Speaker 1: Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
Speaker 1: the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop
Speaker 1: Weekly studios. You are still tuned in the civic cipeer
Speaker 1: Iromy host Ramsy's Jock he.
Speaker 2: Is Rams's jah I am q Ward. Thank you for
Speaker 2: continuing into an inna civic sycy. Yeah, we really do
Speaker 2: appreciate it, and we still got some more for you.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be talking about Ronnie Long. This is the
Speaker 2: gentleman who's been making headlines.
Speaker 1: Lately for getting released from prison after forty four years
Speaker 1: for a wrongful conviction and then being awarded seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars and saying, you know what, that's
Speaker 1: not right because forty four years of my life is
Speaker 1: not worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Even what he what he ended up getting, is still
Speaker 2: still not enough. Yeah, four years of his life, but
Speaker 2: it's a lot less insulting.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to spend some time talking about
Speaker 1: him and indeed the prevalence of cases just like that,
Speaker 1: where you know, people are innocent but they end up
Speaker 1: doing prison time. But before we get there, it's time
Speaker 1: to discuss ba BA Becoming a Better Ally Boba and
Speaker 1: Today's bob A sponsored by Friends of the Movement, can
Speaker 1: sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot
Speaker 1: com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well
Speaker 1: as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal
Speaker 1: dot com all right, and today's story comes from the
Speaker 1: Black Information Network. According to GBP, businesswoman and philanthropist Ronda Striker.
Speaker 3: Should look her up.
Speaker 1: She's like God, she's a billionaire and he's white. If
Speaker 1: you go those in Ona and her husband William Johnston,
Speaker 1: chairman of Greenleaf Trust, donated one hundred million dollars to Spellman,
Speaker 1: marking the largest single donation ever made to an HBCU.
Speaker 1: That's historically black college or university, all right. Striker, a
Speaker 1: Spelman College trustee since nineteen seven ninety seven, hopes to
Speaker 1: empower women through higher education and create more opportunities for
Speaker 1: marginalized groups. According to a press release of the one
Speaker 1: hundred movie and dollars, seventy five million will go toward
Speaker 1: in doubt scholarships for future students in hopes of removing
Speaker 1: financial barriers that prevent qualified individuals from attending Spellman and
Speaker 1: twenty five million will be used to help create an
Speaker 1: academic focus on public policy and democracy, improve student housing,
Speaker 1: and provide flexible funding meet critical and strategic needs.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: We are invigorated and inspired by this incredible act of generosity,
Speaker 1: Doctor Helene Gail, President of Spellman College, said in the
Speaker 1: press release. This gift is a critical step in our
Speaker 1: school's mission to eliminate financial barriers to starting and finishing
Speaker 1: a Spellman education. We can't thank Ronda Striker enough for
Speaker 1: her selflessness and support as both the trustee and friend.
Speaker 1: There is no doubt that Spellman College is better because
Speaker 1: of her. And that is an ally if I ever
Speaker 1: saw one, especially because as of late, as you well know,
Speaker 1: and probably going to talk about it next week, there's
Speaker 1: been so much pushback for DEI inclusivity, affirmative action, and
Speaker 1: really black access to a better life.
Speaker 2: Shout out the Spellman College and the entire ACU.
Speaker 3: All right, let's talk about Ronnie Long.
Speaker 1: So we painted a little bit of a picture for you,
Speaker 1: But I'm going to share a bit from CBS News.
Speaker 1: A man wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for forty four years,
Speaker 1: has reached a twenty five million dollars combined settlement with
Speaker 1: a central North Carolina city and the state of North
Speaker 1: Carolina involving a lawsuit accusing authorities of misconduct, the man's
Speaker 1: lawyer said Tuesday. The settlement, which will end a wrongful
Speaker 1: incarceration lawsuit filed by attorneys for Ronnie Wallace Long in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, also included a public written apology from
Speaker 1: the city of Concord for its role in his imprisonment.
