[Peace] Wednesday 2/23: Lynching Then, Lynching Now: A Stop on the Campaign to End the Death Penalty's national tour

Tue Feb 23 10:05:34 CST 2010

Here's the final line-up for the CEDP panel tomorrow. BD

LYNCHING THEN, LYNCHING NOW
Champaign-Urbana stop on the Campaign to End the Death Penalty's national
speaking tour

*Wed. Feb. 24, 7 PM*
University of Illinois
*Gregory Hall R. 307*
810 S. Wright St. (on southwest corner of quad)--

Champaign-Urbana has found itself at the center of a fight to tackle racism
in the criminal justice system in the wake of the murder of Kiwane
Carrington, an unarmed 15-year-old African-American youth, at the hands of
Champaign police. Join a panel of exonerated prisoners and activists as we
discuss the links between the historical practice of lynching, racism and
the criminal justice today.

Speakers include:
**Mark Clements*, sentenced to life without parole at age 16 based on a
confession tortured out of him by Chicago police, released last year

**Ronnie Kitchen, *Illinois' 20th exonerated death row prisoner; co-founder
of the Death Row Ten, a group of men tortured by Chicago police

**Marvin Reeves*, exonerated Illinois prisoner

**Marlene Martin*, National Director of the Campaign to End the Death
Penalty

**Brian Dolinar*, Champaign-Urbana Citizens for Peace and Justice

MORE ON THE NATIONAL SPEAKING TOUR OF THE CAMPAIGN TO END THE DEATH PENALTY

Presenting the CEDP's *National Speaking Tour for 2009 - 2010.* Join this
teach-in tour in cities around the country this fall and spring. This year's
tour looks at the historic link between the death penalty and lynching in
the United States. Hear from those who have been freed from death row,
activists and scholars on the role of racism in our criminal justice system
and why the death penalty and unjust sentencing need to be abolished.

The local tour stop is sponsored by the International Socialist
Organization, Prairie Greens and Champaign-Urbana Citizens for Peace and
Justice

For more information contact iso.champaign at gmail.com or call 415-713-6260

______________________________________________________________________________________
http://socialistworker.org/2009/10/05/their-long-road-to-justice

     COMMENT: MARLENE MARTIN

Their long road to justice

Marlene Martin, national director of the Campaign to End the Death
Penalty<http://nodeathpenalty.org/>,
describes the corruption and bias that allowed former Illinois prisoners
Ronnie Kitchen and Marvin Reeves to lose decades of their lives behind bars
for a crime they didn’t commit.

October 5, 2009

[image: Marvin Reeves (left) and Ronnie Kitchen (Marlene Martin)]Marvin
Reeves (left) and Ronnie Kitchen (Marlene Martin)

STUNNED AND overjoyed activists, family members and lawyers waited outside
Cook County jailhouse on July 7 to greet Ronnie Kitchen and Marvin Reeves as
they took their first steps as free men in more than 21 years.

Ronnie, who spent 13 of those 21 years on Illinois' death row, suffered
abuse at the hands of Jon Burge, the notorious police commander who presided
over two decades of systematic torture of Black men by his officers. He was
convicted largely on the basis of a confession coerced from him.

It took this long for prosecutors to finally admit the truth--that the two
were innocent men.

"I just want him to suffer the way he made so many of us suffer," Ronnie
said of Burge. "I want him to sit there in a prison cell and think about all
the lives he destroyed."

In fact, as a result of a federal investigation, Burge has been brought up
on charges of conspiracy to commit torture and faces a trial in January
2010. "I'm gonna be in the courtroom, and I'm going to be looking at him
like he looked at me," Ronnie said. "With a look of distain."

  WHAT YOU CAN DO

For more information about the fight against the death penalty nationwide,
visit the Web site of the Campaign to End the Death
Penalty<http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/> and
the Campaign's newsletter, the *New
Abolitionist<http://nodeathpenalty.org/content/new_abolitionist.php?issue_id=13>
*.

On November 7-8, Ronnie Kitchen and Marvin Reeves will join the Campaign to
End the Death Penalty for its ninth annual convention, along with noted
historian and activist Howard Zinn, Martina Correia--the sister of Georgia
death row prisoner Troy Davis--and others on the frontlines of the struggle
against the death penalty. To register for the convention, or for more
information, visit the Campaign's web
site<http://nodeathpenalty.org/content/page.php?cat_id=3&content_id=44>
.

Despite the ongoing campaign to win justice for police torture victims and
members of the Death Row Ten (a group of men, co-founded by Ronnie, who were
tortured and sentenced to death row), activists were shocked at the sudden
and sweeping victory for Marvin and Ronnie.

Attorneys for the two men had put forward a motion for new trials, which
Judge Stanley Sacks granted. On the same day, the State's Attorney's office
said it couldn't meet its burden of proof in presenting a case. So after 21
years, the two men were released.

Family, friends, activists and lawyers were on hand to greet them. As Julien
Ball, a long-time member of the Chicago chapter of the Campaign, said:

I think of all of those demonstrations we organized to pressure Lisa Madigan
for new hearings--the family members trudging out in all kinds of weather to
hold signs and speak our message through the bullhorn. We would send a
delegation up to her office, and we would demand to speak with her. She
wouldn't speak with us. Later, her office would send a note to assure us she
was looking into each case "individually."

