Excessively harsh for a _white kid_. Ligon getting life without parole in 1953 is not at all shocking. Ligon is just lucky that a white girl wasn't involved or he would've gotten the chair.
Teenage black boys are still having their lives disposed of in 2021 because they dared to be dumb teenage boys while black.
It’s horribly cruel, but as our disgusting Supreme Court has declared of similar violations of human life, it is “not unusual”, and so it still stands and it still is done.
It is excessively harsh, and the only way we’re ever going to fix it is by calling our representatives and calling out our representatives to change this.
It says a lot that you don't acknowledge any systemic connection between these. Sure, rich people with their idea-implants can be referenced collectively. Society making you tired, also a reasonable grouping. But implying that white people have been visiting injustice on black people, including having intentionally kept them poor? How dare you, sir.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...
Outright, publicly known racists get protection of judicial immunity, and only near impossible judicial impeachment can do anything about them.
What is the solution?
But step one is to acknowledge that systemic racism exists in the first place. Half of the voters in the country explicitly deny the existence of systemic racism and the need to change anything at all.
"Democrats, liberals, Americans under the age of 50 and those who score low on the racial resentment scale are all far more likely than Republicans, conservatives, Americans older than age 50, and those scoring high in racial resentment to think that Blacks are treated less fairly than whites by the police."
I see that 48% of American adults view it as not a problem or a problem in the other direction. Granted this is only a 1000 person study based on subjective experience. I wonder if they have larger studies, or any studies on objective evaluation[0] of if someone was treated differently based on race. I know I've been treated poorly by police but I don't believe race was a factor.
[0] seems like the 20% harsher sentencing could be an indication, but I'll have to look at that more
It's a great book, with copious references and research behind it.
Bryan Stevenson's book 'Just Mercy' is also well worth reading, and directly relevant to this discussion. Stevenson was the lead in the supreme court case that led to death and LWOP being off limits for juveniles.
I've had a similar experience with a magistrate who was a former cop and retired police chief. He was biased the entire time, violated due process, and made false claims. The complaint is still ongoing. I doubt it will result in much, but it could be useful for future civil cases.
You can't have a review board, or impeachment do anything with a judge with 100% black prosecution record just because it is such.
That's the paradox. Either you subject judiciary to political judgement, or you can't do anything about judges who are not politically impartial.