Author: Linn Washington

London, UK -– Often lost amidst the damning evidence of injustice in the enforcement of Britain’s notorious legal doctrine of joint enterprise are real people like Susan Williams –- persons whose lives have been shredded by the JE doctrine that Britain’s Supreme Court just gutted in a dramatic ruling today.

Williams’ grandson is serving a life sentence under joint enterprise which permits convictions carrying long sentences even of persons who did not commit a crime or even know a crime would occur. Williams said her grandson was trying to break up a fight in 2010 that ended in a fatal shooting by others, yet led to his conviction under JE.

The nightmare for Williams following the joint enterprise arrest and conviction of her grandson, Trevelle Williams, got much darker last November when her youngest daughter, the mother of Trevelle, committed suicide.

Williams’ daughter, Tara Le, was distraught over her inability to free her son Trevelle, nicknamed Bluey, from what the Williams family and others saw as a wrongful conviction.

“The last thing she said to me was ‘Mom, no one is listening.’ Tara said lawyers, the courts and human rights people would not respond to her or the evidence she had uncovered,” Williams said during an interview the day before Britain’s Supreme Court announced its historic ruling on JE.

That unanimous decision by Britain’s highest court, rendered on February 18, 2016, sets new legal standards for joint enterprise saying older standards had been applied too loosely by police, prosecutors and courts for over 30-years.

The President of Britain’s Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, before reading the decision before a courtroom packed with persons, most opposed to JE, said, “We consider that the proper course for this court is to re-state as nearly and clearly as we may, the principles which had been established over many years before the law took a wrong turn.”

Deb Madden (far right) holds ruling outside British Supreme Court building. LBW Photo
 

The Court’s unanimous ruling stated that an error had been made in the mid-1980s when law enforcers, from police through judges and legislators, began equating intent to commit a crime and/or intent to participate in a crime with the contention advanced by enforcers that persons arrested for a crime should have exercised “foresight” in knowing a crime could occur. This led to people being charged and convicted and sentenced simply for having the “bad judgement” or “lack of foresight” to show up at the scene of a crime, even if they weren’t personally involved.

Mohamed Yeslem Beisat, an ambassador for the Western Sahara, knew he faced a serious uphill struggle when he began his position in Washington, D.C. years ago as the representative for his country that is located on the northwest coast of Africa.

Beisat knew that most Americans knew nothing about the volatile circumstance that engulfs the Western Sahara, the nation that holds the undesirable distinction of being the ‘Last Colony’ on the African continent.

The little known Western Sahara sits on the Atlantic Ocean coast of Africa located south of Morocco, north of Mauritania and east of Algeria.

Beisat also knew that Morocco, the monarchy-ruled African nation that has illegally occupied the Western Sahara for four decades, spends millions of dollars annually lobbying U.S. legislators, top policy makers and influential journalists to turn blind-eyes toward Morocco’s colonization — an occupation that is fraught with human rights violations and economic exploitation.

Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara features rampant brutality and discrimination directed against the indigenous population –- the Saharawi –- according to multiple reports from entities as diverse Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department.
Beisat explains Morocco's Wall (in background) during 2014 visit to Western Sahara
Morocco, since its 1975 invasion of the Western Sahara, has been able to defy agreements it made with the United Nations and other bodies requiring Morocco to conduct a referendum where the Saharawi could vote for either independence or alignment with Morocco. The ability of Morocco to defy that long series of official agreements to hold the referendum and/or withdraw from the Western Sahara is the result of strong support from France and tacit support from the United States.

London, UK — Police and prosecutors scheme to secure convictions of persons who did not participate in any crime. Racial minorities disproportionately bear the brunt of this improper practice.

Sounds like too many cities across the United States.

However, this practice of racist law enforcement is also rampant in three of the largest cities in England, including the capital city of London, according to a report released recently by the Centre For Crime and Justice Studies of Manchester Metropolitan University.

“The key findings [indicate] the criminal justice system is more flawed than we might imagine,” states the conclusion of the report entitled “Dangerous associations: joint enterprise, gangs and racism.”