We knew, even though she was giving us the brush-off, that we were getting
through. To greet Ronnie and Marvin walking out of prison was just a
confirmation that with determination and justice on your side, you can win."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE FLIMSY case prosecutors built against Ronnie and Marvin is rooted in
inequality and racism.

Ronnie was picked up on August 25, 1988, under the pretext of auto theft and
taken to the police station at Area 3. While there, he was told he was being
questioned about the murder of five people.

For 16 hours, he was interrogated and beaten. His arms were chained to a
ring in the wall and he was beat with fists and a telephone book. He was
continually referred to as "nigger" and beaten so badly in his groin that he
had to be treated by the doctor for several months due to "swelling and
abrasions." That is how the state obtained its "confession."

Outside of this "confession," the only "evidence" against Ronnie was from a
jailhouse snitch, Willie Williams.

Williams was in prison when he read about the killings. He noticed there was
a reward for anyone who could provide information on the case. He placed a
call to police and told them that Ronnie and Marvin confessed to him in
phone conversations. Yet the information he gave police was no more than
what was in the newspaper articles.

At the trial, Williams told the jury that Ronnie confessed to him in
conversations on July 31 and August 1--but this isn't substantiated by the
call records.

As a way to gather evidence, police sought and received permission to
"overhear" phone conversations by Williams to Ronnie and Marvin. Over a
10-day period, police "listened in" on over 36 phone calls, but Williams
wasn't able to elicit a single incriminating statement. The jury was never
told about these calls.

The jury was also not told about the deal police made with Williams. Neither
was Ronnie's lawyer. Records withheld from the defense until 2003 reveal
that Williams was set up in a work release program, meaning he didn't have
to spend *any* more time in prison for the rest of his three-year sentence,
*and* police arranged to pay his girlfriend's first month's rent on a new
apartment.

But Williams told the jury he received no benefits for his testimony, and
the prosecution did not correct him.

In clear violation of the law, Ronnie's lawyers were kept in the dark about
these arrangements. In fact, the jury was purposefully misled by police that
no deal had been made with Williams. As prosecutor John Eannace claimed in
his closing statement:

Don't let this defendant stand up here, and try and trick or deceive you
that Willie Williams got some kind of deal. When Williams came forward with
this, he wasn't in the County Jail facing an armed robbery charge. He didn't
call the police and say, "Hey, I got something for you, if you can do
something for me. He didn't do that...You can bet that if there had been one
iota of consideration given to Willie Williams on this particular case, he
would have brought it to you. And you would have heard about it in this
courtroom.

But that is *exactly* what happened. The same prosecutor emphasized the
exact same lie in his closing argument in Marvin Reeves' case:

What about the motive? By that, I mean a reason as to why Willie Williams
would come in here and lie to you...He got zero. He got nothing for this. He
stayed in jail, in protective custody, served out his three-year sentence
for burglary. Didn't get any benefit or any break or any consideration form
the police or my office or my office to come forward in this case.

The State attempted to block the release of the entire file to the defense,
but finally, after 11 years, they were forced to hand over the documents and
the truth about the arrangements with Mr. Williams were revealed.

Ronnie's 181-page post-conviction relief petition reads like a movie
script--seemingly unbelievable things occur that one would find hard to
believe happened in real life--unless one is familiar with the workings of
our criminal justice system. Here are a few examples:

-- At the trial, the jury was told there were no suspects in the case other
than Ronnie and Marvin. But the police questioned three suspects, all
intimately involved with the victims.

-- The *Chicago Sun Times* reported that these three suspects passed lie
detector tests. But the police report shows that all three suspects failed
their tests.

-- One of the victims, Deborah Sepulveda, was having an affair. Her husband
was one of the suspects in the crime. When questioned, he failed a lie
detector test. He also claimed he was watching TV the night of the killings,
but couldn't remember any of the shows he watched, even though he was
questioned the following day. He had a fresh scratch mark on his cheek,
which he said he got from a prostitute he was with a few nights before.

-- When Ronnie was beaten at the police station, a lawyer who would be
Ronnie's attorney for his trial had seen Ronnie at the station, crying and
bent over in pain. But since he put himself forward to be Ronnie's lawyer,
he was unable to testify as a witness to what he saw.

Ronnie and Marvin's story might read like a Hollywood movie in some ways,
with a happy ending that both are now free.

But we shouldn't be fooled into believing their release means that justice
has been served. Both of these men had 21 years of their lives stolen, and
the lives they are left with are forever scarred by their run-in with the
criminal justice system.

So there is a bitterness to this victory. All of us who fought for years for
a semblance of justice around these torture cases know what a wonderful
thing it is to be busy planning "welcome home" events. And it's great to
have Ronnie and Marvin speaking out at local meetings, calling attention to
the fact that the struggle is far from over.

But it remains appalling that this injustice ever occurred, let alone that
it took 21 years to "resolve." And with other torture victims still
imprisoned, like Stanley Howard, we know our work is far from over.

As Marvin Reeves said, "There is so much more to be done, so much more. I'm
so grateful for what you all have done. But we got to keep up the struggle."

*First published in the Campaign to End the Death Penalty's
newsletter, the<http://nodeathpenalty.org/>
* New Abolitionist <http://nodeathpenalty.org/>.

-- 
********************************************************
ISO Resources:
isochampaign.org
internationalsocialist.org
haymarketbooks.org
socialistworker.org
isreview.org
********************************************************

-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com

-- 
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