When Justice Is Skin Deep (by Marie Cocco for Truthdig)

[marmar]

When Justice Is Skin Deep

Posted on Apr 26, 2007

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—It is safe to assume that Jerry Miller will not become an international media sensation.

His exoneration for a rape he did not commit does not have the makings of a cultural psychodrama on the order of the Duke University lacrosse team saga. For one thing, Miller is black and working class, not white and upper-middle class, as were the Duke men who were falsely accused. Miller is—or was, before he spent 24 years in prison as an alleged rapist—a young man who’d left high school at 17 to join the Army. He’d just turned 22 and was working as a cook in 1981 when the police picked him up. He’d never before been arrested.

Miller’s arrest for a brutal sexual assault and kidnapping in a Chicago parking garage was based on one officer’s reaction to a composite sketch. The likeness seemed to resemble a man the cop had questioned days earlier because he supposedly was looking too closely at some parked cars. The rape victim couldn’t initially identify Miller; the garage attendants claimed they could.

“The composite sketch wasn’t me,” Miller told me in an interview from New York, where he’d flown to celebrate his good fortune with his lawyers. “You didn’t even have to have good vision to show that. This composite was of a man without a goatee. I had a four-inch goatee. How could you decide it was me?”

On Monday, when a Cook County judge officially cleared him of all charges, Miller became the 200th person to be exonerated based on the work of the Innocence Project, a New York-based network of lawyers who, through the use of DNA evidence, seek to clear those who have been wrongly convicted. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/when_justice_is_skin_deep/

[ThomCat]

1. Justice is, and always has been, a comodity

that is only available to certain people. x(

Justice is something that society as a whole must agree to provide, and our society does not agree to provide anything equally or fairly. Everything, including Justice, gets doled out in different measures based on race, gender, ethnicity, class background, religion and sexuality.

[Captain Hilts]

2. Wealth is THE big factor in avoiding jail. nt

[ThomCat]

3. Only if you're white.

If you're not white, you might easily find out that wealth isn't as useful as you thought. Money doesn't overcome racism. Money won't make you white.

But, yes, if you are white then wealth is the single biggest factor determining your access to Justice.

[Captain Hilts]

5. Helped Reggie Lewis, OJ Simpson, etc. nt

[central scrutinizer]

4. overzealous prosecution

This is why I questioned why Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton got so involved in the Duke case on the side of the DA. Just because the alleged perps were white with a black victim. They should have realized that overzealous prosecutors do not care who they railroad, just that they have a good conviction rate. It has always been easier to railroad black defendants but when you have a chance to get some rich white kids, so much the better.