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Gautz said.

A postmortem test confirmed that he was positive for COVID-19.

Peterson said it hurts for her brother to die now after “surviving 44 years in prison,” when his freedom was weeks away. “My brother shouldn’t have died in there like that,” she said Friday evening.

Garrison is one of 17 state prisoners who’ve died of COVID-19 as of Friday.

Prisoners at Macomb CF taking “Chance for Life” re-entry program in earlier days. Many juvenile lifers were there awaiting re-sentencing in Macomb’s Re-Entry Program, but Garrison ended up having no “Chance for Life.”

More than 520 prisoners have tested positive, out of the 805 total prisoners tested as of Friday. The Department of Corrections houses roughly 38,000 prisoners. With relatively high infection rates at a handful of facilities including Macomb — where 78 prisoners were confirmed to have COVID-19 as of Friday — experts have said there are likely many more undetected cases throughout the prison system.

More: Infection rate at Michigan prison exceeds New York, Chicago jail hot spots

Life without parole

Garrison was sentenced to automatic life in prison without parole on a conviction of first-degree murder for a shooting when he was 16 in 1976.

Kim Craighead, (3rd from l) with family members, campaigns for freedom for her husband Michael Calvin and his childhood friend Charles Lewis, both juvenile lifers. They were later re-sentenced and freed after spending time at Macomb’s Re-Entry Facility. Each had spent over 41 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Calvin was not the shooter in a group of several adults who killed a man. Lewis had been the subject of numerous stories in VOD demonstrating his innocence.

He had an opportunity to be resentenced after a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The court ruled that its 2012 decision that struck down mandatory life sentences for juveniles convicted of murder should be applied retroactively.

Garrison had a [re-sentencing] hearing in December, where his attorney Becky Hahn presented evidence that her client had been rehabilitated and was no longer the troubled individual who entered prison as a teenager.

In court,  Garrison said he was illiterate when he entered prison as a teenager, a result of falling behind in school due to years of hospitalization for tuberculosis, Peterson said. He taught himself to read and write. He studied the law and hoped to help other juvenile lifers upon his release.

“He was a zealous advocate for himself and for other incarcerated persons. He often helped other individuals with their legal matters,” Hahn said.

‘Trying to get free’

A judge in January resentenced Garrison to a term of 40 to 90 years. He’d already served 43 years. The parole board approved his release.

But Garrison declined to parole then. He said he’d rather be discharged from prison than paroled because parole would’ve subjected him to the department’s supervision and restrictions.

Garrison didn’t view parole as freedom. “He was trying to get free,” Peterson said.

Though his new maximum sentence was 90 years, Garrison was eligible to be discharged from prison, without parole, in September because he had been awarded more than 7,000 days of “good time” credits, Gautz said.

He initially planned to remain in prison until then, but that changed when COVID-19 made its way into the prison system, Peterson said. Garrison was again considered for parole in late March and was approved, Gautz said.

A prosecutor has 28 days to appeal the board’s decision to grant parole to a prisoner. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, MDOC recently began asking prosecutors to waive that 28-day period to expedite release in some cases.

Wayne Co. Pros. Kym Worthy delays waiver response, which could have saved Garrison’s life

Wayne Co Pros. Kym Worthy

Gautz said the department sent a waiver request for Garrison’s case to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office on April 8 and did not hear back before his death five days later.

Maria Miller, spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, confirmed that a letter regarding Garrison’s parole was emailed to Prosecutor Kym Worthy. The window to contest his parole would’ve expired May 6. A decision, which would have involved notifying any victims or family members, had not yet been made, Miller said.

Hahn said Garrison’s death is a tragedy.

“I really do think that if he was here, he would want his death to shed light on the dire situation that those others are facing in MDOC,” she said.

Angie Jackson covers the challenges of formerly incarcerated citizens as a corps member with Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, with support from the Hudson-Webber Foundation. Click here to support her work. Contact Angie: ajackson@freepress.com; 313-222-1850. Follow her on Twitter: @AngieJackson23

Below is one of Meek Mill’s many rap songs, which explore the effects of poverty, police killings, the CIA importation of drugs to poor, especially Black communities, and mass incarceration.

“We have to ensure that we never return to the society that enabled this pandemic to emerge.”

 Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor

April 9, 2020 

Covid-19 has laid bare a fundamental truth: that capitalist healthcare is a contradiction in terms, since capital – like the killer virus — cares for nothing but reproducing itself.

What some may remember as the Year of the Lost Spring – lost loved ones, lost jobs, lost freedom of movement – may also become the year that the oligarchy and its servants in both corporate parties lost popular permission to dictate the terms of life and death in the United States.

For the second time this century, the economies of the U.S. and Europe are circling the abyss, dragging much of the rest of the planet with them, while China, site of the first large eruption of Covid-19, leads the world in both economic resilience and global mutual aid — and Cuba has stepped forward once again as the champion of medical solidarity.

The superpower that has killed millions in its quest for global supremacy has utterly failed the most basic test of legitimacy at home: the ability to protect its own population. COVID-19 has laid bare a fundamental truth: that capitalist healthcare is a contradiction in terms, since capital – like the killer virus — cares for nothing but reproducing itself.

“The Lords of Capital have been devouring the nation’s protective membrane, leaving the population defenseless against, not only microbes, but every disease of the poor.”

Mike Duggan celebrates sale of DMC to Vanguard Aug. 5, 2013. It is now owned by Tenet Capital. Hundreds of workers have been laid off, services cut back. VOD photo

Above: ER nurses at the Detroit Medical Center’s Sinai-Grace Hospital conduct sit-down protest about COVID-19 conditions, get fired April 5, 2020. While CEO of the DMC, Mike Duggan (now Mayor of Detroit) sold the ‘non-profit’ to two private, for-profit companies run by New York-based hedge funds.

The U.S. “public” health sector is revealed as a hollowed-out shell, crippled and shrunken by decades of unrelenting privatization at the hands of the oligarch-serving political duopoly. In effect, the Lords of Capital have been devouring the nation’s protective membrane, leaving the population defenseless against, not only microbes, but every disease of the poor — plus opiates and the lethal social pathologies that spawn spectacular and uniquely American mass shootings at schools, churches and shopping malls, and the daily slaughter of Black and brown youth on the streets.

The idiot currently occupying the White House did not create the healthcare crisis, and the people know it. Donald Trump is far too incompetent and unfocused to pull off such a monumental crime, which has been unfolding for decades.

“Democrats have been full partners in stripping the people of public health protections.”

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo

Democrats have been full partners in stripping the people of public health protections – including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the current darling of corporate media, who continues to press for $2.5 billion in Medicaid cuts  in his own state even as he poses as the nation’s top virus-slayer. Joe Biden, the not-all-there man who some would like Cuomo to replace as the Democratic presidential nominee, vows to veto Medicare for All  – the first, preliminary step towards a real national health care system — if it ever comes across his White House desk.

Politicians of both parties take their orders from the Lords of Capital. Otherwise, they are demonized and threatened with expulsion from the capitalist duopoly, the only electoral game that is allowed under oligarchic rule – which is why Bernie Sanders will always be a loyal sheep-dog for a party that opposes his old-style Democratic reforms.

New York City is at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

In the big cities, it is almost invariably the Democrats that enforce Rich Man’s Rule – many of them Black Democrats, since the other half of the duopoly is the White Man’s Party (GOP). Big labor’s only duopoly option is also the Democrats, a straight-jacket that union hacks have no desire to escape, preferring concubinage (whoring) to conflict with the ruling capitalist class.

The unions that purport to fight for the workers, and Blacks, who are overwhelmingly working class and the most left-leaning ethnicity in the nation, have both been reduced by the duopoly to annexes of the Democratic Party, a fatal embrace. The duopoly serves only one master: Capital. Back when the Democrats were the White Man’s Party and an aging Frederick Douglass made his living as a Republican functionary, the former firebrand declared , “The Republican Party is the ship and all else is the sea around us.”

Just as Douglass’ Republicans eventually sanctioned Jim Crow and the dictatorship of Capital, the Democrats have become bulwarks of an austerity Race to the Bottom that has thrown the working class and its most marginalized components overboard to drown in a sea of declining living standards and disappearing “real” jobs and social supports – and without a national health care system.

Covid-19 has made clear the lunacy of this deal with the devil, and that “nobody will save us, but us.”

