Outside of the 6th District’s Federal court dozens of people: family members, advocates and organizational leads came together in support of those wrongfully convicted and over-sentenced in Michigan’s Departmet of Corrections (MDOC). New York based Shawanna Vaughn, prisoner right’s advocate and founder of Silent Cry, traveled across the region to host this rally in support of MDOC captives like Wilson Rivera, Quentin Jones, Martez Clemons and countless others who are unjustifiably suffering behind bars in overcrowded, dilapidated state prison facilities with medical care standards lower than that of many third world counties.
The event highlighted the concrete failures that the state system has within its operating procedures that view plea deals accepted under duress as a success, a state system that works against the people in order to cover up the actions of judges and prosecutors who mishandle justice. Michigan has mis-sentenced and over-sentenced so many of its citizens that the state has bankrupt it’s fund for compensating those formerly incarcerated citizens for each indefensible year spent behind bars. This is an explicit indicator of Michigan’s inability to operate it’s legal and prison system effectively, in a way that the public accepts as being unprejudiced, objective and detached from capital interests. Rally participants insisted that capital interests were valued by official stakeholders over their own, feeling unheard and underserved by the leaders of the state’s legal system they demanded their loved ones immediate releases.
Along with highlighted the concrete failures that the state has within its legal system, protestors also united around their fears for their loved ones physical and mental health. The negligent attitude towards medical care has been an ongoing issue in MDOC, with many people in prison suffering of preventible illnesses and dying from treatable conditions, its as if the system is way too overcrowded to provide any type of effective care to those housed within it. This negligent standard of care has perpetuated throughout the past year of global pandemic conditions including lack of medical resources to distribute among the overcrowded population that places those with conditions at even more risk to either contracting covid or simply having their condition exasperated to the point of critical severity and terminal illness as a result of MDOC’s negligence.
Some rally speakers included Marcus Wright from Better Not Broken LLC who spoke on his experience as an exoneree who continues to support newly released exonerees through his own organization. Similarly, JaMo Thomas, a former juvenile lifer that was released from his extremely harsh sentence after more than thirty years, shared his experience of being sentenced to life in prison at the age of 15. JaMo was released in his 40s a result of recently passed supreme court decision that prohibited juvenile life sentences. Along with these, Justus Noww’s co-founder Shirletha Gaskins reminds attendees to, “Say Their Names!” as incarcerated organizers called in from Michigan prisons scattered across the state including at Gus Harrison in Adrian and Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater, both sites of this year’s #ShutEmDown actions. I had the privilege of speaking during the rally as well, reminding attendees that the conditions people in prison are facing are not unique to those wrongly convicted. The 40 (MDOC underreports 24) prisoner deaths at Lakeland Correctional Facility were preventible, but as a result of MDOC’s failure to respond to pandemic conditions appropriately, dozens of men were sentenced to death behind bars.
The Innocence Rally is a call for us all to demand a complete overhaul of the way that criminal sentencing is conducted in the state of Michigan. What will it take for more citizens to pressure state and elected officials to make the changes necessary in order to have a more effective legal system and humane prison system? Will we have to wait until an unjust arrest shocks one’s own family? If feeling injustice directly is one’s only hope for revelation then that’s their own misfortune. Let’s refuse to allow injustice to spread any further, stand with wrongfully convicted and over-sentenced men and women held captive in MDOC today! Contact your state representative and ask what they are doing to prevent these types of cases, document their response and hold them accountable.
Check out Shawnna Vaughn’s newly published book, Cries for Change.