Speaker 1: The city, located about twenty five miles northeast of Charlotte,
Speaker 1: has agreed to pay twenty two million dollars. In the
Speaker 1: settlement quote, we are deeply remorseful for the past wrongs
Speaker 1: that caused tremendous harm to mister Long, his family, friends,
Speaker 1: and our community, The city statement read. While there are
Speaker 1: no measures to fully restore to mister Long and his
Speaker 1: family all that was taken from them through this agreement,
Speaker 1: we are doing everything in our power to write the
Speaker 1: past wrongs and take responsibility. Long now sixty eight, was
Speaker 1: a young black man living in Concord when he was
Speaker 1: accused of raping a white woman. An all white jury
Speaker 1: in Caberis County that Long's attorneys said was handpicked by
Speaker 1: local law enforcement leaders convicted Long of burglary and rape
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six at age twenty one. Long received
Speaker 1: two life sentences. Long was helped for years in its
Speaker 1: criminal case appeal by a wrongful convictions clinic at Duke
Speaker 1: University's law school. Long's attorneys had said that more than
Speaker 1: forty fingerprints collected from the scene were never shared and
Speaker 1: did not match lungs Seamen's samples also were never disclosed
Speaker 1: to the defense. They later disappeared. A state commission awarded
Speaker 1: Long seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, initially by the law,
Speaker 1: the state's top compensation for victims of wrongful incarceration. He
Speaker 1: then sued in federal court and rally and in part
Speaker 1: accused Conquered police officers of extraordinary misconduct that led to
Speaker 1: his wrongful conviction and imprisonment in violation of his civil rights.
Speaker 1: As part of the settlement, Long also received three million
Speaker 1: dollars from the State Bureau of Investigation quote as reculte
Speaker 1: sorry as a result of the SBI's role in hiding
Speaker 1: evidence from mister Long and his legal team that proved
Speaker 1: his innocence. And I want to read this statement just
Speaker 1: because I think it helps make this live a little
Speaker 1: bit more because remember how young he was at age
Speaker 1: twenty one. I know my mother and father died with
Speaker 1: a broken heart. He said, I'm going to tell them
Speaker 1: now when I visit the grave site, your son is clear. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's a whole lot here. Q. Let's get your
Speaker 1: your initial take on this one before we break it
Speaker 1: down even further.
Speaker 2: It has long been the position of people in power,
Speaker 2: be it legislators, policymakers, or law enforcement two, as you
Speaker 2: said in our previous topic, doubled down on their wrongs,
Speaker 2: especially when those most affected by those wrongs look like us,
Speaker 2: rather than do the work, and in this case, did
Speaker 2: the work and ignored their findings just to maintain their
Speaker 2: position that this young man was by nature criminal. Right,
Speaker 2: because you have to remember that these trials in the
Speaker 2: Deep South of people that look like us, when law
Speaker 2: enforcement does not, when law enforcement is entrenched in white supremacy,
Speaker 2: there is an assumption of guilt from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: And the idea is, even if we didn't get the
Speaker 2: right person, we got one of them. We got one
Speaker 2: and they would have likely probably done it anyway, done
Speaker 2: something anyway, right, real quick.
Speaker 1: I want to say something for those that missed the
Speaker 1: Way Black History Fact. We do a Way Black History
Speaker 1: Fact on the show every week. We just talked about
Speaker 1: Fanny lou Hamer and she went to a doctory to
Speaker 1: have a uterine surgery and they forced sterilization on her
Speaker 1: during that procedure against her wishes without her knowing. So
Speaker 1: this is not like this way of thinking, at least
Speaker 1: we got one of them, or got one off the street,
Speaker 1: would eventually done something that goes beyond law enforcement. This
Speaker 1: is and that's that is not an isolated story. That's
Speaker 1: not even isolated to black people. There have been population
Speaker 1: control measures that have been forced on Puerto Rico comes
Speaker 1: to mind. I know that our Hispanic brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: they've had issues with this as well, but please continue.
Speaker 2: So we have to live with that reality. This man
Speaker 2: almost literally lived the entirety of his life.
Speaker 3: In prison.