COOPERATION JACKSON ISSUES CALL FOR GENERAL STRIKE MAY 1

Cooperation Jackson, the Mississippi-based  “emerging vehicle for sustainable community development, economic democracy, and community ownership,” last week put out a call for a general strike to begin on May 1st — May Day — and a list of demands “that will transform our broken and inequitable society, and build a new society run by and for us – the working-class, poor, oppressed majority.” (See BAR, April 6, 2020.)

See https://cooperationjackson.org/

“Despite the asymmetry of power between ourselves on the Left and the organized working-class, and the forces of the right,” says the Call, “we have to do everything we can to intervene. We must stop the worst most deadly version of this pandemic from becoming a reality, and we have to ensure that we never return to the society that enabled this pandemic to emerge and have the impact it is having in the first place. We must do everything that we can to create a new, just, equitable and ecologically regenerative economy.”

Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson

The proposed demands include protection of front-line workers exposed to the virus, and of “other vulnerable communities, including the homeless, migrants, and refugees from discrimination and attack in this time of crisis”; democratization of the means of production, by converting corporations into cooperatives; universal healthcare and basic services (education, childcare, elderly care, water, electricity, internet, etc.); a universal basic income; democratized credit (“Bail out the people, not the corporations and Wall Street”); a “decarbonized economy and Green New Deal; housing as a human right; clean and decommodified water for all; a Debt Jubilee; release of prisoners and closure of jails and prisons; closure of detention centers and reunification of families; shutdown of overseas military bases and cuts in the military budget, with spending transferred to social needs and infrastructure.

Cooperation Jackson spokesman Kali Akuno said nearly 300 activists took part in a conference call on Monday and reached “consensus on doing collective action to support what’s already going on.” Committees were formed to launch and sustain the strike and to put together a national strike fund.

“We’re trying to answer questions of the last 30 years in a few days,” said Akuno. May Day is important, “but we have no illusion that the ‘big one’ will happen on May 1st,” with the epidemic raging and much of the population still on lockdown, “but we’ll keep working towards it to send a clear message that we need a new system.”

The resistance predates Cooperation Jackson’s call. Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, compiled and circulated a list of grassroots labor and social activist actions in the time of plague across the nation and the world [VOD-list is at bottom of this story.]

Lockdown and Beyond

http://blackisbackcoalition.org/the-covid-19-pandemic-black-people-fight-back-webinar-april-11-12/

As long as the lockdown continues, activists will have to find novel uses for technology. The Black Is Back Coalition  had planned to hold its annual Electoral School gathering in St. Louis this weekend, April 11 and 12, but will instead conduct the event over the internet. The theme has been changed to “Covid-19 Pandemic: Black People Fight Back ,” with an emphasis on “sellout Negroes in the time of plague,” said coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela.

That’s an apt description of the battle ahead of us. The Democratic Party has for the last four years blamed all of the ills of capitalism — and their own crimes — on the singularly loathsome person of Donald Trump and his imaginary partners in Moscow. Trump has, in effect, been their shield, diverting attention from Democratic complicity in the Race to the Bottom – which is why Hillary Clinton wanted him to be the Republican nominee, and why the Democrats insist he is the only issue in 2020.

Protest at Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit against 2014 bankruptcy takeover of city.

If Trump is the root of all evil, then all that needs to be done is to replace him with a Democrat – leaving intact the system created by both parties at the behest of the ruling class.

But the Covid-19 epidemic would have wrought mass death and economic havoc in the United States no matter which half of the corporate duopoly was in charge,  because both corporate parties have been eagerly dismantling and privatizing the public health sector for two generations. The Covid-19 bailout of banks and corporations under Trump is modeled on the bank and corporate bailout under Obama more than a decade ago. Neither scheme saved anybody but the financial and corporate elite. The First Black President and the Thoroughly Racist President both serve the same masters.

“The Covid-19 epidemic would have wrought mass death and economic havoc in the United States no matter which half of the corporate duopoly was in charge.”

