THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: Do police rush to judgment when they investigate themselves?

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Inglewood, California Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks faces a dilemma that many big city police chiefs face when their officer’s gun down unarmed civilians under dubious circumstances, and those civilians in almost all cases are young African Americans or Latinos.

In this case the victim was 19 year-old Michael Byoune.


The deep suspicion is that police routinely bend, twist and massage testimony and evidence to whitewash and ultimately exonerate officers.


The way to counter that is to conduct a thorough and honest investigation and if the officer(s) are found guilty of wrongdoing impose swift punishment.


But that almost always draws loud protests from police unions and some city officials.

The Byoune killing by any standard was a bad shooting. In fact, it evoked instant comparisons to the killing of bride-groom-to-be Sean Bell by NYPD officers in 2007. Bell, like Byoune, was a young African-American male. Bell and Byoune were unarmed. There is no indication that he, like Bell, was involved in any gang or criminal involvement. From tapes and news clips, Inglewood police officers riddled the car that Byoune was in with bullet holes. The car Bell was in was also riddled with gunfire.

COMMENTARY....

The Hutchinson Report: Racially-Polarized Democratic Party Now a Far Greater Peril to Obama and Clinton

By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s divvy-up of North Carolina and Indiana between them further deepens the two perils the Democrats face. One is that neither heavy hitter can deliver the knockout punch that the Democrats desperately need to get on with the business of mounting a united front against John McCain. The other is the much-talked and much-worried-about peril of a divided party and what that means.

There are two big reasons that preordained that the Democrats would find themselves in this muddled, confused and frustrating danger. The Democrats’ winner-not-take-all proportional delegate system and the system of superdelegates that they dumped onto the primaries was a prescription for disaster. The idea behind this was to bring democracy with a small d to the vote process and snatch the decision about who gets the big prize out of deal-making party bosses at the national convention. This supposedly would insure a smooth, happy-faced party convention and a coronation for the party’s pick.

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The Hutchinson Report: Result of Excessively Imprisoning Black Youth Before Trials Has Been Catastrophic

By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson

On Sept. 4, 21-year-old Joshua Pomier will have served nearly four years in a detention center near San Bernardino, California. Pomier is charged with multiple counts of car theft and robbery.

There are two deeply troubling problems with the amount of time he has spent behind bars. One, he has not been convicted of any of the crimes he’s charged with. He had barely turned 18 years old when he and another juvenile were arrested for the crimes in September 2004. Pomier and family members vehemently protest his innocence. The even more tormenting problem is not Pomier’s guilt or innocence, but the absurdly long length of time that he has been jailed awaiting disposition -- any disposition -- of the charges leveled against him.

His bail was set at nearly a half million dollars, and there have been several delayed court dates. During that time, he has been relentlessly pressured to accept a plea bargain that will require him to serve a lengthy prison sentence. Pomier has refused and continues to protest his innocence.

Pomier is African-American, and his dragged-out incarceration without being convicted of anything is not unusual. In fact, he’s a near-textbook example of how thousands of mostly black and Latino young adults and juveniles languish for months, even years, in America’s jails with high or no bail, receive shoddy or non-existent legal counsel and are browbeaten and even threatened by harried, overworked and often indifferent public defenders and prosecutors to accept deals.

The Coalition for Juvenile Justice estimates that on any given day, nearly 30,000 youth between the ages of 14 and 18 years old are locked down in juvenile detention centers nationally for interminably long periods awaiting disposition of their cases. Even with the plunge in juvenile and adult crime, the numbers of youth and young adults incarcerated for lengthy pre-detention jail time nearly doubled in the 1990s. During the same time, the rates of excessive pre-trial detention time dropped for white youth.

The young adult defendants are nearly always faced with excessively high bail, and for juveniles, no bail. In the juvenile system, most states do not permit bail. Juveniles are considered wards of the court, and pre-trial release is solely at the discretion of the judge. High bail or lack of bail, clogged court calendars, and overcrowded jails virtually ensure that defendants such as Pomier get lost in the system without any disposition of their case. In one study, the Sentencing Project found that blacks on average were held for a year or more without any action on their case.

