Jamaica Express

Hurricane Came

jamaicaexpress — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:49:00 -0800

News

Carter Storms Law School

Former boxing champion bashes abuses

Published On 1/20/2006 1:20:26 AM
By PARAS D. BHAYANI
Crimson Staff Writer

Rubin Carter, know to many simply as “The Hurricane,” delivered a stirring speech to a crowd of 150 yesterday at Harvard Law School in which he lambasted the criminal justice systems in the U.S., Canada, and Jamaica for what he claimed was a high incidence of wrongful convictions and a system that is based more often on prejudice and “tunnel vision” than on evidence.

“Wake up!” he implored the crowd. “And learn that liberty and the pursuit of happiness are actually the same thing.”

Carter recounted the details of his conviction for triple murder in 1966 when he was at the height of his middleweight boxing career. He spoke of how he was saved from the electric chair only because of the quality of his legal representation, and how he still spent nearly twenty years in prison, ten of which were in the pitch dark of solitary confinement.

Carter also said that when a court granted his 1985 petition for a writ of habeas corpus—one of only three granted that year out of 8,500 filed nationwide—it effectively gave him back his freedom. In overturning Carter’s conviction, the court wrote that “the trial had been based completely on racism and not on legal evidence.” Carter, who still carries the original writ in his breast pocket, repeatedly referred to habeas corpus as “the great writ” and said that without it he would have “languished and died behind bars.”

Carter also lashed out at the criminal justice system, saying that capital punishment had turned the system into “assembly lines of death,” and pointing to the large numbers of incarcerated minorities—blacks in the U.S., Muslims in France, and Aborigines in Australia—as evidence of its shortcomings.

Carter ended with a plea for his new group, Innocence International, which he said will expose abuses and wrongful convictions in justice systems across the world.

Carter was joined at the event by Courtney Kazembe and Kevin Wallen, both of whom work in Jamaican prisons to promote “restorative justice,” and Charles R. Nesson, the Weld professor of law and the co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Kazembe and Wallen first spoke of their work in rehabilitating Jamaican prison inmates, and how after six years in operation, their program, Students Expressing Truth, has kept every one of its participants from becoming repeat offenders. Kazembe, who addressed the crowd first, outlined the theoretical contours of their program and how “transformation” can be used to reduce redicivism and to give people a “reason to live.”

“Our program makes people ask, ‘Why am I getting the results I’m getting in my life?,’” Kazembe said. “It’s a powerful realization where you cause people to step outside of themselves [and] take and accept responsibility.”

Immediately after Kazembe, Wallen began to fill in the details, starting with an extended anecdote about his path to becoming a teacher and motivational speaker. He told of his first meeting with Carter and how the two were invited to visit a Jamaican prison after inmates attended one of their events.

“The prison that was designed to hold 600 inmates was holding 1,800,” Wallen said. “The prisoners were in 8.5 by 5.5 by 11 foot cells, and there were a minimum of four and a maximum of nine people in each one. The inmates were locked down in their cells at 3 p.m. each day and not released until 9 a.m. the next morning.”

Wallen also spoke of the rampant homophobia in Jamaican prisons, saying that the prisons have sections labeled “Boy’s Towns” where homosexuals are isolated from the other inmates.

“If someone calls you gay and you don’t deny it, you have to go to ‘Boy’s Town,’” Wallen said. “If a cup hits the floor and you drink from it again, you’re gay. It sounds stupid and it is, but [it’s] something they have to live with.”

Of his own prison sentence, Carter said, “I sat in that cell feasting on hatred for ten years.”

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE -- Hurricane Coming

jamaicaexpress — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 03:58:00 -0800

Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. EST, January 19, 2006, in Harvard Law School Ames Courtroom and on the Web

Kevin Wallen, Rubin *Hurricane* Carter, and Courtney Kazembe will speak about RESTORATIVE JUSTICE in JAMAICA: All Invited -- Admission Free. Come to the Ames Courtroom if you can. If not, consider watching and participating in the event through the net. If you would like not only to watch the webcast but also be on line by IM with a person in the room who can anser and convey your questions, please email nesson@law.harvard.edu and we will connect you.