Speaker 2: You commit a crime that is a very impossible thing
Speaker 2: to reconcile. That's why you see people react to sentence,
Speaker 2: to harsh sentences the way that they do, even though
Speaker 2: found guilty when all the evidence pointed to them, and
Speaker 2: there's a likelihood because we don't know without being able
Speaker 2: to actually prove it ourselves. We don't know, right, but
Speaker 2: even in instances where you'd be so inclined to believe
Speaker 2: this person is guilty, forty four years is a lifetime, sure,
Speaker 2: even for a crime you committed to try to daily
Speaker 2: reconcile for forty four years, something that you are absolutely
Speaker 2: certain that you did not do and that you probably
Speaker 2: assumed upon your arrest.
Speaker 3: Or the evidence will Yeah, I'll be funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the evidence is going to show very very swiftly
Speaker 2: that I had nothing to do with this is the
Speaker 2: way that a normal person would react. We have to
Speaker 2: go into it kind of like, man, this could really
Speaker 2: go bad.
Speaker 3: No matter what you're gonna love.
Speaker 2: You have to say if all the evidence shows that
Speaker 2: this wasn't me. It's really hard to try with the
Speaker 2: amount of time that we have to articulate how it
Speaker 2: feels to know this singular truth. Unfortunately for us, we
Speaker 2: know that it's not singular, which makes it far worse.
Speaker 1: So that's what I want. There's two things I want
Speaker 1: to say. One I'll get to eventually, but the first
Speaker 1: one that I want to say is that on this show,
Speaker 1: we use examples like this as a way of illuminating
Speaker 1: or giving you an aperture into understanding data. We are
Speaker 1: not two black men who got an hour of radio
Speaker 1: time and thought, hey, why don't we just complain about
Speaker 1: isolated incidents.
Speaker 3: No, this show was put together meticulously.
Speaker 1: And rather than us spouting out numbers of rates of incarceration,
Speaker 1: rates of whatever bad that is affecting marginalized people in
Speaker 1: this country, we often enough do our best to share
Speaker 1: stories that let you know what the real world implications are,
Speaker 1: and that explain that data to you in a way
Speaker 1: that humanizes it and that allows you. We're assuming that
Speaker 1: you are potential allies or maybe well established allies. If
Speaker 1: you're listening to us on this radio station, this gives
Speaker 1: you some insight into.
Speaker 3: The numbers.
Speaker 1: In other words, we're not just talking for the sake
Speaker 1: of talking. We don't think this stuff is cool. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to bum in everybody out. This is
Speaker 1: what allows us to make the numbers live, right, And
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 3: Another thing that you said, and this is the other
Speaker 3: point I wanted to make.
Speaker 1: When you talk about a normal person getting himmed up
Speaker 1: by the police, right, normal person who's innocent would think
Speaker 1: to themselves, oh, you know what, I'm innocent I'll just
Speaker 1: explain it to the police and they will understand that
Speaker 1: I'm innocent of this crime. Everything is going to be okay,
Speaker 1: or I just want to survive this interaction, right, No, No,
Speaker 1: that's us. I'm talking about a normal person.
Speaker 3: Right, No, No, I'm or yeah, you were.
Speaker 2: Just the idea is I can't of course, I can't
Speaker 2: explain myself about this. I'm being arrested, right, So, Okay,
Speaker 2: I see what you're saying. So let me just get
Speaker 2: through this because eventually they're going to see that I'm
Speaker 2: I wasn't even there, or it was him I saw him,
Speaker 2: or video or the fingerprints or something like, there's no
Speaker 2: way this was me.
Speaker 1: I'll be fine, yeah, right, okay, So normal person says
Speaker 1: that normal person, so let me not say normal.
Speaker 3: Let's say heterosexual. Straight. I guess that's the same thing.
Speaker 1: Christian white, healthy man, Okay, might have this type of thinking.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me just talk to the police. It'll be fine.
Speaker 3: I'll explain everything to them. We'll be good.
Speaker 2: Well, according to a certain superintendent, what you just described
Speaker 2: is normal.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is what Yeah, so this is what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to say. We have to so thank you
Speaker 2: for that to conform to the normal.