The effect of outrageously long pre-trial imprisonment has been catastrophic. It has severely strained jail and detention center inmate capacity, overtaxed city and county budgets and strapped public defenders to keep up with the backlog of cases that have not had any legal resolution. The Juvenile Justice group’s study pegged the cost of one detention bed at more than $1 million over 20 years, and that’s a juvenile detention bed. The jail costs for lengthy adult pretrial imprisonment is higher.

Then there’s the human cost. Excessive pre-trial detention has resulted in a rise in inmate violence in overcrowded, poorly served jails, increased suicides, stress-related illnesses, and psychiatric ailments, as well as the personal anguish of the family members of the defendant awaiting trial or sentencing not knowing how -- or especially when -- their fate will be decided.

The outrage of men and women languishing indefinitely behind bars costs society in still other ways. A San Francisco study of 1,500 high risk youth found that the youths that were placed in alternative to detention programs had a far lower recidivism rate than youth who remained incarcerated while awaiting sentencing.

An international criminal justice reform group, Justice Initiative, has established pre-trial detention reform study projects in 10 countries. In Mexico, the project has worked with prosecutors in several areas to provide a more efficient and effective bail supervision program, bail assistance and counseling programs to ensure that defendants have access to fair and reasonable bail. This has reduced the number of defendants who skip bail and has lowered recidivism rates.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other international legal and human rights groups have fiercely condemned excessive pre-trial imprisonment in the United States and other countries. They have labeled it a gross violation of civil liberties. It also mocks the U.S. Constitution’s precept of a defendant’s right to a speedy trial.

The outrage and condemnation of international legal and human rights bodies and the efforts by some states at reforms in the way defendants awaiting disposition of their cases are handled is welcome. However, it won’t do much to ease the anxiety of Pomier’s family. They have waited for nearly four years to find out his legal fate. Unfortunately, there’s no sign that their wait will end any time soon.

THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: Obama's Farrakhan Dilemma

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson











Here's what a spokesperson for Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama said when he got wind of former Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's virtual endorsement of Obama's White House bid, "Senator Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan's past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister's support."

Farrakhan made the glowing tout of Obama at the NOI's annual Savior's Day confab in Chicago. Obama's denunciation of Farrakhan was blunt and pointed. But he did not reject Farrakhan's implied endorsement.

Even after Hillary Clinton publicly demanded that he forcefully reject Farrakhan's endorsement, Obama waffled. He weakly said after more Clinton cajoling that he rejected the endorsement. He still did not mention Farrakhan by name.

A candidate shouldn't need to be prodded by his opponent to emphatically reject the endorsement of a controversial, and in the case of Farrakhan, much vilified figure. Obama, of course, does not endorse Farrakhan's views, politics, or his organization, and he has made that clear on more than one occasion.

Yet his failure to flatly say he does not want his endorsement is no surprise. Farrakhan may be a controversial and much vilified figure but he is not a fringe figure within black communities. He is still cheered and admired by thousands of blacks. They are also voters too and most have embraced Obama with almost messianic zeal. This zeal has been a driving force in powering Obama's surge past Clinton. Many blacks are exhilarated by the prospect that a black man will sit in the Oval office. In other words, Obama is a racial fantasy come true for many blacks.

Few blacks publicly demand that he assume the role of a black leader. They have made no demand that he tell what he'll do to boost civil rights protections, fight the HIV/AIDS plague, or take strong positions on the other pressing social issues. It's just as well they haven't since his image is that of the new generation African-American elected official who thinks and speaks as a unifier and consensus builder, not a racial crusader.

However, many blacks quietly expect or at least hope that if he's elected it will be more than a historic first for blacks. They hope that he will be a vigorous proponent of civil rights and social programs. As long as that hope is there their impassioned zeal be for him will be there too. If Obama denounces Farrakhan too strongly that would raise the eyebrows of the thousands of blacks who admire Farrakhan and his organization.

But, if Obama doesn't blast Farrakhan as an anti-white hate monger that could raise questioning eyebrows with many white voters. He can't afford that. He's far exceeded the predictions of many who questioned whether whites would vote for an African-American for president. They have and he has even done what was thought to be even more implausible and that's net considerable backing from white males. They have been rock solid backers of GOP presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. Obama got their support with his open-ended message of change and unity. Farrakhan, then, is the absolute last thing that Obama needs now that he's on a roll with so many diverse voters.

