Jury Selection Begins For The R. Kelly Trial

Aaron McGruder’s cartoon “The Boondocks” settled this issue with a trial over three years ago. It appears that real life could learn a lesson from reel life. He was found not guilty on “The Boondocks” and I wouldn’t doubt if he goes free in the upcoming trial, which is almost six years after the alleged crime was committed. My problem with this trial is that it should have taken place back in 2002 when witnesses and facts were fresh. After the passing of nearly six years both R. Kelly and the supposed victim (who is now an adult) both deny that they were even in the video.

Attorneys in R&B superstar R. Kelly's child pornography trial are expected to begin questioning 150 potential jurors on Monday and it is unlikely any of his fans will be chosen to hear the allegations against one of urban music's biggest stars. Selecting a jury should take about a week, and the trial itself could take several weeks. A jury was chosen for the Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson trials and find one will be selected for this trial too. The selection of the 16 jurors, four of them alternates, will be key for both prosecutors and defense attorneys.

The 41-year-old hitmaker, known for sexually charged hits like "Bump N' Grind," has pleaded not guilty to charges that he videotaped himself having sex with a girl as young as 13. This is a case where a celebrity has good and bad public images, on one hand he is singing the gospel-like “I Believe I Can Fly” and on the other he is performing sexually infused songs like “Ignition” .

When the trial gets under way, prosecutors will face a daunting challenge: The girl believed to be on the videotape, who is now 23, says it wasn't her. Prosecutors say the videotape was made between Jan. 1, 1998, and Nov. 1 2000, and that the girl who appears in it was born in September 1984. Kelly was indicted on pornography charges June 5, 2002, after the tape surfaced.

I am definitely not taking up for R. Kelly, but let us look at this issue from a historical perspective.

— When Jerry Lee Lewis, rock’n’roll musician, married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra Gale Brown, in 1957, radio stations refused to play his music, bookings were cancelled and several years passed before his career recovered

— Miami Vice actor Don Johnson was 22 when he began a four-year relationship with 14-year-old Melanie Griffith. She moved in with him and they were married three years later. She went on to become a star in her own right

— In 1992 film director Woody Allen was accused of sleeping with his partner Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon Yi Previn. She was 21, he was 56. They were later married

— Elvis Presley met Priscilla in 1959 in Germany, where her father was stationed at an airbase near Friedberg. Elvis, too, was based there while in the army. She was invited to a party at Elvis’s home. Priscilla was 14, Elvis 24. They married eight years later in 1967

— Bill Wyman started “dating” 13-year-old Mandy Smith in 1983 when he was 47. They married six years later – and divorced two years after that

The only difference is that Kelly's indiscretion was caught on film. Were any of these performers prosecuted? NO. Should they have been? YES, that is if we are playing by the same set of rules. This has been happening for years, yet no one has been prosecuted for the offense until now.

Check out this clip from "The Trial of R. Kelly".

Mumia Deserves New Hearing

A federal appeals court on Thursday said former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot be executed for murdering a Philadelphia police officer without a new penalty hearing. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Abu-Jamal's conviction should stand, but that he should get a new sentencing hearing because of flawed jury instructions. If prosecutors don't want to give him a new death penalty hearing, Abu-Jamal would be sentenced automatically to life in prison.

Abu-Jamal, 53, once a radio reporter, has attracted a legion of artists and activists to his cause in a quarter-century on death row. A Philadelphia jury convicted him in 1982 of killing Officer Daniel Faulkner, 25, after the patrolman pulled over Abu-Jamal's brother in an overnight traffic stop.

He had appealed, arguing that racism by the judge and prosecutors corrupted his conviction at the hands of a mostly white jury. Prosecutors, meanwhile, had appealed a federal judge's 2001 decision to grant Abu-Jamal a new sentencing hearing because of the jury instructions.

Hundreds of people protested outside the federal building in Philadelphia in May and an overflow crowd - including legal scholars, students, lawyers, the policeman's widow and Abu-Jamal's brother - filled the courtroom when the appeals court heard arguments about the case.

The officer's widow, Maureen Faulkner, has kept her husband's memory alive over the years, and recently co-wrote a book about the case. The book, "Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain and Injustice," written with radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish, came out in December.

