Prison Legal News, October 2017
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Prison Legal News PUBLISHED BY THE HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENSE CENTER VOL. 28 No. 10 October 2017 ISSN 1075-7678 Dedicated to Protecting Human Rights No-show Cops and Dysfunctional Courts Keep Cook County Jail Prisoners Waiting Years for a Trial Chicago police missed more than 11,000 court dates since 2010, causing months or years of unnecessary delays for prisoners awaiting trial. by Spencer Woodman, Chicago Reader une 25, 2012, was a terrible day for night, Robinson repaired to his girlfriend’s Jail. After entering a guilty plea, he says, JJermaine Robinson. Overall, life was good house on Rhodes Avenue to hang out with he spent the rest of his teens downstate in – the 21-year-old Washington Park resident friends and to see his one-year-old daugh- the Vienna Correctional Center. In 2011, had been studying music management at ter, he says. But just after midnight, he says, Robinson says, he spent another several Columbia College and was a few weeks several Chicago police officers rammed months in prison after being caught with a into a job working as a janitor at a nearby down the side door of the house and burst small amount of marijuana. Boys & Girls Club. But his 13-year-old into the living room. But upon his release later that year, neighbor had been killed by random gunfire Police would later say that they had Robinson says he was striving toward a dif- the previous day, and Robinson spent the spotted Robinson dashing from the front ferent path. He’d taken two courses in music evening at an emotional memorial service. porch into the house holding a revolver. management at Columbia that spring, and After the service ended around mid- According to police reports, the officers he hoped to return. His dream, he said, was found a handgun in the house, which they to cultivate the talent of musicians he knew claimed belonged to Robinson. They ar- across the south side. His girlfriend was INSIDE rested him and two other young men. At seven months pregnant with a second child, the precinct, in a cinderblock interrogation and the future seemed to hold promise. From the Editor 14 room, Robinson says he told police he was The arrest at the house in Washington Mississippi DOC Bribery Scheme 16 only visiting the home and knew nothing Park marked a sudden end to Robinson’s about the gun. hopes. He feared his past convictions would Tattoo Recognition Technology 20 But by the time of his arrest, Robinson cast him in a suspicious light in front of a Electronic Monitoring Widespread 24 was well acquainted with Cook County’s judge and jury. criminal justice system. He had grown “My case was basically my word against EPA Recognizes Prisons 28 up poor in the Ida B. Wells Homes in the police’s word,” he says. “So by my be- Parole Remains Elusive in VA 32 Bronzeville, where his great-grandmother, ing a convicted felon, my credibility was a retired CTA bus driver, struggled to raise already shot.” Waging War on the Poor 34 him, his mother and a dozen other grand- In the early hours of the morning, Corizon Loses IN DOC Contract 44 children. “It was sometimes seven of us in Robinson recalls, he was transferred from one bed,” Robinson recalls. At times he’d the police precinct to the Cook County Jail, Prison Phones and Detroit Pistons 48 skip school because he feared that his stu- a 96-acre complex of bleak concrete cell Prison Gerrymandering Rulings 52 dent uniforms were so smelly and unclean blocks stretching along California Avenue they’d draw derision from his classmates. on the southwest side. Stinging 7th Circuit Dissent 56 By his midteens, he’d started deal- Although no court documents indicate Victim-centered Investigations 60 ing cocaine and heroin, and at 17, he was that the state had any physical evidence arrested on drug and weapons charges. linking Robinson to the gun, a judge denied News in Brief 63 Although still a minor, he was charged with his request for electronic monitoring and a felony and booked into the Cook County set his bond at $7,500 – the amount he’d The Habeas Citebook (2nd edition) by Brandon Sample and Alissa Hull The second edition of The Habeas Citebook is now available! Published by Prison Legal News, it is designed to help pro-se prisoner litigants identify and raise viable claims for potential habeas corpus relief. This book is an invaluable resource that identifies hundreds of cases where the federal courts have granted habeas relief to prisoners whose attorneys provided ineffective assistance of counsel. 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Date of Birth ________/________/____________ FILL OUT APPLICATION AND RETURN VIA MAIL MAILING ADDRESS Incarcerated Since ________/________/__________ PO Box 4315 Lynchburg, VA 24502 October 2017 2 Prison Legal News Cook County Prisoners Wait (cont.) percentage than the jail’s overall popula- Prison Legal News tion. Only 11.5 percent of Cook County prisoners are white, as are a mere 7 percent a publication of the have to pay in order to be released from jail of its long-term pretrial detainees. (The Human Rights Defense Center www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org and resume work and school as he awaited racial breakdown of the jail’s population is EDITOR trial. It was a sum neither Robinson nor already strikingly disproportionate to the Paul Wright his family had at their disposal. Robinson’s county’s population as a whole, which is MANAGING EDITOR family set out on the first of numerous 42.6 percent white.) Alex Friedmann failed attempts to raise the money while Most prisoners awaiting trial for mul- COLUMNISTS Robinson stayed in jail waiting for his case tiple years in Cook County face charges Michael Cohen, Kent Russell, to be resolved. for violent crimes such as murder, rape Mumia Abu-Jamal As Robinson reacclimated to life or assault. But, according to the sheriff ’s CONTRIBUTING WRITERS behind bars, he noticed something that department, nearly half of them have been Matthew Clarke, John Dannenberg, dismayed him: a few of the prisoners he’d held not because they’ve been deemed too Derek Gilna, Gary Hunter, met during his first spate in jail as a teenager dangerous for release, but simply because David Reutter, Joe Watson, Mark Wilson, Christopher Zoukis were still there now, awaiting trial.