Author: dadoonan

MWC News
by Michael Parenti
September 22, 2015

Today, across the nation, we witness homicidal violence delivered against unarmed people by law enforcement officers. These beatings and killings are carried out with something close to impunity. The cops almost always get away with murder. Moreover, these crimes are nothing new; they are longstanding in practice.

A study of police brutality in three major cities—conducted just about half a century ago in 1967—found that all the victims had one thing in common: they were from low-income groups. Other studies however showed that it often was enough just to be Black, even if middle class.

Take the case of Carl Newland, an African-American, 48-year-old accountant who happened to be walking by a newsstand that had just been robbed one evening in 1975. He was roughed up by the police, then brought before the newsstand clerk, who emphatically denied that Newland was the stickup man. Nevertheless, because of his “belligerent attitude” he was taken to jail and severely beaten by the police, according to statements by several prisoners. He died in his cell that same night. Consider some other cases.

About a half century ago, a Black man was forced to lie face down in a Detroit motel and a policeman cold-bloodedly pumped a bullet into his head.

–At about that same time, a 10-year-old Black boy walking with his foster father in Queens, New York, was killed by a plainclothes policeman who leaped from his unmarked car, firing away without identifying himself, shouting “Hey niggers!”

–A White “hippie” (as counterculture people were called in the late 1960s and 1970s ), finding his home suddenly surrounded by unidentified, armed men in Humboldt County, California, fled in terror out the back door only to be shot dead by county police and narcotic agents surrounding his house, the wrong house. Raiding the wrong house and shooting its frightened inhabitants became a regular pastime decades ago. “Fighting crime” and “fighting the drug war” were the call of the day.

–A 12-year-old Chicano boy in Dallas, arrested as a burglary suspect, was shot through his head by a cop.

–A Black shell-shocked Vietnam veteran was killed by two police on a Houston street as he reached into his pocket to take out a Bible.

–In Champaign, Illinois, in 1970, a frightened African American bookstore employee attempted flight when police menacingly approached his car. He was shot in the back. The culpable officer was indicted for voluntary manslaughter, released on a $5,000 bond and soon found “not guilty” by an all-White, middle-American jury.

–In Cambridge, Massachusetts, an Italian-American, working-class youth was beaten to death by cops in a police van.

–A New York policeman shot a 22-year-old Black college student who was standing with his hands in the air. Then the cop planted a toy pistol next to the victim’s body.

–A Chicano youth in Houston was taken to a secluded spot by cops, beaten until unconscious, then thrown into a bayou to drown.

–A Black youth, who was attempting to retrieve a basketball in a schoolyard, was shot through the head by Chicago police. One could go on and on with stories from years past about how the courageous Thin Blue Line repeatedly saved us with their endless killings.

Today, sparked by body-cam videos and social media, people are giving more attention to eye-witness accounts of such frightful events. Our Boys in Blue are being challenged by groups such as Black Lives Matter. But let us not overlook the many who were victimized by police during the late 1960s and 1970s and who are still with us, not merely in memory but in actuality. That is to say, a substantial number of those unjustly convicted long-ago are still in prison today. We all can name some of them: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Herman Bell, Janine Africa, Hugo Pinell, and others. Consider also the lesser known cases. One that I have in mind is Gary Tyler.

In 1974 in Louisiana, a bus carrying Black children was attacked by a mob of Whites, some of whom were armed. According to the bus driver, a gun was fired from the attacking crowd. The shot missed the bus but killed a White youth in the surrounding crowd. The police arrived and forced the Black students out of the bus and to their knees. One of them, Gary Tyler (16-years-old at the time) was arrested for “interfering with an officer.” What he actually did was voice his objection to the deputy sheriff’s putting a gun to the heads of kneeling Black students.

The police claimed they found a gun on the bus but it curiously turned out to be a police revolver with no fingerprints. Nevertheless Gary was charged with being the possessor of the gun and murderer of the White youth. He was convicted by an all-White jury and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

The prosecution’s case rested entirely on two witnesses, both of whom recanted their testimony. Both charged that police had coerced them into fingering Tyler. The police had threatened to take one witness’ child away from her and charge her as an accessory to the killing. In any case, the judge refused to grant a new trial. Gary ended up with a life sentence and no chance of parole.