The study documents that claims by police in Britain that young blacks dominate gang membership and thus are demonstrably the most violent are incorrect. Police and court data cited in the report document that black youth were not those who committed the most serious youth violence. In London for example, police list blacks as 72 percent of that city’s gang members. But official data collected for the report stated non-blacks committed 73 percent of the serious youth violence in London.
Tottenham rights activist Scott with report co-authors Clarke (left) and Williams (right) -LBWPhoto
The report found that prosecutors during trials of youthful suspects seize upon on the gang label levied by police to create a sinister perception of criminality that boost prosecutors chances of obtaining convictions. Prosecutors often push non-crime related ‘evidence’ such as listening to rap music and texting friends, particularly in cases where the defendant was not at the scene of the crime…or even where the defendant may not have known a crime would ever occur.

London — In a rational world where the rules of arithmetic apply it just doesn’t add up to declare that 40,000 is mathematically more significant than 500,000.

But in the fact-free world of Donald Trump 40,000 counts more than 500,000…at least that is Republican Trump’s new math as it applies to people in the United Kingdom.

Bad Trump (this incisive drawing was contributed to ThisCantBeHappening by two young artists, Amelia, 5, and Makayla, 8)
 

Over 500,000 Brits have signed a petition to ban Trump from entering the U.K. because of his hateful declarations, particularly his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. That ban-Trump petition had 577,023 signatures as of Jan. 20 -– a figure that keeps increasing.

Yet, typical of Trump, he saw more significance in the 40,000-plus British signatures on a petition opposing any blocking of his entry.

Trump insisted he has “many more fans than naysayers” across the U.K. when he responded to a British reporter at a campaign stop in Iowa hours after the U.K.’s Parliament concluded it’s Monday January 18th debate on those ban/no-ban petitions.

And in The Donald’s fact-free world it never computed in his mind that the Parliamentary debate began with an announcement that 30,000 of the 42,898 signatures on the don’t-ban-Trump petition had been removed because there was serious suspicion that those 30,000 signatures were not valid. That announcement in Parliament about removal of the questioned signatures stated those deleted signatures appeared to have originated from a single source.

Of course The Donald probably sees the ban-him petition as being trumped by British poll results stating 24 percent of Brits support his ban Muslim entry idea.

Trump saw big pluses in the Parliament debate about him despite the unflattering descriptions of him which were a core feature of that debate. These included members of parliament calling Trump as a buffoon, corrosive, an idiot, poisonous and a xenophobe, all appellations that flowed from both supporters and opponents of the ban petition.

Trump told the British reporter in Iowa that he saw it as a “great honor” to have ben the focus of a Parliament debate. Trump told that reporter that he was “very happy” with what happened in Parliament – presumably what didn’t happen: significant support for the ban.

Parliament took no official action on the ban or not-ban petitions because the authority in the U.K. to ban entry rests not with Parliament but with the the U.K. Home Secretary — the equivalent of the US Secretary of the Interior. The ban Trump petition has garnered more signatures than any public petition sent to Parliament it was announced during the debate.

Even the U.K’s ruling conservative government voiced opposition to Trump’s ban-Muslims posture. The U.K. government’s official statement, read into the record during that Parliament debate, stated in part: “The Prime Minister has made clear that he completely disagrees with Donald Trump’s remarks. The Home Secretary has said that Donald Trump’s remarks in relation to Muslims are divisive, unhelpful and wrong.”

Philly City Hall Protest
 

The first in a three-part series on Mumia Abu-Jamal’s fight to force the Pennsylvania prison system to treat his active Hep-C infection, and that of thousands of other infected state inmates, and on the raging Hepatitis C epidemic in the nation’s prisons. (Click here for Part II)
 

The big courthouse news in Pennsylvania this week does not involve yet another sordid revelation in the sleazy racist-pornographic email scandal now soiling top justice system officials in the Keystone State that include a state supreme court justice and ranking prosecutors.

This big news is rare courtroom testimony from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the renowned jailhouse journalist considered by many around the world as an authentic political prisoner in America.

