Tenn. judge reprimanded for offering reduced jail time in exchange for sterilization

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post




By Derek Hawkins November 21 at 4:45 AM

When Judge Sam Benningfield of White County, Tenn., offered to shave off jail time for inmates who volunteered for sterilization, a chorus of attorneys, advocates and public officials reacted with horror.

Benningfield said his goal was to break a “vicious cycle” of repeat drug offenders with children. But many argued that the proposal, outlined in a May order, was nothing short of eugenics. Not to mention it seemed unconstitutional on its face. Civil rights lawyers brought legal actions and a local prosecutor told his staff to avoid the judge’s program at all costs.

Now, after the wave of backlash and amid multiple lawsuits, state judicial regulators have formally reprimanded Benningfield for promising 30-day sentence reductions to inmates who agreed to receive vasectomies or birth control implants.

In a letter filed Monday, the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct found that Benningfield violated rules regarding judicial independence, integrity and propriety.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/21/tenn-judge-reprimanded-for-offering-reduced-jail-time-in-exchange-for-sterilization/?hpid=hp_hp-morning-mix_mm-judge%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.892b6801278c

[procon]

1. But he's still on the the bench, yeah?

There is an ugly history of eugenics and coerced or forced sterilization in the US to control “undesirable” people. This judge was no different than the Nazi's who used eugenics to keep their master race "pure", and I suspect his motivation is similar.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. And the U.S. was doing forced sterilizations during the same years as Nazi Germany

and in a number of cases, well before the existence of Nazi Germany -http://www.uvm.edu/%7Elkaelber/eugenics/

And we have never stopped to date (while Germany did)....

[procon]

8. It was used in the 60s to cull "undesirable" people like my cousin who had Downs Syndrome.

My aunt and uncle sent her away to some expensive school that to "educate and train" her. While there, the school got a court order to have her sterilized without getting parental consent.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Yup

and unfortunately many of those "undesirables" were black women.

As Rewire reported in May, 77 percent of all those sterilized in North Carolina were women; about 2,000 were people 18 and younger. Before the 1960s—when Black people became the majority of those sterilized—poor, rural white girls were the primary targets of authorities and women reformers.” Segregation had “shielded some Black women from the eugenicist’s scalpel,” explains Rebecca Kluchin, a health-care historian, in the film because they were excluded from white health-care institutions. After the racial segregation era of Jim Crow, North Carolina’s Black population became eligible to receive public assistance, which also meant it became a target population for sterilization. Starting in the 1960s, Black women made up a significant percentage of those sterilized under the state’s eugenics campaign.

https://rewire.news/article/2017/01/30/state-eugenics-sheds-light-north-carolinas-sterilization-abuse/

http://www.journalnow.com/specialreports/againsttheirwill/

(As a sidenote, my mother used to be a social worker here in PA in the 1950s before I was born and she used to tell us that part of her caseload included many of those children who you describe with Downs - they used to call them "Mongoloids" back then... as well as those born with microcephaly, etc. She would occasionally talk about the institutions here in PA where they would take them.)

[dewsgirl]

2. Was this one of Trump's judges?

[Thor_MN]

4. No, he is an elected judge, not an appointed judge.

[dewsgirl]

5. Thank you, I can't imagine the scenarios like this

That will likely surround those judges.

[Thor_MN]

6. From my point of view, judges are random names on ballots.

And most often, running unopposed.

Some random lawyer choosing the relative stability of working for the Judicial system, either out of a sense of civil service or an inability to find paying clients.

[hibbing]

7. Do I have to guess the ethnicity? n/t

[joanbarnes]

10. I thought birth control was sinful in Tennessee?