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I hope you'll bear with me if my posts are a bit more brief in the next couple of weeks. I am finishing a book and working
under (self-inflicted) killer pressure. But relief is near.
In the meantime, I was struck today by two harshly contrasting sides of humanity.
One side is that of Darryl Hunt. His story is best told by this blurb from his website [http://www.darrylhuntproject.org/],
from which he runs a project dedicated to freeing prisoners wrongly convicted of crimes:
"In 1985, Darryl Hunt, an 18 year old African American, was convicted for the rape and vicious murder of a young,
white female newspaper reporter. In two trials, despite the fact that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, 23 white
jurors found Hunt guilty based on eyewitness testimony. The case graphically revealed the difficulties between cross-racial
identification. The testimonies taken into consideration were those of a 14 year old, Caucasian heroin addict; a former Klansman;
and a man who, before finally fingering Hunt as the perpetrator, had wrongly identified two other men.
"Before his second trial in 1990, Darryl Hunt rejected a plea bargain that would have immediately made him a free
man. In 1994 DNA tests performed on semen samples did not match that of Darryl Hunt. But, he was denied a third trial. The
North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the denial 4-3 and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
"In response to a petition by Darryl Hunt's attorney a Superior Court judge finally ordered that the DNA specimens
found at the crime scene be matched against a database containing information on violent criminals in North Carolina. This
resulted in a match to another individual proving Darryl Hunt's innocence.
"In February of 2004 all charges against Darryl Hunt were dismissed. He subsequently received a full pardon from
the Governor."
I heard Hunt on the radio on March 2 on the Marc Steiner Show, a gem of a program on NPR station WYPR in Baltimore. Hunt's
case, long since documented, was a nightmare of misidentification, racist presumption, and conspiratorial concealment of his
innocence by police and prosecutors to avoid bureaucratic humiliation. It is a horror story of the first degree, and yet another
devastating argument for abolition of the death penalty, a perfectly irrevocable punishment invoked by an inherently flawed
system. If you read about Hunt's case in detail, it will likely bring you to tears.
What moved me most about Hunt's radio interview was his ironclad and regal compassion. When asked if any of the many police
officers, attorneys, judges and witnesses who railroaded him have since apologized or admitted moral culpability, he replied
that no, none of them have. But he then went on to say that he expects no apologies; the people truly owed an apology, he
said, are the family members of the murder victim, who were lied to by the state for 20 years -- and who still, in their blind
rage, blame Hunt for the crime despite DNA proof of his innocence and the subsequent confession of the true perpetrator.
This from a man who was wrongly imprisoned for 20 years.
If you are prepared to be both infuriated and inspired, get the entire story at his website.
On the flip side of humanity, however, is the latest bulletin concerning our mendacious president, who an AP-acquired
video has now revealed to have lied yet again, this time in his claim four days after Katrina that neither he nor other top
officials anticipated the breach of the levees. In fact, as the video proves, Bush and others were fully briefed on the likelihood
that the levees would break and that federal response would be insufficient.
In the August 28, 2005 video, Bush sits with his elbows on the table while being warned of impending disaster, asks no
questions, and then replies with empty homilies about how the feds will stay on top of things. The video is remarkable, among
other things, for revealing the near-frantic concern of then- FEMA chief Michael D. Brown, who is now beginning to look more
and more like a fall guy for an administration that simply didn't care.
For the full story in the March 1 issue of Editor & Publisher, go to [http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002114558].
© 2006 Bruce A. Jacobs (Posted 3/2/06)
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