The link for the webcast is here.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE -- General Penitentiary

jamaicaexpress — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 03:34:00 -0800

From the Observer
Tower Street prison gets IT lab
TYRONE S REID, Observer staff reporter
Wednesday, January 18, 2006

THE prison service yesterday opened an information technology lab at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre in Kingston - a move the department hopes will help the more than 1,600 inmates acquire skills and help with their rehabilitation.
(complete story)

Restorative Justice

jamaicaexpress — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 05:57:00 -0800

You will be interested and see the relevance of the program
that Kevin and I are doing in conjunction with my upcoming class. We are
consulting to DCS Commissioner Reese in creating a program of "Restorative
Justice" to address a problem that often arises when inmates are released
from prison on parole. If there are enmities that are unresolved, new
violence often breaks out when the parolee gets home. DCS has not yet been
successful in developing a program to deal with this kind of problem.The
Commissioner is interested in developing a program that will constructively
bring unresolved enmities to the surface and deal with them before
parole. Kevin and I have agreed to help with this. We will be looking at cases
from all points of view, very much including the viewpoint of the victim.
Kevin is hosting a group consisting of Courtney Kazembe, Roderick Gordon,
Rozimund Brown and LaToya Bidwell, looking at all aspects of controversy, asking questions from the vantage of justice (human rights)
for criminal defendants and victims. In this structure my role is
ancillary, as consultant, offering interaction with my students in Evidence
and Internet.

Start

jamaicaexpress — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 04:57:00 -0800

Hi, i'm charlie, aka eon, d of c,
my role is to amplify the voice of Jamaica with cyber strategy
this site is brought to you by Kevin Wallen and Richard Reese and Camella Rhone and Desmond Green and the teammates of SET and SSET, and by Trevor Rhone and Perry Henzell,

which leads me to an announcement:
Saturday Jamaica Night, January 7, 2006, food, music, a showing of The Harder They Come and Talk with Colin Channer and Wayne Marshall

Let me share a problem with you. Kevin, leader of SET, who has been speaking to the net through my blog and will now be speaking here, is leading Jamaica into a process of restorative justice. At the invitation of Richard Reese, Commissioner of Corrections, but independent of him, Kevin and a group he has assembled will be demonstrating a cyberstrategy for dispute resolution of controversy surrounding inmates being released on parole, the difficulty being that upon release the controversy can often break out into violence, which defeats the whole purpose of law and corrections. The strategy includes the challenge of mastering the technology of getting message out and back from Kevin's group to the community of people who find themselves divided by the dispute. We are starting on January 5, 2005, with the first meeting of Kevin's group.

Kevin, would you explain from here.

On the 5th of January a group of individuals will gather at my office in Kingston Jamaica to discuss the issues facing Jamaica and it's justice system. We will start this process by discussing cases that have some bit of controvacy about them. We will try our best to make sure that all sides are represented in each of the cases we discuss. In all of this we would love to get the communities involved and so there will be a recording of the trial transcript of each of the cases which will read like a play designed for radio. The play will then be broken down into segments. After each segment is aired a discussion will be faciltated by me, where each member of the pannel will be asked to give their expert opinion. Some of the questions we are looking to have answered are questions such as, did the justice system work in this case, was justice served, what was right or wrong with the prosecution's case, what was wrong or right with the defence case, What of the Judge and the Jury. Did they act in accordance with the law. In some cases there will be live video confrencing sessions with Professor Nesson's Winter evidence class from Harvard Law School.

Test

Charles — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 13:35:00 -0800

Test yes yes check out the link screen top right wonderful to have such support thank you citizen lab thank you civiblog thank you nart thank you andy thank you colin, who is coming to talk with my class on Saturday Jamaica Night January 7, food, music, a showing of The Harder They Come and Talk with Colin Channer and Wayne&Wax, maybe Z and his class can help get you in by remote