Tag: life in prison

Project Rebound at HSU breathes life support into possibilities for life successes to people returning from incarceration and at-risk youth.

This year, advocates are demanding that the understaffed Parole Board be filled with people who believe in rehabilitation, have experience in human services and have a background that allows them to be impartial evaluators.

Over the past few years, President Obama, former Attorney General Eric Holder, members of both houses of Congress and many other elected officials have expressed the need for criminal justice reform. Much concern has been raised regarding overly harsh penalties for low-level drug offenses and firearms violations. There is, however, one particularly egregious judicial injustice that has not made the headlines, perhaps because it primarily effects only poor African Americans.

Although states across this country have banned executions where the public can freely attend, some contend that the American public is again witnessing the spectacle of a public execution. This current spectacle of governmental killing involves a high-profile inmate in Pennsylvania that evidence indicates is quite possibly experiencing a “slow execution” through calculated medical mistreatment.

Theodore Paul Wafer, 55, of Dearborn Heights, Mich., was convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Renisha McBride on Thursday, Aug. 7, in downtown Detroit. The jury began deliberations a little before noon on Wednesday, Aug. 6. The Wayne County jury found Wafer guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter and using a firearm in the commission of a felony in the Nov. 2, 2013, killing of McBride. Wafer was remanded into custody after the trial and will be sentenced Aug. 25 by Judge Dana Margaret Hathaway. He faces a maximum of life in prison.

Word has just reached us that Steve Champion, a prisoner on San Quentin’s death row well known as an inspirational advocate for justice and as one of the trio with Stanley Tookie Williams and Anthony Ross, began a hunger strike last Thursday, Oct. 4. His demands – still unmet – are listed in “The struggle never stops,” published in the July Bay View and reprinted here, and he asks that all who believe in justice flood the San Quentin warden and Corrections Department (CDCR) spokespersons with calls and emails.

Mumia's legal situation is extremely dangerous. His life truly is on the line. Rallies are being held on Tuesday, November 9th, in Oakland and Philadelphia.