Rodney King Verdict
Before there was Eric Garner, there was Rodney Glen King. King, a construction worker, became famous when he took Los Angeles police officers on a high-speed chase on March 3, 1991, which ended with officers surrounding King and viciously beating him. A witness videotaped the beating from his balcony and sent it to a local television station, leading to it being aired around the world. But on April 29, 1992, a jury of 10 whites, one Hispanic and one Filipina in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley acquitted the four police officers who had been charged with using excessive force. The announcement of the verdict caused the Black community to explode in outrage, leading to a three-day riot that resulted in 53 people being killed and over 2,000 injured.
George Zimmerman Acquittal
On Saturday, July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman walked free from a Florida courtroom after being acquitted of murdering 17-year-old unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin, in a case that was closely monitored by a nation that was forced to have an intense debate about race, the lives of Black boys and the irrational fears of whites. African-Americans were devastated that a boy who went to the store for a pack of Skittles could be killed by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain and he get away with it. After the three-week trial, the jury accepted Zimmerman’s contention that he shot Martin in self-defense, believing his life to be in immediate danger.
Supreme Court Guts Voting Rights Act
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court in June 2013 gutted what many consider perhaps the most successful piece of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act had required federal review of new voting rules in 15 states, most of them in the South. In Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts voted to gut the law on the basis that “our country has changed,” and that blanket federal protection wasn’t needed to stop discrimination. Justice Ruth Ginsburg warned that getting rid of the measure was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” After the decision, states across the nation with Republican-controlled legislatures like Texas and North Carolina almost immediately began passing new voting restrictions.
Assata Shakur Labeled a Terrorist
In May 2013, the FBI decided to put the 65-year-old grandmother, Assata Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, on its Most Wanted Terrorist list — the first woman to make the list of top terrorists. Shakur, the step-aunt of rapper Tupac Shakur (her brother was Tupac’s stepfather), for decades has been a despised figure in law enforcement circles, where she is seen as a dangerous cop-killer and terrorist. But to many Blacks, Shakur is a hero for standing up to law enforcement while she was a leader of the Black Liberation Army in the 1970s and for her forceful writings and commentary on the conditions of Black people after she fled to Cuba sometime around 1984. She has been the subject of films, documentaries and rap songs over the years. Under questionable evidence, Shakur was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973 and became an underground legend in 1979 after she made a daring escape from prison — with the help of accomplices who took two guards hostage — and fled to Cuba, where she has been living in exile the last 30 years.
Darren Wilson Grand Jury
A St. Louis County grand jury on Nov. 24 decided not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the August killing of teenager Michael Brown. The decision wasn’t a surprise — leaks from the grand jury had led most observers to conclude an indictment was unlikely — but it was unusual. Grand juries nearly always decide to indict — or at least, they nearly always do so in cases that don’t involve police officers. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, and grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them. Grand jury non-indictments are equally rare in state courts such as the Ferguson case. The decision prompted angry nationwide protests as many Americans have begun to realize the justice system is much less likely to yield justice for Black males.
Central Park Five
Five juvenile males — four Black and one of Hispanic descent — were tried and convicted for the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a female jogger in New York City’s Central Park, on April 19, 1989. Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam confessed to her rape and beating after many hours of aggressive interrogation at the hands of seasoned homicide detectives. The five served their complete sentences, between six and 13 years, before another man, serial rapist Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime, and DNA testing supported his confession, vacating the sentences in 2002. The wrongful convictions of the young men showed how law enforcement, social institutions and media could undermine the very rights of the individuals they were designed to safeguard and protect.
Daniel Pantaleo Grand Jury
Like the Rodney King beating, Eric Garner’s choking by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo was caught on video, with viewers able to see and hear the father of six say “I can’t breathe”— 11 times. After Garner’s death, a Staten Island grand jury on Dec. 3 decided not to indict Pantaleo — a decision that led to days of intense protests across the nation from an outraged and anguished public.
Bush v. Gore
In the biggest political contest in the nation, at the final hour the Supreme Court chose the president in the 2000 election, forever shocking a substantial portion of the populace. The election between Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush was so close that it came down to one state, Florida, where the candidates were separated by just 1,800 votes. When the counties began recounting votes, Bush’s lead dropped to just 327, out of almost 6 million ballots cast. Eventually, the Supreme Court stepped in and, in an unsigned opinion, the Court voted 5-4 to put a stop to the Florida recount. Allowing the recount to go forward, the Court said, would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back down to the Florida Supreme Court, which had no alternative but to dismiss it. The presidential election of 2000 had been decided, in essence, by the vote of one Supreme Court justice, giving the world President George W. Bush.
Citizens United
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, released in January 2010, tossed out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. It gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools, calling for the election or defeat of individual candidates. The high court’s 5-4 decision said that it is OK for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. In the eyes of many, it gave power to the wealthy to openly tilt the American election apparatus permanently in their favor. The decision did not affect contributions. It is still illegal for companies and labor unions to give money directly to candidates for federal office. The court said that because these funds were not being spent in coordination with a campaign, they “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
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