Speaker 1: Well said, So that's what this person is thinking, right,
Speaker 1: and that makes sense if indeed he is innocent. Nothing
Speaker 1: to see here. Let me just explain it to them
Speaker 1: and it'll be fine. For people who don't fit that
Speaker 1: specific description, it can be more problematic. The darker you are,
Speaker 1: the more problematic it is. And there's other factors. That's
Speaker 1: like a scale, you know, the more this you are,
Speaker 1: the more problematic those interactions can be. So much so
Speaker 1: that we actively teach people on this show. If the
Speaker 1: police are talking to you, it's like you know, name
Speaker 1: and rank and that's it. Like you're showing me your ID.
Speaker 1: If I'm being detained, I request my right to legal counsel,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm being arrested, whatever you know? And
Speaker 1: the most basic of questions, because the truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is that the police are so well equipped to
Speaker 1: take words. If you think you're explaining words to them
Speaker 1: and use those words against you, you could be guilty
Speaker 1: of a crime that you don't even know exist. It's
Speaker 1: their job to know all ten thousand laws that you
Speaker 1: may have broken. I didn't just make up that number.
Speaker 1: That's a real number. Their job is to know that,
Speaker 1: and they'll catch you on something. Hey, you were riding
Speaker 1: your bike and it didn't have a light on the
Speaker 1: front of it. You see what I'm saying, And then
Speaker 1: they can they have the right to detain you as
Speaker 1: a result of that. And now you're detained and being questioned,
Speaker 1: and if you say the wrong thing I was, I
Speaker 1: was coming from here and I was going there. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you're in a world of mess
Speaker 1: right now. The thing is the reason we know this,
Speaker 1: So I didn't just learn this doing the show. I've
Speaker 1: been knowing this. The reason I know that is because
Speaker 1: I've lived a black life. I'm gonna take it a
Speaker 1: step first.
Speaker 2: It's urban myth that most black Americans could be paralegals
Speaker 2: just from that interactions with law enforcement.
Speaker 3: So watch this this next step.
Speaker 1: You mentioned something about if you're black and you're interacting
Speaker 1: with the police and you get arrested and you're hemmed up.
Speaker 1: That's a very different situation because there's a chance you
Speaker 1: might not make it out, even if the evidence is
Speaker 1: in your favor, even if you are completely innocent. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to survive the interaction first, I mean literally,
Speaker 1: ye that first, you have to not have your life
Speaker 1: taken just during the interaction, even for something as benign
Speaker 1: as your tail light is out or you didn't signal
Speaker 1: before you got over, like imagine that that's what you
Speaker 1: Even we do videos of people dying because of the
Speaker 1: stuff like that. All did was not signal before changing lanes,
Speaker 1: and the result of that interaction, the subsequent interaction, was
Speaker 1: that you died. Because they go around with guns and
Speaker 1: they get scared so easily. And Q always says he
Speaker 1: doesn't really think they're scared anyway.
Speaker 2: I know that that's not fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I try to give the benefit of the doubt
Speaker 1: because I know there's people that will push back, not
Speaker 1: because I sincerely believe that there's some things that just
Speaker 1: are objectively like not scary anyway. And if they are scary,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be an officer. We should not call you
Speaker 1: a brave hero that protects us or whatever. It contradicts
Speaker 1: that narrative. And then even back to what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: I want to talk for a second about plea deals.
Speaker 1: Why would an innocent person accept.
Speaker 3: The plea.
Speaker 2: Rhetorical or you want some fee?
Speaker 3: No no no, no, no no no, I'll I'll make the point.
Speaker 3: I know you know, I know you got it. Don't
Speaker 3: jump on.
Speaker 1: Look man, y'all, y'all may not notice, but Q is
Speaker 1: from Detroit. He knows these stories better than well about
Speaker 1: the same rest of us.
Speaker 3: How about that, But Q it got them Detroit stores.
Speaker 3: My older brothers on the other side, I.
Speaker 1: Don't want to say yeah so so yeah, I can
Speaker 1: know exactly what that is.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of insight as to why someone innocent
Speaker 2: of a crime would do such a thing.
Speaker 3: So watch this. Here's the data for you. Okay.
Speaker 1: This comes from the Innocence Project, so you can check
Speaker 1: this out for yourself.
Speaker 3: Innocenceproject dot org.
