The American criminal justice system, according to National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President and Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Todd Jealous, is “broken.” Kenneth Lee, a Korean-American who, the last I knew, lived in the Baltimore area, would probably agree with Jealous, but not for the same reason.
After Troy Davis was executed in Georgia last week for killing an off-duty Savannah police officer in 1989, Jealous, according to news stories, tweeted this statement:
“In death, Troy Davis will live on as a reminder of a broken justice system that kills an innocent man while a murderer walks free.”
Lee is, no doubt, also concerned about a murderer walking free — albeit in a case where no murderer was ever convicted.
The story of how Davis wound up on Georgia’s death row was recounted way too many times in the weeks and months leading up to his death. What happened to a guy named Davon Neverdon is probably unknown outside of Baltimore and its immediate suburbs.
In September of 1993, about four years after Davis’ crime spree down in Savannah, a college student named Joel J. Lee was visiting a friend to borrow a book in Baltimore. Someone fatally shot Lee in a robbery attempt. Eyewitnesses identified that man as Neverdon.
Neverdon went to trial in July of 1995. Several eyewitnesses, including a couple of his buddies and several disinterested parties, identified Neverdon as the shooter. In spite of their testimony, a predominantly black Baltimore jury acquitted the black defendant of murder charges.
“I need closure,” Kenneth Lee, Joel Lee’s father, told me a couple of years later. It’s closure he will probably never get. And you can bet that the gaggle of left-wingers who supported Davis and screamed that his execution was bloody murder won’t rush to get justice for Kenneth Lee any time soon.
I listened to one of the jurors in the Neverdon case talking on a local radio show in Baltimore a day after the verdict. None of the eyewitnesses, she said, was credible. So the jurors believed, and so the verdict stands. Davis’ supporters, who went on and on (and on) about the seven of nine eyewitnesses who recanted in his case, could learn something from the Neverdon trial.
The first thing they could learn is that assessing eyewitness testimony is the province of the jury, not second-guessers with a clear political agenda. (The abolition of the death penalty, in the case of most of Davis’ supporters.)
The second thing they can learn is that jurors — or a judge, if the defendant chooses to forego a jury trial — need to find only one eyewitness credible.
A best-case example occurred this past spring, in a bench trial completely unrelated to either the Neverdon or Davis trials.
In June of 2011, Gahiji Tshamba, an off-duty Baltimore police officer, fatally shot Marine veteran Tyrone Brown in a dispute outside a nightclub. Prosecutors and defense attorneys provided a bevy of eyewitnesses, probably as many, if not more, than the ones who testified at Davis’ trial.
When all was said and done, Baltimore Circuit Judge Edward R.K. Hargadon decided only one of them, Brown’s sister, was credible. He found Tshamba guilty. (Tshamba had waived his right to a jury trial.)
Hargadon sentenced Tshamba to 15 years. Some of Tshamba’s family members might feel the criminal justice system is “broken.” So might Tshamba. I’m sure Kenneth Lee feels it is.
Someone should remind Jealous – who has yet to show the concern for law-abiding black citizens that he shows for convicted black felons — that even if the system is broken, the nature and cause of its brokenness is very much up for debate.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
