RIGHTS: Lawyers Denounce Racism in US Justice System

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 12 2000 (IPS) - A Washington-based organisation of human rights lawyers denounced the United States justice system before the United Nations Human Rights Commission of acting in a discriminatory and racist manner.

US attorney William B. Moffitt said the International Human Rights Law Group was turning to the UN for support because when the richest country in the world systematically disregards the human rights of Blacks, it offends the dignity of all the world’s citizens.

Although all forms of slavery and segregation have been eradicated, racial discrimination is still prevalent in the United States, according to the Law Group.

The human rights group asked for support from the UN Human Rights Commission – the highest human rights body in the UN system – which is currently holding its annual sessions in Geneva.

Moffitt told IPS that his group was turning to the international community due to the lack of willingness within the United States to address the problem.

That lack of willingness exists even though the statistics speak for themselves, and despite the fact that the government itself acknowledges that people of African descent do not receive equal treatment before the law, said the attorney.

Racial profiling, in which racial origin turns into a presumption of guilt even in the absence of evidence of criminal behaviour, has become endemic throughout the United States, the Law Group stated in its petition to the Human Rights Commission.

From 1989 to 1994, the number of women of colour in prison shot up by 78 percent, said the human rights group. But “perhaps the most outstanding statistic is that today one-third – 33 percent – of Afroamerican males between the ages of 20 and 29 are currently under some form of incarceration or course of revision,” it added.

In his speech to the Human Rights Commission, Moffitt pointed out that 50 years ago, Black males accounted for five percent of the US population and 30 percent of the prison population, compared to six percent of the total population and a full 50 percent of the prison population today.

The unequal treatment is even more glaring in cases involving drug charges, Moffitt told the representatives of the 53 member states of the Human Rights Commission.

Although members of minority groups account for less than 20 percent of those arrested on drug charges, they comprise more than 30 percent of those who are tried, nearly 50 percent of those who are convicted and more than 70 percent of those sent to prison in connection with drug-related offences.

The so-called “war on drugs” in the United States is “primarily a war against minority people,” said Moffitt, who is also the president of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers.

In the past, “particular drugs have been associated with particular types of people,” said the attorney. “Popular culture in the US associated opium with the Chinese, marihuana with Mexicans and cocaine with Afroamericans.”

That racial and ethnic discrimination is still alive and well, he warned.

Moffitt said that since 1997, the US federal justice system has been based on a system of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences. In the case of drug offences, the system is governed by a mathematical orientation based on the weight of the drug in question.

But the guidelines established by Congress specifically mention one particular drug, crack cocaine, without providing any scientific definition. “It’s just described in the guidelines as crack cocaine,” he pointed out.

Despite that lack of scientific rigour, the guidelines make one gram of crack equivalent to any other kind of cocaine, for sentencing purposes. “It was completely arbitrary. There was no science involved, no discussion,” he complained.”We fought the battle in court after it happened. (But) the courts simply say: they can do that, that’s legislation.”

Crack, meanwhile, is the cheapest form of cocaine, which means those affected most heavily by “this disparateness, this one hundred-to-one situation,” are generally those at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale – who tend to be first, poor, and second, minorities, said Moffitt.

Thus, a youngster possessing 15 grams of crack is given the same treatment as someone caught with 100 times more of any other kind of cocaine.

“So what we see in our country now is some young kid who basically is given a hundred dollarrs to carry something from New York to Washington, who is 16, 17, 18 years old and he’s carrying more than 15 grams.

“That entitles him to a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence and potentially a life sentence. So you see 17, 18, 19-year-old children getting 25 and 30-year sentences of real and actual time in federal prisons,” said Moffitt.

That also means an overwhelming majority, 85 percent, of those prosecuted according to these guidelines are Black or Latino. “Our children go to jail for much longer and are treated much more harshly,” the lawyer protested.

The Law Group also told the Human Rights Commission that there was irrefutable evidence that capital punishment was applied in an arbitrary, unfair and discriminatory manner, based on racial or socioeconomic origin.

George H. Kendall, an adviser to the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers, said that if the victim was white, whoever was accused of the murder was four times more likely to be sentenced to death than if the victim was non-white.

Historically, the system has put much more value on white life than on non-white life, said Kendall. “It’s long been the practice in the US to overprotect whites and underprotect and undervalue non-whites in the administration of the death penalty,” he stressed.

Kendall also pointed out that never before in US history have incarceration rates been as high as they are today, almost surpassing the levels of imprisonment seen in Russia, for example. That increase has not occurred among whites, however, but among “prisoners of colour,” he underlined.

And never before have so many women been thrown behind bars, principally women of colour, he added.

In 1980, the US prison population stood at 200,000. Today, it amounts to two million. There are 200,000 people behind bars in California alone, and 160,000 in Texas, according to the statistics cited by Kendall.

In most states, those imprisoned for a felony lose their right to vote. In consequence, 1.4 million men of minority descent cannot take part in elections, he observed.

“This is particularly important because these people are deprived of their political power and their ability to change the system,” Kendall complained. “These citizens are treated in an inhuman manner and deprived of their most valuable currency.”

The Law Group urged the UN Human Rights Commission to examine violations committed in the US justice system on the basis of racial discrimination, and to consider sending several of the UN special rapporteurs on human rights issues to the United States.

RIGHTS: Lawyers Denounce Racism in US Justice System

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 12 2000 (IPS) - A Washington-based organisation of human rights lawyers denounced the United States justice system before the United Nations Human Rights Commission of acting in a discriminatory and racist manner.
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