Obama isn't the first politician to face the Farrakhan dilemma. It got Jesse Jackson into momentary hot water during his presidential bid in 1984. Jackson rashly agreed to let the NOI briefly handle some of his security. That drew howls that Jackson was in bed with the Farrakhan. Jackson backpedaled fast and dropped the NOI as part of his security. That didn't stop the loud grumbles that Jackson as a presidential candidate was too cozy with Farrakhan. But Jackson did not denounce Farrakhan. He stayed mute in part out of his stubborn insistence that no one should tell him who could support him, and in bigger part with an eye on the black vote.

Obama is closing in on a place in history. If he wins the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries, his fierce nomination battle with Clinton will be virtually over. The movement will be irresistible among Democrats to nominate him and that will evaporate the Democrat's worst fear, namely a fractured convention, split between the two warring Obama and Clinton factions. A divided party would be a lethal blow to the Democrat's chances to take back the White House.

But Obama also knows that he doesn't just need black votes. Any Democratic presidential contender will get the majority of black votes. That was the case with Democratic presidential contenders Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. Both still lost. He needs blacks to turn his drive to the White House into a crusade. They must make a spirited and massive rush to the polls. Farrakhan can help insure that some of that spirit and some of those numbers are there. Obama can't publicly applaud him for doing that. But he can't totally reject him either. That's Obama's Farrakhan dilemma.

THE HUTCHINSON POLITICAL REPORT

No Super Tuesday Knockout Punch for Obama or Clinton.

By Columnist and Political Analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The odds are that Democratic presidential arch rivals Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton will know no more about which of the two will be the party's standard bearer the day after Super Tuesday than they did when the day started.

The early talk about the "inevitability" of Hillary's march to the Democratic nomination has long since ceased. And any talk about Obama's inevitability, despite his rock star size crowds, poll surge and high profile endorsements, is just as nonsensical and wishful thinking.



Obama will win some of the 15 Democratic state primaries and seven caucuses and one in American Samoa and Clinton will win some others. In the biggest and most crucial delegate rich state of California, the delegates are parceled out proportionally, so both Clinton and Obama will get their share.


But even with no Clinton or Obama knockout punch on Super Tuesday, the day will still answer some questions while raising a couple of large questions for which ever one grabs the top Democratic prize.

The first question for Obama is ... (READ MORE).


Will Super Tuesday Decide Whether Obama or Clinton Get the Democratic Presidential nomination? Vote at earlofarihutchinson.bogspot.com


Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book: The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press February 2008)

THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: The 'Nevada Phenomenon' Perils Obama - Will Latino Voters Back Obama?

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A confident Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama shrugged off the buzz that he'd crash and burn with Latino voters, "Not in Illinois, they all voted for me."

But not so fast; there was this retort from a reader, yeah, but you ran against Alan Keyes.


Keyes, being the luckless and hapless Eleventh hour black Republican political sacrificial lamb who Obama annihilated in his smash victory for the U.S. Senate in 2004.


But this time around, Obama faces a far bigger opponent than Keyes could ever hope to be, or even for that matter archrival Hillary Clinton. It's the 'Nevada Phenomenon'.


It poses a far bigger danger to Obama's White House drive than even the much debated 'Bradley Effect'.


The Bradley Effect is named after former Los Angeles. mayor Tom Bradley who lost his bid for California governor to a white opponent in 1986, though Bradley had big leads in polls. Many white voters told pollsters and interviewers that they had no problem voting for an African-American, but once in the privacy of the voting booth voted for his white opponent.


The 'Nevada Phenomenon' by contrast has nothing to do with the supposed penchant for white voters to deceive pollsters and interviewers on race. In the South Carolina primary white voters went in reverse. The polls had Obama winning only ten percent of the white vote but in his smash win he more than double that percent. The 'Nevada Phenomenon' instead is the mix of wariness, fear, indifference and even hostility of the majority of Latino voters toward a black candidate.


It is more troublesome and intractable than potential white voter resistance to Obama. ... (READ MORE).