Town hall on wrongful convictions calls for action: “The revolutionary side of misery”

Chicago, IL – Over 150 survivors of wrongful convictions, their family members and community members gathered on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, March 22, for an action-focused town hall meeting. The event was organized by the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture (CFIST) and aimed to strengthen the movement to free all survivors of wrongful conviction and end the system of police torture that has made Chicago the torture capitol of the United States.

The two-and-a-half-hour program took place at Sixth Grace Presbyterian Church in the Douglas neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. 4th Ward Alderman Lamont Robinson, who represents the Douglas neighborhood, was also in attendance, in addition to 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez.

A panel of six survivors of wrongful conviction and police torture opened the event: Frank Chapman, Kevin Jackson, Adolfo Davis, Clayborn Smith, Reginald Henderson and Sean Tyler.

These survivors, whose cases highlight the gross injustice of Chicago’s criminal “justice” system, shared moving testimonies detailing not only the trauma associated with their incarceration, but the strength of the movement that helped them win their freedom and need to keep fighting to free those still inside.

The mental and physical toll of being kidnapped and tortured by CPD detectives, locked up in the worst prison conditions imaginable, and separated from their families for decades, cannot be overstated.

“The only time we saw a sunrise was when we were up at 4 a.m. to be taken in to court” said Clayborn Smith, a survivor of torture and wrongful conviction. Smith was kidnapped in 1992 and tortured for 39 hours by CPD detectives John Halloran, Kenneth Boudreu and James O’Brien, and served 29 years for a murder he had nothing to do with.

But despite the trauma, the panel emphasized the need for further action to fight back against the system of frame-ups and coercion, dubbed the “torture machine” by civil rights lawyer Flint Taylor.

Frank Chapman, executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, was the elder on the panel. After 15 years of wrongful incarceration and 50 years in the movement since, Chapman’s perspective captured the essence of the whole evening.

“Don’t just talk to me about your pain and misery, cuz I done had that too. So have millions of others,” Chapman said. “But if you don’t ever get to the revolutionary side of misery, you don’t ever get to the solution.”

Kevin Jackson, who recently won his freedom after over 23 years of wrongful conviction at the hands of CPD detectives Brian Forberg and John Foster, described the movement’s role in winning his freedom.

“The movement is the reason I’m standing here right now,” Jackson said. “My lawyers were sitting there basically scratching their heads until public attention came to my case.”

During the years-long battle in court to win Jackson’s freedom, the CFIST campaign mobilized family members and movement supporters to attend his court dates and held dozens of press conferences and rallies drawing public attention to the case.

“They moved the needle,” Jackson said.

After the panel of survivors, a panel of legal experts took the stage, including Jorge Soto, a jailhouse lawyer and survivor of wrongful conviction; Michelle Mbekeani, former senior advisor to previous Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and Sheila Bedi, a civil rights lawyer and clinical professor with the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

Mbekeani, who worked for the most progressive State’s Attorney in Cook County in history, Kim Foxx, shared firsthand inside information on the racism and corruption of the office, describing the way that CPD detectives and prosecuting state’s attorneys work in the same building and often have close relationships that help them achieve and uphold wrongful convictions to advance their careers.

Soto, who served the joint-longest wrongful conviction sentence in Illinois history, has seen the corruption of the justice system from all angles.

There’s a pervasiveness of this white, patriarchal racism in the state’s attorney’s office, like in CPD,” Soto said. “It’s a culture.”

The final panel of the evening featured the family members of survivors who are still inside. The panel, which included Anette Torres, girlfriend of Elias Gomez; Norma Jean Scales, aunt of Douglas Livingston; Johnnie Hayes, wife of Devon Showers, and Alicia Gill, sister of Michael Minniefield, inspired attendees with their dedication to the struggle to free their loved ones.

“We need to fight and not give up,” Torres said. “Elias is not alone. Your husband, your brother, your son, your nephew, they’re not alone.”

Merawi Gerima, co-chair of the CFIST campaign, also spoke briefly on the connection between the movement to end wrongful conviction and the broader fight for community control of police in Chicago.

Gerima described CFIST’s strategy of organizing around cases of wrongful conviction at the police district level by mobilizing community members to Police District Council meetings, a localized accountability body created by an ordinance fought for and won by CAARPR in 2021.

Decades of struggle to free the wrongfully convicted and end police torture provide more evidence that only a mass movement by and for working and oppressed people can win the power we need to hold the architects and enforcers of this racist system accountable, and replace it with a system that works for the people.

“There’s strength in the community and these organizations,” said Kevin Jackson. “So if you ain’t a part of one, join one!”

#ChicagoIL #InJusticeSystem #CFIST #NAARPR

Source: https://fightbacknews.org/town-hall-on-wrongful-convictions-calls-for-action-the-revolutionary-side-of?pk_campaign=rss-feed