Black law students from around the country stood with St. Louis social-justice organizers to call for systemic and institutional criminal justice reform.
“St. Louis is ground zero for bringing attention to what’s happening in communities of color all across the country,” said Derick Dailey, national chair of the National Black Law Students Association, at a Friday, July 15 press conference at St. Louis City Hall.
As black law students, Dailey said, “We stand at that intersection of being lawyers in training, but also African Americans who understand the burden of being black in this country.”
The students’ press conference came on the eve of the 91st Annual Convention of the National Bar Association, held in St. Louis July 16-21.
“Charles Hamilton Houston said, ‘Lawyers had a choice,’” said Pamela J. Meanes, the NBA’s immediate past president and a partner at Thompson Coburn. “They could be a social engineer or parasites on society. Today, the National Black Law Students Association deemed that they would be social engineers to call in question a just system which is actually unjust.”
Meanes said that sometime what we see on video is not what is considered to be police brutality, but it’s considered policing under the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Tennessee v Garner. In that case, the court established that, under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officers may use deadly force against a fleeing suspect if they have probable cause that the individual posed a threat.
“And if, in fact, what we see shocks our consciousness, we should put efforts in getting Congress to set a standard for de-escalation of force. Until the law is changed, we will not see real reform in the justice system.”
Jordan Gaither, marketing director of the National Black Law Students Association, said that the black community is continually told to “get over it.”
“We will not get over the disproportionality,” Gaither said. “We refuse to believe that we are suspects.”
Several local organizations spoke alongside the students, including the ArchCity Defenders, St. Louis Strong, the ACLU, St. James AME Church and the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.
“It is our responsibility, as much as our universities’, to help us come together and have these conversations,” said Alexus Williams, a black law student at Saint Louis University School of Law.
Group members said, despite the widespread evidence of police brutality and the inequalities embedded in the criminal justice system, Congress and the judicial system have failed to address this “assault on the dignity of people of color.”
“A white man in South Carolina goes into a Wal-Mart, terrorizes the Wal-Mart, leads the police on a high-speed chase, gets into a fight with police, steals a Taser – and lives to tell about it,” Meanes said. “But a black man in Ohio standing in a toy aisle, holding a toy gun in an open-carry state, is gunned down in 0.06 seconds. That tells us something is wrong with the criminal justice system.”
Read more at http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/black-law-students-call-for-systemic-reform/article_b4463a0e-4edb-11e6-b4e8-53a7f440f5e0.html