On December 18th Abu-Jamal is scheduled to testify during a federal court hearing on his lawsuit attacking medical mistreatment from Pennsylvania prison authorities, and demanding –- negligent treatment that almost ended his life earlier this year. The lawsuit also seeks a court order mandating that he and other Pennsylvania inmates diagnosed with Hep C, a potentially deadly diseased, get treated with medications that, while costly, have a proven cure rate that is quite impressive

Abu-Jamal has rarely testified in court during the thirty-plus-years he’s waged legal battles in criminal and civil courtrooms at state and federal levels. Abu-Jamal spent nearly thirty-years on death row improperly due to calculated error by the judge at his 1982 trial for killing a Philadelphia policeman. Pennsylvania appellate courts cavalierly upheld that trial judge’s error but that error was eventually overturned in federal court leading to Abu-Jamal’s current life-without-parole sentence. Pennsylvania is the state with America’s second largest number of inmates with life-without-parole sentences

This federal court hearing arises from a lawsuit filed over failures of Pennsylvania prison personnel to properly treat medical problems that produced painful rashes and open sores all over Abu-Jamal’s body. Medication given to Abu-Jamal during the mistreatment of those rashes produced dangerous side effects including diabetes, a serious condition that went untreated by the prison medical personnel that also refused to inform Abu-Jamal about the diabetes. Earlier this year that untreated diabetes caused Abu-Jamal to blackout. Prison officials reluctantly rushed him to a hospital emergency room in diabetic shock close to death.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a bold yet belated move when he fired his embattled police superintendent in the wake of a national uproar surrounding the release of a chilling video that captured the police killing of a teen–a ward of the city of Chicago.

Included in that uproar is anger over mounting evidence of a cover-up connected to the brutal and unjustified shooting graphically displayed on that video. Political and civic leaders in Chicago had demanded the removal of Chicago top cop Garry McCarthy months before Emanuel’s uproar-triggered ouster of his police superintendent.

If Mayor Emanuel is really serious about his stated desire to rebuild “public trust” he needs to do two other things and do those two things quickly.

The long-hidden video of a police murder: Two cops draw guns on unarmed youth walking in opposite lane. One cop shoots the 17-year-old ward of the city 16 times in 15 seconds, as he poses no threat to them. See puff from one bullet fired at the victim Laquan McDonald when he was lying on the ground dying (click image to see the full dash-cam video)
 

The first thing Emanuel needs to do is issue a strong public rebuke of Chicago’s top prosecutor, Anita Alvarez.

This prosecutor dragged her feet for over a year on indicting the policeman shown in that video firing 16-shots in the space of 15 seconds into Laquan McDonald. That police video clearly shows the 17-year-old McDonald walking away from police, not lurching towards officers. Chicago’s Police Department, then headed by McCarthy, along with its police union had maintained since McDonald’s fatal shooting in October 2014 that the teen was approaching the officers.

On the topic of torture the nation of Turkey could teach some gruesome techniques to ISIS, the terrorist movement executing a savage reign across Syria and beyond (reportedly with Turkish government support).

That reality of brutality in Turkey – another problematic American ally – is a fact known all too well by Turgay Ulu, a Turkish journalist who endured a 15-year imprisonment in Turkey, where he was tortured. During Ulu’s long imprisonment, Turkish authorities justified his conviction on their claim that they had evidence against him –- evidence authorities obtained from two other victims of torture.

“I was tortured with electro shocks,” Ulu said during an interview earlier this year in Berlin, Germany where he is a leading figure in a movement for refugee rights. Ulu’s long imprisonment in Turkey led many, including Amnesty International, to consider him a political prisoner. Ulu was released from a Turkish prison in 2011 and he immediately fled to Europe.

Ulu was initially arrested in 1996 when Turkish authorities accused the then 23-year-old of belonging to two communist organizations. Ulu admits being a “Marxist” activist in Turkey but denies membership in those two organizations. A report Amnesty International released in 2006 examining serious flaws in Turkey’s justice system cited Ulu’s case. That AI report noted it was “highly improbable” that Ulu would be involved in “two ideologically unrelated” armed organizations.
Turgay Ulu, Turkish dissident and political prisoner caught in a Kafkaesque trap between Turkey and Germany

Protests against rampant police brutality occurred recently in the respective capitals of France and the United States – two nations that proclaim strict fidelity to the rule of law yet two professed democracy-loving nations where officials routinely condone rampant lawlessness by law enforcers.

The 20th Anniversary of the 1995 Million Man March – captioned “Justice Or Else” – took place in Washington, DCk with a core complaint being police brutality. During that protest rally held outside the U.S. Capitol building and along the National Mall relatives of police brutality victims were invited speakers. Those relatives included the father of Michael Brown, killed in 2014 by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri and a sister of Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas police station this past summer following a flawed and brutal arrest for an alleged minor traffic violation.

