Convicted With No Evidence by an All-White Jury, Black Community Leader Rev. Edward Pinkney Faces Li

Convicted With No Evidence by an All-White Jury, Black Community Leader Rev. Edward Pinkney Faces Life in Prison
Friday, 12 December 2014 12:12
By Victoria Collier and Ben-Zion Ptashnik, Truthout | News Analysis

The fight in Benton Harbor is a war, it’s not a conflict. It’s a war over whether America will have prosperity and democracy, or live in poverty under the heel of open corporate rule. - Rev. Edward Pinkney


As reports escalate of police assaults and murder of unarmed black men for "suspected" crimes, a jury trial certainly sounds like welcome justice.

Not so for many in Michigan, where a 66-year-old black activist, Rev. Edward Pinkney, convicted of felony election fraud by an all-white jury, faces a life sentence, amid accusations of trumped-up charges and no direct evidence of wrongdoing.

When an all-white jury is chosen to try a prominent black community leader of an impoverished city with a 90 percent black population, when the powers that be have numerous reasons to want him discredited, when the evidence is entirely lacking and the punishment is draconian, there is ample cause to suspect another egregious breach of justice - one as blatant as refusing to indict the police who killed an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, and choked a father of six to death in Staten Island.

To be clear, there is nothing illegal about trying a black man with an all-white jury in the United States. In the 1986 Supreme Court ruling, Batson v. Kentucky, the court held that a defendant is not entitled to a jury containing or lacking members of any particular race. But in this case of activist, Reverend Edward Pinkney, his supporters believe it is equivalent to a white mob lynching an "upstart negro."

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http://truth-out.org/news/item/27974-all-white-jury-convicts-black-community-leader-with-no-evidence-reverend-edward-pinkney-faces-life-in-prison