Marion Jones Sentenced to Six Months in Jail

Once the most celebrated woman athlete in the world, a disgraced Marion Jones has been sentenced to six months in jail for perjury. Last year she denied using performance enhancing drugs despite reports to the contrary. She was also involved in a check fraud scheme. I wonder if I am the only one speculating about what happened to cause this young woman’s downward spiral.

Seven years after winning five Olympic track and field medals is officially broke and humiliated. Jones has lost off all of her properties, including the home she had purchased for her mother. Last year, a Jones urine sample tested positive for the performance-enhancing drugs. Jones immediately quit a European track tour and returned to the United States. Although she was cleared when a backup sample tested negative, she missed at least five major international meets, forfeiting an estimated $300,000 in appearance and performance fees.

In her prime, Jones was one of track’s first female millionaires, typically earning between $70,000 and $80,000 a race, plus at least another $1 million from race bonuses and endorsement deals. Jones made an appeal to the judge that she not be separated from her two sons, which includes a baby who is still nursing. The judge denied her request acknowledging that the children were innocent victims, but "criminals have to realize the consequences of their actions on others".

Jones claims not to have known that she was taken steroids, which she stated was given to her by her then trainer, Trevor Graham. I don’t think she should go to jail. She has been stripped of her money, homes, lifestyle, Olympic medals, and her dignity. Why should her young children have to suffer the absence of their mother? I would like to know how others feel about Jones’s sentencing.

Supreme Court Ruling Aimed At Reducing Racial Disparity

The Associated Press reports that on Monday the Supreme Court ruled that judges may impose shorter prison sentences for crack cocaine crimes, enhancing judicial discretion to reduce the disparity between sentences for crack and cocaine powder. By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.

In a separate sentencing case that did not involve crack cocaine, the court also ruled in favor of judicial discretion to impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend.The challenges to criminal sentences center on a judge's discretion to impose a shorter sentence than is called for in guidelines established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, at Congress' direction. The guidelines were adopted in the mid-1980s to help produce uniform punishments for similar crimes.

The cases are the result of a decision three years ago in which the justices ruled that judges need not strictly follow the sentencing guidelines. Instead, appellate courts would review sentences for reasonableness, although the court has since struggled to define what it meant by that term. Seventy percent of crack defendants are given the mandatory prison terms. Those convicted of crimes involving crack are overwhelmingly people of color.

Kimbrough's case did not present the justices with the ultimate question of the fairness of the disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences. Congress wrote the harsher treatment for crack into a law that sets a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking in 5 grams of crack cocaine or 100 times as much cocaine powder. The law also sets maximum terms.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said, "A reviewing court could not rationally conclude that it was an abuse of discretion" to cut four years off the guidelines-recommended sentence for Kimbrough. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas (surprise, surprise) dissented. It seems that Thomas has no ambition to help people of color, especially black people, but I digress (check out his book in the library).

The Sentencing Commission recently changed the guidelines to reduce the disparity in prison time for the two crimes. New guidelines took effect Nov. 1 after Congress took no action to overturn the change. The commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday afternoon on the retroactive application of the crack cocaine guideline amendment that went into effect on Nov. 1. The commission has estimated 19,500 inmates could apply for sentence reductions under the proposal.

The Lena Baker Story

Tichina Arnold ("Everybody Hates Chris", "Martin") will be starring in an independent film entitled "The Lena Baker Story" about the first and only Georgia woman to be sent to the electric chair. First of all I am totally against the death penalty under any circumstances. The main reason is that it is a barbaric and outdated way to deal with crime. Secondly, it does not deter crime because those who commit crime do not think they will get caught and many people actually do not get caught.

Another problem with the death penalty is that some people on death row are not guilty, which brings me back to Ms. Baker. It seems that this woman was used for sex (raped) by her employer regularly and when she finally got the nerve to fight back she ended up killing him which led to her being convicted (by an all white, male jury) and sentenced to death. Although she proclaimed her innocence, stating that she acted in self-defense, she was executed. Sixty years after her execution she was pardoned by the Governor of Georgia.

Although justice came far too late for this mother of three, her story can help to illustrate what is wrong with the United States justice system. The same problems that existed sixty years ago still persist today. People of color continue to bear the brunt of an justice system that often times simply does not work . Some people say that the time has come to move on and not focus on the past. I beg to differ, “Those who are unaware of history are destined to repeat it" - George Santayana. I welcome any comments you might have.