On the same Saturday as the “Justice Or Else” rally in DC, protestors gathered outside the Gare de Nord train station in Paris to demonstrate against the death earlier this year of Amadou Koumé. That 33-year-old father of three died during an encounter with police at a bar in Paris when he was put in a choke-hold while being handcuffed. The Paris protestors demanded a judicial inquiry into the death of Koumé, rejecting what they contend has been a cover-up by police and prosecutors in Paris regarding his death.

While nearly 4,000-miles separate Washington, DC and Paris, the issue of police brutality connects the two capitals through a chain of similarities surrounding police brutality, for example the fact that the principle targets of police brutality in France and across America are persons of color.

Trans-Atlantic Police Murders: Amadeu Koumé in Paris, France and Tamir Rice in the Cleveland, Ohio
 

Editor’s Note:

This article from Ferguson In Paris, an anti-police brutality group in France, does not contain a byline. The reason for this is because members of that group say they must maintain anonymity as much as possible remain to avoid abusive retaliation from authorities and others in France. “We publish under the name of the organization because of fierce repression regarding activists dealing with police brutality,” explained a Ferguson In Paris member during a recent email exchange with ThisCan’tBeHappening.net. The claimed support by French government authorities and other for freedom of speech following the fatal shootings at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office last January 2015 apparently do not extend to French activists opposed to brutality by French police. (Ferguson In Paris, an organization that fights against police brutality and racism/discrimination in France, works in solidarity with anti-brutality groups in the United States.)
 

AN UGLY UNDERSIDE OF FRANCE: RAMPANT POLICE BRUTALITY
 

In 2005, the human rights monitoring organization Amnesty International published a report titled: “France: The search for justice.” That Amnesty report examined allegations of serious human rights violations by law enforcement officials across France between 1991 and 2005. Those human rights violations by law enforcers included unlawful killings, excessive use of force, torture, and other mistreatment. Racist abuse was reported in many cases examined by Amnesty and racist motivation appeared to be a factor in many more. As that report noted, the persistent targets of police abuse in France are “foreign nationals or French nationals of foreign origin.”

On the basis of the evidence examined, Amnesty International concluded that a pattern of de facto impunity existed with regard to police and other law enforcement officials in France. Failures by French officials “to address” police abuses have created a “climate of effective impunity for law enforcement officers,” the report stated.

That report identified a number of factors contributing to this impunity. Those factors included gaps or flaws in legislation; reluctance or failure of police, prosecutors and courts to thoroughly investigate and prosecute human rights violations involving law enforcement officials; and sentences which were not commensurate with the gravity of the crime. Like Ferguson and most other places in the United States, the Amnesty report stated that convictions of abusive police across France are “relatively rare, or when they occurred, sentences have mainly been nominal.”
French cops spray teargas directly into a protester's face during a demonstration against police abuse
 

Over 1,500 miles separate Harris County, Texas and Harrison Township, New Jersey yet public officials in those two jurisdictions seemingly share a similar posture on persons who protest against abuse by police.

Recently Ron Hickman, the Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, blasted the Black Lives Matters movement blaming that surging anti-abuse entity for being an impetus for the brutal murder of a Harris County deputy.

Hickman readily acknowledged that he didn’t have all of the facts surrounding the murder of Deputy Darren Goforth, particularly the motive for that murder. However, that lack of facts didn’t stop Hickman from his hair-trigger blast at Black Lives Matters for that murder committed by a man known to have a long history of mental illness who had no involvement with Black Lives Matter.

Earlier this year, the governing committee of Harrison Township, NJ approved a resolution “Recognizing and Honoring” the service of law enforcement officers. But that resolution contained flawed assertions like most critics of police brutality are “career criminals and agitators who seek to divide our nation…”

Curiously overlooked by many critics of those who criticize police brutality is the fact that the overwhelming majority of persons who participate in anti-brutality protests are law-abiding citizens opposed to unnecessary use of excessive force by law enforcers. Persons that have led anti-brutality protests in South Jersey communities near Harrison Township have been respected members of the clergy and prominent community leaders, not the “career criminals” referenced in that resolution approved in February.

Although the Black Lives Matters movement certainly is not beyond criticism, it is disingenuous to bash that social justice protest as an initiator of attacks on police.

‘Calling Out’ police abuse is not the same as issuance of calls to attack police. Black Lives Matter does ‘assail repeated failures across America to corral police brutality but it does not ask people to attack police.

Two men shot and killed, one a fleeing man in South Carolina, one a Texas sheriff: No connection, no equivalence