This 16-year old student, Gary Tyler, had attempted to calm a snarling officer who was uttering threats while pointing his loaded weapon at the heads of Black school children. Gary could sense the rage emitting from the trigger-happy cops. Over the years many of us have confronted police in one or another such situation. Nowadays we get numerous same-day recordings of “cops gone wild” with pile-on beatings and shootings of unarmed civilians. On each occasion the local police department announces, “The incident is under investigation.” The killer cop usually is given “administrative leave with pay,” or what some of us would call “paid vacation.”

The police tell us that the victim was reaching for his waist ban or was holding a cellphone in his hand that looked like a gun—certainly enough like a gun to perforate him with a deluge of bullets. The public hears the cop’s familiar story. When attorneys and media ask for more information, what we get is what the police department decides they want us to see. Before too long, the accused cop is kindly stroked by a White, suburban Grand Jury and an obligingly soft-handed prosecutor who has his own eye on a more elevated juridical or political office, and who therefore does not want to offend his war-against-crime White constituency.

Gary Tyler is now 57 years old. He has been in prison since he was 16. He will likely remain incarcerated for the rest of his life unless the numerous pleas from around the country and from countries around the world should start having some impact.

There are scores of prisoners of political note, and hundreds of others like Gary who were just in the wrong place or just speaking up against the potentially lethal behavior of police. They continue to be victimized by a law enforcement system capable of the most venal acts both within the community and in the courtroom, taking away whole lifetimes of innocent people by use of street executions or judicial killings or perpetual incarcerations—an abuse of justice that is beyond measure.

Michael Parenti’s most recent books are Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid’s Life (an ethnic memoir); and Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies.

Alice Through the Macro Lens
June 27, 2012

He always had a feeling it would always come down to just one person. One governor to agree to sign the release. One judge to admit his mistake. One man to cleanse his soul and confess his sin.

On Monday 25th June 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States of America held that “The Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders.” He was a juvenile when he was sentenced for a homicide. The state mandated that he had to be sentenced to death or to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. This ruling applies to him. Five Supreme Justices concurred; four dissented. One vote separated the ayes from the nays. One person decided that potentially he can finally be free. If one person who said aye had said nay, this too would have been a dead end. But they didn’t. Five to four. The ayes have it.

His juvenile years are long gone, as is much of his adult life. His once defiant dreadlocks  thinned and turned to grey many years ago and have since been shaved off. But devotion to maintaining a disciplined regime to keep body and soul healthy has kept the spirit alive. His eyes still hold that flame of defiance.

For 38 years he maintained his innocence, but since the youthful age of 16, Gary Tyler has been imprisoned. Contained. Caged.

“Just say you did it, and we’ll let you out,” they teased. He would have none of it.

Three separate pardon boards recommended release. The state of Louisiana would have none of it.

Stalemate. Standoff. Each party digging in their heels and refusing to budge. The man refusing to admit any guilt; the state refusing to accept they may have made a mistake.

Now the Supreme Court has offered both parties a compromise. A win-win situation. Louisiana can release Gary Tyler from his nearly four decade long nightmare on a technicality. Louisiana won’t have to admit they made a gross error in legal and moral judgement, and Gary Tyler won’t have to rollover to the establishment. The Supreme Court, the highest court in all the land, has decided that sentencing a child under the age of 18 to a sentence of life without parole is “cruel and unusual punishment.” Nobody can contest it, because there is no court higher to lodge an appeal. The Supreme Court has decided that the cases involving all those children that received life without parole as a result of their state’s mandatory sentencing rules should be revisited. Neither party has to admit their failings. Neither has to admit any guilt.

The standoff can end.

Maine Coast Now
By Lawrence Reichard
February 14, 2007

Two days ago I opened the New York Times and there it was, the first new article on Gary Tyler in years. Never mind Katrina, this man has been living his own personal hell in Louisiana for 33 years, two thirds of his life, and there is no end in sight. Gary Tyler has been buried alive by the state of Louisiana, and it’s all legal. Gary’s crime? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And being black.

