Manafort And Kalief Browder.....
a tale of two justice systems. Paul Manafort, facing spending the rest of his life in jail, having violated the terms of his release, is allowed to go home to house arrest without even putting up any cash. (in case you didn't realize it, his $10 million bond required no posting of cash). Meanwhile, a kid accused of stealing a backpack (charges that were eventually dismissed) spent 3 years in jail because his family couldn't raise the $3,000 needed to get him out on bail. Something is seriously amiss. Where is the outrage?
Before it was about the suicide of a tormented young man, before it was about the crippling effects of prolonged solitary confinement, before it was about the Dickensian court process that kept him awaiting trial for three years, the story of Kalief Browder was about bail.
Kalief Browder was jailed because he couldn’t pay $3,000.
That’s the bail amount a judge first set back in 2010, after Browder was arrested at age 16 and charged with stealing a backpack. His family was unable to raise the money, so he was sent to Rikers Island, where he was held for the next three years before prosecutors in the Bronx decided to dismiss the charges. But once he was in the system, and despite efforts by his lawyer, even the initial bail offer was denied him.
Violence and long stints in solitary defined Browder’s experience at Rikers, as detailed in an October 2014 profile in The New Yorker. “I’m not all right. I’m messed up,” Browder told the magazine after his release. The story sparked outrage and promises from city officials to reform Rikers, but for Browder, the damage had been done. He hanged himself on Saturday. He was 22.
read the rest here: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/06/09/no-bail-less-hope-the-death-of-kalief-browder
Kalief Browder was the first person I thought of when former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort walked free from a federal courthouse Monday afternoon after pleading “not guilty” to federal charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life. Browder, remember, got no such mercy in 2010 from a New York judge, who initially demanded that the 16-year-old, or his family, come up with $3,000 for bail or bond in a case involving an allegedly stolen backpack.
As the world now knows, Browder and his family couldn’t pay the tab in a case that was complicated by his own probation violation. Still, no defense attorney rescued him, no prosecutor, judge, or jailer looked at the case and was moved to correct a manifest injustice. No one came on television the night he was put into a cell to talk about the particulars of his case or cause. And so the young man ended up tortured in the Rikers Island jail, peppered with long stints in solitary confinement, until he was released, broken, back into the world. He didn’t make it. In 2015, at the age of 22, he committed suicide, another in an endless stream of young Americans whose spirit was crushed by the injustice of our justice system.
Both Manafort and Browder were supposed to be presumed innocent under the law. But I’ve covered enough criminal law over the past 20 years, covered enough due process violations and perp walks, to realize that the depth and breadth of the presumption of innocence, like so many other hoary standards, depends almost entirely on who the defendant and judge are, and on what the alleged crime may be. Manafort, charged with “conspiracy against the United States” and not with some petty burglary charge, was able to return home Monday on house arrest, a $10 million bond, and the surrender of his passport.
read the rest here: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a13127990/manafort-house-arrest/
Hmm...what could the difference be?
= new reply since forum marked as read
...and yes black people can hire lawyers too. Black people can BE lawyers.
It's not race, it's having the money to hire the best lawyers and they require big bucks, obviously.
Manafort's bail was brokered before he turned himself in, and that's what high-priced lawyers do.
I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that's the way it is.
I believe Manafort will go to jail though. He'll get a cushy country club prison because his lawyer will work it out for him. But he's not getting out of this. Neither is Trump or his family. Mueller will make sure of it.