Through its abject obedience to the Democratic Party, the Black Misleadership Class acts as mercenaries for the same oligarchy. They are welcomed into the subservient fold because the Lords of Capital have no problem with ethnic and religious “diversity” in the lower ranks of the power structure (mayors, a few corporate executives, even a compliant Black president), as long as society is structured according to the needs of Capital. Black politics will have to be transformed – not just independent of the Democratic Party, but relentlessly opposed to it – or there is no chance of lifting Black America from the bottom of the racial barrel, much less eliminating the racial hierarchy, altogether.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders agreed on U.S. war agenda in Syria, Middle East, Latin America

Bernie Sanders’ final surrender  to the will of his half of the corporate duopoly, was anticlimax. Covid-19 will swell the ranks of dissidents in the party and nation, and Sanders’ concession will remove false hope that a corporate party can fight corporate rule. Sanders played a key role in popularizing the term “socialism,” but also in sanitizing it as compatible with existing power structures. Jeff Bezos and the rest of the obscenely rich are just as deadly if they are more heavily taxed, as they are when they keep most of their money.

A real left must fight for real socialism if the real world is to be saved from the greatest threat to life on Earth: the capitalist ruling classes of the United States and Europe, the historical and unrepentant enslavers of humanity and ravagers of the planet. Real socialism kicks the oligarchy off the commanding heights of the economy so they can no longer inflict unending austerity, war and warming on the planet while the people remain unprotected from the periodic visitation of deadly microbes. It must be a socialism that respects and facilitates the self-determination of Black people and all other oppressed nationalities that demand it – which is the only way that socialism can work in a racist society.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .

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WORLD-WIDE FORCES FIGHTING THE CAPITALIST-COVID EPIDEMIC

New Orleans https://vimeo.com/404840708

Workers beginning to revolt https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3b9ny/coronavirus-general-strike https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/03/strike-your-life https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-coronavirus-worker-revolt-is-just-beginning_n_5e84e57bc5b60bbd734e3fa0 https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/coronavirus-marks-the-best-and-worst-time-for-workers-to-strike https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/the-coronavirus-may-be-a-tipping-point-for-labor.html

Amazon warehouse workers https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/4/6/21203949/amazon-little-village-dch1-coronavirus-covid-19-christian-zamarron-domonic-wilkerson https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/30/21199942/amazon-warehouse-coronavirus-covid-new-york-protest-walkout https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21202745/amazon-coronavirus-walk-out-detroit-protests-warehouse-cleaning https://fortune.com/2020/03/30/amazon-workers-new-york-warehouse-strike-coronavirus-safety-fears/

GE workers https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/ge-workers-plan-to-protest-at-two-facilities-after-coronavirus-layoffs.html

Uber and Lyft drivers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/19/uber-lyft-coronavirus-benefits-ab5

Wholefoods https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2020/03/31/coronavirus-workplace-conditions-spur-protests-whole-foods-amazon/5093570002/

Nurses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMrBHRFWV2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQQdna0P9s https://www.newsweek.com/nurses-protest-coronavirus-california-cdc-1491873 https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/nurses-say-detroit-hospital-told-them-leave-after-coronavirus-protest

ICE detainees https://theintercept.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-ice-detention/

Grocery store workers https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/grocery-store-workers-to-protest-in-boston-demanding-adequate-protections-amid-pandemic/2103707/ https://www.inquirer.com/jobs/labor/coronavirus-philadelphia-grocery-workers-moms-organic-market-protest-20200406.html

McDonald’s in LA https://la.eater.com/2020/4/6/21210092/mcdonalds-walkout-protest-south-la-crenshaw-coronavirus-covid-19-los-angeles

Local officials in Georgia https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/stupid-and-crazy-local-officials-protest-gov-kemps-decision-to-reopen-beaches-in-hard-hit-georgia/ar-BB12dsxn

Brazil https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51955679

Ivory Coast https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52189144

Pakistan https://globalnews.ca/news/6787520/coronavirus-pakistan-iran-protest/

Global https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/06/work-a06.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/coronavirus-fears-spark-prison-unrest-worldwide.html

Palestinians https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-protest-jaffa-covid-19-restrictions-police-brutality

Kenya https://nypost.com/2020/03/27/some-kenyan-nurses-refusing-coronavirus-patients-in-protest-over-gear-shortages/

Italy https://www.foxnews.com/world/italian-inmates-die-during-protest-over-coronavirus-measures https://www.dw.com/en/italian-workers-protest-against-open-factories-as-covid-19-spreads/a-52921359

Germany https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/23520/germany-asylum-seekers-protest-against-virus-quarantine