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Local and national activists demonstrated last Saturday and again Monday in protest of a Bronx judge’s decision on May 15 to throw out a manslaughter indictment against a New York City police officer charged last year with the shooting death of unarmed teenager Ramarley Graham.

Graham was gunned down on Feb. 2, 2012 after NYPD Officer Richard Haste chased the 18-year-old youth into his own apartment and then shot him at close range as Graham was allegedly trying to flush marijuana down the toilet.

Bronx Supreme Court Justice Steven Barrett dismissed the case on a technicality ruling prosecutors gave the grand jury flawed instructions during the February 2012 proceeding, but also made it clear that prosecutors could again bring up charges against Haste.

Specifically, Barrett ruled prosecutors wrongly instructed the grand jury members that they didn’t need to consider information relayed to Officer Haste by fellow officers that Graham had a gun.
“Inadvertently, the district attorney’s instructions did mislead the jury,” the judge was reported as saying. “In effect, the grand jury was told…the communications of the officers were not relevant. This is blatantly wrong.”

The decision created an uproar from Graham’s family and friends, who had filled the tiny courtroom.
“What more can you do to me?” shouted Graham’s mother, Constance Malcolm. “You killed my g— child.”
Following the decision, the National Action Network and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network held rallies attended by Graham’s family members both last Saturday and again Monday to demand justice.
“This is an outrageous miscarriage of justice and an insult to the family and supporters of Ramarley Graham. We demand that a new grand jury is convened immediately and that the case is properly presented,” said Rev. Al Sharpton in a statement.

Meanwhile members of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network went both to Graham’s home in the Bronx to show support, and then gathered in front of the 47th NYPD Precinct with a banner that read “Justice for Ramarley Graham”.

“First, this cop murders Ramarley in the bathroom of his home. Then, only after protests and outpourings of anger towards Richard Haste, the killer, indicted but on manslaughter charges four months later, not murder,” said Stop Mass Incarceration Network spokesperson Travis Morales. “The prosecutors have no problem filling the prisons with 2.4 million mainly Black and Latino people, but when the cops murder one of us they forget how to prosecute.”

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said he disagreed with the decision and will wait for the judge’s written ruling before deciding on whether to appeal or to convene a new grand jury.

“It cannot be said more forcefully that we disagree with the court,” Johnson said in a statement. “As we await the court’s written decision, we will begin the process of weighing which of the options—appeal of the decision or representation to the grand jury—better serves the people of the Bronx.”

The case was the first in which an NYPD officer was charged criminally with a shooting in the line of duty since 2007, when three officers were charged in the death of unarmed Queens resident Sean Bell.

Ken Thompson, candidate for Brooklyn DA, has written a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo requesting a special prosecutor be named to review 50 cases of wrongful prosecution from within the DA’s office. “I request that you exercise your authority to grant the New York State Attorney General or another special prosecutor a referral to conduct an independent review of the dozens of questionable prosecutions that have recently come under scrutiny,” wrote Thompson. “It has become clear that considering this troubling pattern of official misconduct and wrongful convictions, District Attorney Hynes is not capable of conducting a truly independent review of his own cases.”

Earlier this month DA Hynes ordered a review of 50 murder cases assigned to Louis Scarcella, a retired detective.

Scarcella’s shoddy police work was questioned when in March a judge freed David Ranta who had served 23 years in prison for murdering a rabbi. Ranta was convicted after Scarcella allegedly produced witnesses against Ranta by removing violent criminals from prison, allowing them to smoke crack and visit prostitutes. Scarcella was known to pay cash for murder witnesses including one woman who happened to witness 6 different murders, including one man who allegedly committed 2 separate murders.

Scarcella was assigned to several dozen murder cases in the 1980s and 1990s which were prosecuted under DA Hynes and his predecessor Liz Holtzman. He retired in 1999.

Thompson’s letter to Cuomo cited the Ranta case and that of Jabbar Collins.

Collins spent 16 years in prison for the murder of a rabbi, a murder he did not commit. Three witnesses testified against him, but there was sufficient doubt about their testimonies that Collins initiated a $150 million federal lawsuit against the city for wrongful prosecution. From the bench, U.S. District Judge Frederic Block said “I’m disturbed by Hynes’behavior. This is horrific behavior on the part of [Michael] Vecchione,” who Hynes promoted to Chief of the Rackets Division even after it was revealed Vecchione allegedly withheld exculpatory evidence from defense council in several cases and has been accused of threatening witnesses with violence and longer prison sentences.

DA Hynes’ insists that his office is quite capable of reviewing wrongful convictions that his office obtained, even as victims of those wrongful prosecutions are skeptical.

“It is simply unacceptable for the fox to continue guarding the henhouse. There is precedent for the government to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate potential wrongdoing,” said Thompson, referring to the NYS Attorney General’s first-of-its-kind Conviction Review Bureau that is positioned to review cases involving allegations of misconduct by prosecutors and law enforcement.

The scope of wrongful prosecutions — not just in Brooklyn but around the city and across the country — have raised questions as to whether an independent body should be permanently established to review cases.

