Milwaukee Judge Jails Black Democratic Campaign Workers

[DUHandle]

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=418855


Tossing aside a plea agreement that called for probation, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Michael B. Brennan sentenced four Democratic Party workers to jail Wednesday for slashing tires on 25 vans rented by Republicans to take voters to polls for the 2004 presidential election.

Outside the courtroom, Marvin Pratt shook his head and mentioned the three fired Milwaukee police officers recently acquitted in the Frank Jude Jr. beating.

"Isn't it funny - in the city of Milwaukee, you can beat a man half to death and get exonerated, and here you've got four men who committed a property crime" sentenced to jail, Pratt said.




A little background here: three of the four party workers are black. Two of them are the sons of Black Democrats. Marvin Pratt is the former mayor.

[bryant69]

1. What a weak defense

Did they slash the tires?

What is the penalty for property damage?

Those are the questions you ask.

Irrevelent questions include "Should cops be allowed to beat up people?" and "Are the defendents white or black?"

Did these campaign workers slash those tires? If they did than they have to pay the penalty.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[rpannier]

2. Agreed

100%

[atreides1]

3. Sometimes

It has to be about justice not just the law.

[bryant69]

4. What does that mean in this case?

Tose republican assholes deserved to get theit tires slashed?

[harlinchi]

5. Criminals should experience the consequences of their actions.

But there needs to be a little fairness in the application of the laws. A six month term for felony vandalism seems extreme when 18- and 19 year old sons of other legislators are given extremely lenient treatment for far more egregious offenses. I just don't thinks it's coincidence. A DU post referred to this situation in conjunction with another that gives a little relevance to one of the questions you would dismiss:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1036167

In that post they refer to an article which discloses that:
...Clifton Bennett, 18, the son of Arizona Senate President Ken Bennett, and his co-defendant, Kyle Wheeler, 19, were charged in January with 18 counts of aggravated assault and 18 counts of kidnapping for the incidents, which happened at a youth camp last June.

The younger Bennett confessed to police that he and Wheeler sodomized the 11- to 14-year-old boys with broomsticks and flashlights in at least 40 incidents, court documents show.

...Yavapai County prosecutors now say they'll drop all but one assault charge and likely recommend little or no jail time if Bennett agrees to plead guilty.

Wheeler has been offered a similar deal but faces an additional assault charge for choking three boys until they passed out.
http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2006/04/03/news/local/20060403_local_news_7.txt


Want to ask what race they were?

[bryant69]

6. Thank you for the condescension.

I'm already familiar with that dispicable case and I am well aware of their race and their religion for that matter.

That would have been a better example for the Defense to use, in fact, although one could argue that the two courts are in different states and therefore not comparable.

[harlinchi]

7. I don't mean to be condescending.

I get a little bothered by posts which seem to make little of the issue of race when race matters in so much that occurs in this country. We all see the numerous individual events in which race is a significant factor; many of us fail to connect the dots which proliferate on the page to the extent that the 'picture' should be readily seen.

[bryant69]

8. And I am bothered by people using race as an excuse for bad behaivor

Slashing tires of your political enemy is bullshit move and it makes us all look bad. The people who slashed those tires are, in my opinion, jerks who should be punished. Six months seems a little harsh, but I'd certainly be ok with 60 days.

Why should these guys get the pass because they happen to be black?

Bryant

[harlinchi]

10. They'd get no pass from me, either!

In fact the mother of one of the perpetrators indicated how proud she was of her son for acknowledging his wrongdoing, being remorseful and preparing to pay restitution. Sixty days sounds pretty correct. Heck, six months might be appropriate for the crime committed as long as more egregious crimes get punished more severely.

Slashing tires of your political enemy is bullshit move and it makes us all look bad.

I agree here as well. I'm gonna have to stop agreeing with you or this disagreement will go all to heck!

I will say that Blacks are not routinely given the legal benefit of the doubt. On the contrary, the numbers would indicate the reverse is true!

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=STR20060419&articleId=2284

...One group is most especially targeted: Blacks are 12.3 percent of US population, but they comprise roughly half of the roughly 2 million Americans currently behind bars. Between 1980 and 2000, the number of black men in jail or prison grew fivefold (500 percent), to the point where, as the Justice Policy Institute (2002) recently reported, there were more black men behind bars than enrolled in colleges or universities in the US. On any given day, Chaiken reported, 30 percent of African-American males ages 20 to 29 are under correctional supervision – either in jail or prison or on probation or parole.

The incarceration rate for African-Americans is 1,815 per 100,000 compared to 609 per 100, 000 for Latino-Americans, 99 per 100,000 for Asian-Americans, and 235 per 100, 000 for American whites. For black adult males the incarceration rate is a remarkable 4, 484 per 100,000, compared 1, 668 per 100,000 for Hispanic males and 1,318 per 100,000 for white males. Roughly one in ten of the world's prisoners is an African-American male. In mid-year 1999, 11 percent of Black US males in their 20s and early 30s were in prison and 33 percent of Black male high school dropouts were in prison or in jail.

Now I'm not saying that Blacks do not commit crimes or that those that do shouldn't be punished. I suspect, however, that unequal application of the laws has contributed to this awful set of statistics.

