Kamala Harris and Cory Booker side with Byron Allen in civil rights suit against Comcast and Charter

The Congressional Black Caucus has weighed in on the $20B lawsuit between Byron Allen‘s Entertainment Studios and the media companies, Comcast and Charter. Just in the nick of time, hours before the deadline for amicus briefs were to be filed in the highest court of the land, CBC members added their political voices to the powerful choir against Comcast, Charter and the President Donald Trump‘s Department of Justice regarding what Erwin Chemerinsky believes is the most important civil rights case of our time.

READ MORE: Berkeley Law Dean believes that Comcast and Charter Communications are putting Black people’s civil rights in jeopardy

The DOJ filed an amicus brief earlier this summer which stated that Allen and his team (and if they win… all Black owned businesses) will have to prove that race is the only factor in refusal to work with a business.  The CBC understands that this re-imagining of  the Civil Rights Act of 1886 is problematic, particularly since systemic racism is not necessarily overt.

According to Deadline, among those who have lent their voice in protest are presidential candidates, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). However, they are not alone. Earlier this week, a tsunami of the nation’s most respected civil rights organizations have let off sirens of opposition against what would be a dynamic change to a civil rights statute enacted to protect Black people from discrimination in business. The case, which will have the Civil Rights Act of 1866 smack dab in the middle of it, has reached the political mountain of The Supreme Court and is to be heard on November 13.

READ MORE: Color of Change demands Comcast withdraw its Supreme Court challenge to the Civil Rights Act of 1866

“As members of Congress, amici have a strong interest in ensuring that the laws Congress has passed are interpreted in a manner that is consistent with their text, history, and Congress’s plan in passing them,” says the brief filed by The CBC this Monday. “…The statute at issue in this case—42 U.S.C. § 1981—was passed immediately after the Civil War as part of a broader effort to ensure that the newly freed slaves enjoyed the same rights as other citizens.”

The brief continued, “This Court should not rewrite Section 1981 and disturb the vital protections that Congress passed that statute to provide.”

Booker and Harris are not the only voices from the race to the White House chiming in on this important issue. Mayor Pete Buttigieg was equally disturbed about the partnership formed between Comcast, Charter and the DOJ.

On October 1, he said, “It’s very clear that the civil rights division of the DOJ is not very energetic when it comes to civil rights, right?” The next day he took it even further, “This is critical because we need that economic empowerment to happen. I think this conversation needs to happen alongside the reparations conversation.”

READ MORE: Buttigieg on Byron Allen’s Comcast case — ‘It matters who’s running the DOJ’

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Federal Judge Places Consent Decree on Racist Mississippi County Sheriff’s Department

A federal judge has ordered a Mississippi county sheriff’s office to make sweeping changes after a civil rights lawsuit accused the county’s law enforcement agency of targeting black residents for years.

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Amber Guyger: Protests erupt over light sentence

Protests erupted Wednesday outside of a Dallas courtroom after Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years for the shooting death of Botham Jean after she entered the wrong home.

—The Forgiveness Trap: Botham Jean’s family’s response to Amber Guyger triggers debate—

Prosecutors urged the court to hand down a 28-year sentence to Guyger, the age Jeanwould have been today had he lived. Instead, Guyger was sentenced to a mere 10 years, a decision that angered protesters who believed the punishment was too light given the circumstances.

Tensions ran high between demonstrators and police after the sentencing, as activists chanted, “No justice, no peace,” outside the courthouse, The Star-Telegram reports.

Officers ordered them to “Please exit the roadway” but things soon took a turn and a video captured one woman getting arrested.

A woman in a red shirt could be seen walking with her fist up as officers swarm and pull her down when she tried to run. The woman was handcuffed.

WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE: There’s been an arrest in the protest in downtown #Dallas . The protest is taking place after #AmberGuyger received a 10 year sentence for the murder of #BothamJean pic.twitter.com/Ci8Sa8M87u

— Alex Rozier (@RozierReports) October 3, 2019

Another person could be heard on the video screaming, “This is why we hate you!”

“Let her go!” another shouted.

Dallas police on Thursday said the woman in the video, Safiya Paul, 31 was arrested and charged  with obstruction, a misdemeanor, police said. She was released from jail on a $500 bond.

The protests followed a tense week of testimony in the Guyger case. On Tuesday, a jury decided in less than 24 hours to convict the 31-year-old after prosecutors convinced them that the Sept. 6, 2018 shooting was not accidental, but instead an avoidable tragedy sparked by Guyger’s poor judgment. By Wednesday, it was announced that she had only been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Before anyone could celebrate the “guilty” verdict, a disturbing video started making the rounds of a Black deputy stroking Amber Guyger’s hair after the verdict. Viewers said it was jarring to see Guyger being handled so adoringly by a person of color immediately after she was convicted of killing an unarmed Black man.

What the hell man? She’s stroking Amber’s hair after she was found guilty of murder. Some of us are still slaves. That’s why WS don’t want us speaking about black empowerment. They don’t want their slaves to finally be set free. #AmberGuyger pic.twitter.com/y1sLGwjUgB

— African Diaspora News Channel (@AfrDiasporaNews) October 1, 2019

That same day, Botham Jean’s younger brother, Brandt Jean, took the stand for his victim statement, and tearfully said to her brother’s killer, “I don’t want to say twice or for the 100th time how much you have taken from us. I think you know that, but I just.. I hope you go to God with all the guilt and all the bad things you have done in the past. Each and every one of us may have done something that we have not supposed to do. If you are truly are sorry, I know I can speak for myself, I forgive you.”