In 1974, at the age of 16, Gary was convicted of killing a 13-year- old white boy during a race riot at Destrehan High School in Destrehan, La., 25 miles upriver from New Orleans. In 2003, I visited Gary in Louisiana’s infamous Angola State Penitentiary, Gary’s home for the last 32 years. At one point courts took over the administration of Angola because the prison’s personnel couldn’t seem to stop torturing their charges. Those days are over, but Gary Tyler’s nightmare lives on.

Years ago Gary’s case attracted considerable attention. Amnesty International expressed concern about it. Gary inspired songs by Gil Scott Heron and Aaron Neville. He had an active defense committee. But now, well into his fourth decade in prison, Gary has been all but forgotten. When I visited Gary, gone was the young, wiry, defiant kid depicted in a photo taken the day Timothy Weber died. Gone was the young radical militant with dreadlocks I had seen in other photos. I spent two days with a quiet, soft-spoken man approaching middle age who could stand to lose a few pounds and seemed to be well liked by fellow inmates and captors alike.

Gary wasn’t even at Destrehan High School when the riot broke out. He was hitchhiking with a friend when a police detective stopped them. Not believing Gary’s story that he had been suspended from school, the detective searched Gary, put him in his cruiser and drove him to Destrehan High, depositing him in the middle of a full-blown riot. The scene was ugly. Armed whites were descending on the school, which had been closed for the day because of the riot. Black students were scrambling to get on any bus they could just to get away. Gary rounded up some of his relatives and they boarded bus 91. As bus 91 pulled out, a white mob lined the bus’ path, yelled epithets and hurled stones at the bus. A shot rang out and Timothy Weber, standing outside the bus, was shot and killed.

Police stopped the bus and forced off all its students. They asked Gary’s cousin about a bullet necklace he was wearing and when Gary mouthed off about this he was arrested for disturbing the peace. Police searched the bus twice, looking for the gun that killed Timothy Weber. They even removed the seat cushions, but they found nothing. At trial, the driver of bus 91, a combat veteran, testified there was ‘no way’ a gun had been fired on bus 91.

They took Gary to a police substation, and that’s where things began to go seriously downhill for Gary Tyler.

According to Gary, his mother and several of his fellow students, all of whom were at the police substation, the police did a real number on Gary that day, beating him so badly they had to cover him with a jacket when they transferred him the next day amidst intense media coverage.

In the words of Bob Dylan, Gary’s trial was a pig circus ‘ he never had a chance. The state’s star witness was a young woman who had been jilted by Gary, was mentally ill and had a history of fabrications ‘ she had once fabricated her own kidnapping. Natalie Blanks later recanted her testimony, saying the police had threatened to send her to prison if she didn’t ‘cooperate.’ Two other witnesses against Tyler later recanted their testimony, alleging similar police threats. The alleged murder weapon, miraculously found after two unsuccessful searches, was later revealed to have been missing from a police firing range ‘ and then the gun disappeared, again. The state alleged that a trace substance found on Tyler’s gloves ‘was consistent with’ gunpowder, but the technician who claimed this later lost his job for lying in another case.

Tyler’s lawyer had never tried a capital case. According to Tyler, Jack Williams met with his client only 2-3 times, for a total of 2-3 hours, before trial, and Williams’ recollection is scarcely more flattering. Williams interviewed only two witnesses prior to trial and he failed to object to the judge’s faulty and extremely prejudicial jury instructions. Williams failed to request a change of venue, despite repeated requests by Tyler and his mother. With a busload of students to draw from, the defense called only six witnesses. Williams later went on to become an assistant D.A., a curious promotion for a man of questionable competence.

In a state that is one-third black, Tyler’s jury of 12 peers was all white. Gary was originally sentenced to death and became the youngest death row inmate in the country. But when the Supreme Court temporarily tossed out the death penalty, Tyler’s sentence was changed to life at hard labor.

Most states have moved to life sentences of determinate length, but not Louisiana. Under Louisiana’s draconian and outdated system, life sentences are of indefinite length ‘ at no point is the state required to grant a parole hearing. Tyler has twice been recommended for pardons but in both cases governors declined to follow the recommendations of their own pardon boards. And so Gary Tyler sits and waits for a miracle, much as he has for the last 33 years. It is high time for Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to provide that miracle by commuting Gary Tyler’s sentence to time served. Blanco’s address is: P.O. Box 94004; Baton Rouge, LA 70804.