[bryant69]

11. It's problemattic

I agree that blacks get the short end of the stick in our legal system - particularly when it comes to drugs (as I'm sure you are aware). There are some systematic things we need to change (mandatory minimums, for example), and of course constructing a more just society would also lower black incarceration rates. As for giving blacks the benefit of the doubt - I agree - I just don't know how we fix this problem short of mandatory sentances (taking the judge's opinion of the convicted out of the equation) or something similar (which I'm not a fan of). Or we wait another 60 years for the bench to roll over, bringing more open judges to the bench. Of course there's no guarentee this would happen - I don't know.

Bryant

[harlinchi]

15. Dadgummit! You just can't argue with well-intentioned folks!

I thank you for a reasonable discourse! I also think you'll agree that, despite the issues of race in this country, we'd be better served to address the larger issue of 'loss of country' in this country. You probably do. I post about race occasionally but I post more often about, e.g., Sen. Pat Roberts, the poster boy for what has been hidden from America!

[onenote]

12. I think 60 days may be too little, 6 months too much

Five defendants were originally charged with felony property destruction and faced 3 1/2 years in prison max term if convicted. They all denied the charges and it wasn't until the jury was deliberating that a deal was reached allowing them to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Under the deal they could have gotten as much as 9 months and a $10,000 fine. They got 6 months and $1000 fine. On the face of it, that doesn't seem unreasonable. What troubles me is that the fifth defendant, who refused to take the deal, was acquitted of the felony charge. Under the circumstances, I think splitting the difference -- giving them around half of the max misdemeanor time -- four months, would be appropriate. (I don't know whether the defense of the defendant who was acquitted was based on a claim that he didn't do it or that the necessary elements of a felony charge hadn't been met. The answer to that question might cause me to adjust my opinion on the sentence).

onenote

[LittleClarkie]

17. So without the deal they would have been acquitted maybe

and yet the judge felt he needed to make an example of them.

I dunno. It bugs me.

But thanks for the info. I wasn't paying nearly as much attention as I should have to this case.

[onenote]

18. a bit more info

From what I can tell, it appears that the defendant that was acquitted wasn't denying that the vandalism occurred or even that he was involved. Rather his defense apparently (and I'm not absolutely positive about this)was that it wasn't proven that he personally did sufficient damage to warrant a felony charge.

A couple of other points. It is my understanding that of the four defendants that took the deal, three were black, one was white. The defendant that was acquitted was black. Two of the defendants, one black and one white, got the most stringent sentence (six months), while the other two defendants (each black) got five months and four months.

Again, this is based on what I can discern from web research, not on any first hand knowledge.

onenote

[realisticphish]

9. And...

that's in arizona. this is wisconsin. It's not like the same judge is on both cases, so why does it matter?

Law is law, like it or not. Arizona? travesty. But that doesn't mean we should "compensate" in wisconsin.

[LittleClarkie]

16. Exactly. They needed to pay and be on probation for a while

But this is freeperville, and a big deal was made here about Democrats and election fraud. I got accused of voting more than once MERELY for being a Democrat. (I also got called a Communist for being a Democrat, but that's another story). They tried to turn clerical error in the face of monumental voter turnout into outright fraud by the Dems.

I would like to see what judgements this judge has handed down before. He's probably supposed to be non-partisan, but how much do you wanna bet he's a Republican.

[onenote]

19. Probation would be too light, imho

Six months -- too long. But they were originally charged with a felony, pled down to a misdemeanor that still had the potential for nine months in jail. If they were just dufus vandalizing cars, probation and restitution might be appropriate. But the fact that this was done in order to prevent people from getting to the polls makes it more serious and warrants a stiffer penalty, although six months seems too harsh.

Didn't the repug in the New Hampshire phone jamming case get five months?

onenote

[LittleClarkie]

14. But the prosecution was calling for probation

The judge decided to "make an example" of these men.

Did they deserve SOME penalty. Sure. THAT one? No. Six months in fucking jail? For slashing tires?! Hell no.

[LittleClarkie]

13. But white cops who beat a black guy til he was unrecognizable was set free

by an all-white jury.

The current mayor is a good guy, and was up in arms about the black dude.

I haven't heard what he had to say about this case though.

To be clear:

Was what these people did on election day a bad thing?

Yes, and it is even more a shame that they decided to play this prank because Gwen Moore is the first black Congresswoman to be elected from Wisconsin, and she did NOT need the bad publicity that this has brought.

Did they deserve to go to jail?

Hell no. Even the prosecution was calling for probation. The judge has jumped the shark.

Would Republicans doing the same thing have been as big a deal? I highly doubt it. They've tried to make a big deal here about voter fraud by Democrats on the flimsiest of evidence. Mere clerical error became a grand conspiracy in the eyes of some of our Republican lawmakers. So the fact that these people are Democrats, and the children of high level Democrats, I suspect, but can't prove, fed into their conviction judgement.

I live one county over from this one. At least they have a Democratic mayor. Me, I have Sensenbrenner.

Help me, lord.

[progressivebydesign]

20. Someone slashes my tires, I'd like them in jail, also.

It's faulty reasoning to say that they should not go to jail for what they did (destroying the property of other people) just because you're unhappy with the result of a totally unrelated case. Why do you have to insert race into this? They slashed the tires of the opposing party, and that was very wrong. It's akin to phone jamming on the other side.