7 years ago
3
Black man will spend six years in US prison despite jury finding him 'not guilty'
A black man who was found not guilty of armed robbery will still serve up to seven years behind bars after a judge ruled he had breached the rules of his probation sentence for another crime. Ramad Chatman handed himself in to police when he found out he was a suspect for an armed robbery at a convenience store in his hometown of Georgia in July 2014.
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http://www.independent.co.uk
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If you ever want to know what "fake news" looks like, this is it.
First and foremost, this article starts off with a bold-faced lie:
The judge absolutely did NOT "overrule the jury"- the judge can't overrule the jury in this case. Judges can overturn convictions as a matter of law, but they cannot overturn a jury's acquittal. Period. Ramad Chatman was found "Not Guilty" by the jury and that acquittal still stands. But there were two separate issues here: A) Did he rob the convenience store, and B) Did he violate the terms of his probation:
A) As I just said, he was acquitted by the jury, so "A" is a dead issue.
B) His probation violation hearing occurred before the criminal trial, not after. The way the article is written it makes it seem like the judge was upset that he wasn't convicted and so he decided to lock him up anyway, which is not at all what happened. Second, he was a convicted felon on probation for robbery and he was charged with another robbery, there's not a jurisdiction in this country where someone doesn't get violated for that, I don't care if they're white, black, green, or purple. Which leads to my next point.
For the Independent to argue that race played a role in this case (which they do), and that the defendant was treated unfairly because he's black (which they also do), they would have to first show that his treatment was unfair, which they don't do. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that this defendants treatment had anything at all to do with his race, and nothing to suggest that defendants of other races are treated differently in similar circumstance, other than the bias of the person who wrote the article. They could've used this case to highlight the need for sentencing reform or to shine a light on the failures of the probation system in this country- a system in which people are set up for failure from the start- by practice even if not by design. They could've raised real, substantive issues worthy of debate. Instead we get this trash which is nothing more than emotionally manipulative race-baiting.
Lazy "journalists" always go for the low hanging fruit.
This just doesn't seem fair at all. No way this doesn't get appealed and if it does I don't even know what to say anymore. American "freedom" is a huge pile of lies.