In other campaign news, despite DA Hynes’ 6 terms in office, last spring prospective voters admitted they didn’t know the name of Brooklyn’s district attorney during Thompson campaign intimate barber shop town halls. A couple of weeks later CBS announced a six-part reality television show featuring the successes and failures of Hynes and his top prosecutors. Candidate for Brooklyn DA Abe George, a Manhattan prosecutor, is suing CBS, DA Hynes, and Hynes’ campaign, calling the series an ‘infomercial.’ Citing the First Amendment, CBS plans to begin airing the series sometime in May.

The question asked at the National Action Network’s convention panel on immigration was what was the effect of immigration reform on African-Americans. Very straight forward. But as reported on Here and Now, the show that ABC puts on in the time slot where cultural educator Gil Noble reigned with Like it Is, the question was never answered.

Instead what followed was an unending stream of comments from politicians and immigration experts, all giving the Democratic talking points of how Black people have always been for freedom and justice for all. They spoke of the heartbreak and pain of illegal immigrants threatened to be separated from family and new roots, but the impact of immigration reform on African-Americans was never addressed. Every other ethnic group has a chance to, and is expected to by the way, stand up and voice their concerns about how their group should receive special treatment as immigration reform is being considered. But when African-Americans ask the question on what ostensibly is a black show, then the answer is let’s talk about freedom instead. That’s the Democratic message and everyone on the segments aired recited it like puppets.

Perhaps in sessions not shown there were discussions of displaced workers, overburdened public health facilities and how resources can be apportioned to respond to the effects of immigration on a population already at risk.

You can support immigration reform and still ask the question, as so many other ethnic groups have, “What’s in it for me?” Are there going to be dollars attached to cover the increased use of city hospitals where many African-Americans get their health care? What about extra dollars into the education system to help defray the cost of educating our foreign-born brothers and sisters and provide better education outcomes for all of the students?
Do the reform, but include addressing African-American concerns in that “comprehensive” immigration bill.

Apple Computer: An Extreme Tax Dodger
We know paying taxes is not the strong suit of major American corporations but recent reports say that Apple Computer has set new standards for avoiding paying anything approaching a fair share. By having a corporation in Ireland, but handling the management from the U. S., they are able to exploit loopholes in both countries to avoid paying taxes all together.
Tens of billions of dollars in taxes not paid means that it is the masses of people who have to pay for the infrastructure, talent pool and country that made Apple possible. Here’s another ripe opportunity for “comprehensive” reform.

Sexual Assaults in the Military
As reported in the New York Times a 2011 study by the Pew Research Center has “found that of the 167,000 enlisted women in the military, 31 percent are Black, twice their percentage in the civilian female population”. Which means that of the 26,000 incidents of sexual assault and unwanted sexual contact reported, at least 8,060 were black, and if history and psychology are any guide, the number is probably higher than that.
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has introduced legislation that is bipartisan and bicameral (supported both in House and Senate) and would for the first time remove the decision as to whether to take a case to trial or general court-martial completely out of the chain of command and give that discretion to experienced trial counsel with prosecutorial experience. We hope that passes and once justice gets meted out, watch how fast their behavior stops.
Bullying: Not Just a Young Person Problem
There is a lot of justifiable concern regarding the increase in bullying behavior in the schools and there is a great deal of work being done in the schools and in homes to address the situation. But part of the problem may be the culture of bullying running through the society and soaking into the children. The behavior of the United States overseas is nothing if not bullying, going wherever it wants and doing whatever it wants, including killing American citizens without due process. And here in the States the administration has been caught spying on journalists and political activists and has a penchant for severely punishing whistleblowers risking their careers to expose information an informed citizenry must have.
The financial industry is another bully. They use the muscle of their money to tell legislators what to write and they try to beat up anyone who doesn’t go along, their apoplectic response to no-nonsense Senator Elizabeth Warren being a case in point. The senator is like the schoolyard hero who confronts the bully and we need to elect more like her. If we can rein in all of that bullying, we’d have the resources necessary to solve a lot of the problems in the schools.

Medgar Evers College
The turmoil at Medgar Evers College regarding the presidential selection process may be justified, but it may also be unnecessary. Our guess is that none of the names being floated about will be among the finalists visiting the school the first week in June and it may not be a bad idea to see who they are, look at their backgrounds and hear them speak, before objecting to them.

And with local politicians waiting until the very last minute to unite in opposition to the process, they make it difficult to take them seriously.

For all that is actually known, the search committee may have found surprisingly good candidates who are able to address the community concerns with the direction of the college.

The alternative is to fight over finding an interim person of substance and position, who’s willing to stop whatever they’re doing for a year to take over a troubled institution, while another fight is joined on who will be on a new committee that will look for a new president to battle over. Meanwhile, the students are left to deal with uncertainty and drama instead of learning the skills to deal with a competitive and dangerous future. And if it turns out that the search committee has made poor choices to present to the community, then we can take to the ramparts.