Botham Jean's brother to Amber Guyger: "I forgive you."

In a stunning moment, Brandt Jean asked the judge to allow him to hug the former Dallas police officer after she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing his sibling. https://t.co/Pw4gBchCC1 pic.twitter.com/OPNbZrlmxi

— ABC News (@ABC) October 3, 2019

—BREAKING: Amber Guyger sentenced to 10 years for shooting death of Botham Jean; brother offers forgiveness in emotional gesture—

He then hugged his brother’s killer. And to add insult to injury, the State District Judge Tammy Kemp hugged Guyger too.

The protests are a culmination of the community’s anger over the sentence and what seems likes privileged treatment of Guyger.

“Why give a murder conviction and then 10 years?” said Dominique Alexander, the leader of the Next Generation Action Network, explaining why the Black community is outraged.

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Diversity of jury seen as key factor in officer’s conviction

By TAMMY WEBBER Associated Press
The questioning dragged on all day and into the evening as lawyers queried hundreds of prospective jurors for potential bias in the trial of Amber Guyger, the white Dallas police officer who fatally shot a black neighbor in his own living room.

Finally, the judge sent everyone home except the attorneys, who made their final selections in private.

It wasn’t until jurors filed into the courtroom for opening statements that the public got its first look at something many had hoped for: a panel that was as racially diverse as Dallas County.

READ MORE: The Forgiveness Trap – Botham Jean’s family’s response to Amber Guyger triggers debate

On Wednesday, the jury composed largely of people of color and women sentenced Guyger to 10 years in prison, a day after convicting her of murder in the September 2018 killing of her upstairs neighbor, Botham Jean, after she said she mistook his apartment for her own.
“This trial had a magnifying glass on it,” and jury selection was a fairer process because of that, said Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Texas at Dallas. He said prosecutors and defense attorneys likely realized there would be a huge public outcry if the jury turned out mostly white.

“There were so many different eyes looking at this case, it was hard not to play by the rules,” he said.

Guyger, 31, was still in her police uniform after a long shift when she shot Jean, a 26-year-old accountant from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, after pushing open the unlocked door to his apartment. She was soon fired from the force and charged with murder.

She testified at her trial that she mistook Jean’s home for her own, which was one floor below, and thought he was a burglar.

READ MORE: Tracee Ellis Ross dishes about Hollywood snubs during ‘Girlfriends’ days

From the beginning, the jury’s demographics were bound to be closely watched in a case that ignited debate over race and policing. Critics, including Jean’s family, questioned why Guyger was not taken into custody immediately after the shooting and whether race played a factor in her decision to use deadly force.

Research suggests that more diverse juries make decisions differently than all-white juries, said Samuel R. Sommers, a Tufts University professor who has studied jury diversity. For example, an all-white jury is more likely to convict a black defendant.

“Race and ethnicity influence our perceptions and judgment all the time in our daily lives,” he said. “Nothing makes those biases disappear when we enter a jury room.”

Guyger’s attorneys tried unsuccessfully to get the trial moved to another county, arguing that pretrial publicity made a fair trial in Dallas County impossible. Moving the trial to a suburban county also would have all but guaranteed a whiter, more conservative jury, which could have led to a different outcome, experts said.

Dallas County is about 29% non-Hispanic white.

While awaiting the jury’s sentence, an attorney for Jean’s family, Ben Crump, said the panel’s diversity would help them “see past all the technical, intellectual justifications for an unjustifiable killing.”

But another Jean family attorney, Daryl Washington, said Thursday that the jury also represented Guyger because it included eight women.

“It was very important to have jurors representative of the county they served in … but this wasn’t just about black and white,” Washington said.

One of Guyger’s lawyers and the president of the Dallas Police Association, which paid for her legal defense, did not respond to calls and text messages seeking comment Wednesday and Thursday.

Prosecutors historically have tried to get all-white juries because they were more likely to support law enforcement, said Kerri Anderson Donica, president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

“I think it’s so ingrained in prosecutors’ minds that it’s probably a bias they don’t even realize exists,” said Donica, who is white.

Former Dallas County prosecutor Heath Harris, who is black, said all attorneys seek jurors who will “rule how you want.” Harris, now a defense attorney, said it’s just as common for attorneys of minority clients to try to limit conservative white jurors. And though he believes Guyger would probably have been acquitted if the trial were held elsewhere, he thought there was enough evidence to justify either an acquittal or conviction.

The case also illustrates how much Dallas County has changed.

A 1986 Dallas Morning News investigation found that prosecutors routinely manipulated the racial makeup of juries through legal challenges, excluding up to 90% of qualified black candidates from felony juries. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that jurors could not be excluded solely based on race.

The newspaper also cited a treatise on jury selection written in the 1960s and credited to a Dallas County assistant district attorney. It advised prosecutors to not allow any minorities on a jury “no matter how rich or how well-educated.”

Community activist Changa Higgins, who leads the Dallas Community Police Oversight Coalition, said he was still shocked when the Guyger jury returned a conviction.
“This is one of the very few times I’ve seen the justice system work the way it’s supposed to work for us, or the way it works for white people,” he said.
___
Webber reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Jake Bleiberg in Dallas contributed.

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This Is By Far the Best Deal We've Ever Seen On ExOfficio's Ultra-Popular Boxer Briefs

ExOfficio 3-Pack Boxer Briefs | $20-$21 | Amazon | Small, Large, XL in Charcoal. Small in Black. Medium packs priced at $30, which is still a great deal.

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