Speaker 1: Okay, fifty seven percent of the people who have been
Speaker 1: freed from prison for a crime that they did not commit,
Speaker 1: fifty seven percent of them were black.
Speaker 3: How many what percentage of black people are there in
Speaker 3: this country? Roughly fourteen? There you go.
Speaker 1: Fifty seven percent who have been exonerated were black.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Of those exonerated after a guilty plea was entered, seventy
Speaker 1: five percent were black and brown people. In other words,
Speaker 1: you see how an innocent person could enter in to
Speaker 1: the record a plea of guilty or to accept the
Speaker 1: plea deal because their chances of fighting that either they
Speaker 1: don't have the money, they're not in the best legal
Speaker 1: position to have as much strength going into that, or
Speaker 1: they realize that they could lose even if they're innocent.
Speaker 1: So let me just explit the difference. I'll accept the
Speaker 1: plea I'll be home in two years, five or whatever
Speaker 1: the number is, and what does that do? That pads
Speaker 1: the incarceration rates and that adds to the narrative that
Speaker 1: black people and brown people are criminals and so forth.
Speaker 1: How about this? So the Georgia Innocence Project projects this
Speaker 1: studies or says this studies estimate that four to six
Speaker 1: percent of incarcerated people are innocent.
Speaker 3: Right, So.
Speaker 1: We have a criminal justice system as deeply flawed. But
Speaker 1: Brian Stevenson is a person who're a big fan of
Speaker 1: on this show.
Speaker 3: He's the.
Speaker 1: Head guy of the Equal Justice Initiative, So check him out.
Speaker 1: Brian Stevenson an Equal Justice Initiative. He says something that
Speaker 1: is very potent, and we've said on the show before
Speaker 1: as well, these are often enough life and death situations
Speaker 1: and circumstances. Would you get onto an airplane if you
Speaker 1: knew that four to six percent of airplanes crashed.
Speaker 3: Why do we not have that?
Speaker 1: Would we allow an industry to exist if four to
Speaker 1: six percent.
Speaker 3: Of the airplanes crashed? Right?
Speaker 1: But we allow this in the criminal justice system because
Speaker 1: we've written these people off. And he believes that we've
Speaker 1: written these people off unfairly because the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: in and of itself is biased. It's not so simple
Speaker 1: as just don't do the crime, right, because as we see,
Speaker 1: you don't have to do the crime to lose forty
Speaker 1: four years of your life and then get an insulting
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 2: When you say the next statistic, four to six percent
Speaker 2: sounds like a very very small number, and I think
Speaker 2: some people, given the data like that would accept that
Speaker 2: as a risk they would take.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Car accidents are a far higher percentage of that We
Speaker 2: get in our car and drive every day. So make
Speaker 2: that live a little bit better if you could. I
Speaker 2: got you, Doug, So watch this. That means one out
Speaker 2: of twenty cases result in a wrongful conviction. And I
Speaker 2: want to take the last second to add this. There's
Speaker 2: this number that you may have come across if you're
Speaker 2: really like in the social justice like me, and Q
Speaker 2: thirteen fifty or thirteen fifty two. The idea there is
Speaker 2: that it's a racist trope. But the idea is that
Speaker 2: these people will say, well.
Speaker 1: Thirteen percent of the population commits fifty percent of the crime,
Speaker 1: or fifty two percent of the crime.
Speaker 3: That's the thirteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: So when you factor in poverty rates, when you factor
Speaker 1: in access to necessities, when you factor in over policing,
Speaker 1: because it's not that these people commit that much crime,
Speaker 1: it's they get arrested that much crime.
Speaker 2: Right, black people used of that much crime there is
Speaker 2: charged with that much crime.
Speaker 1: And then you add to it the fact that these
Speaker 1: wrongful arrests exist and disproportionately overwhelmingly in most instances, affect
Speaker 1: black people. Now you're starting to get those numbers a
Speaker 1: little bit more consistent with those of our white brothers
Speaker 1: who often espouse this number thirteen fifty or thirteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: So there's your food for thought for the week, and
Speaker 1: we'll leave it right there. I'd like to thank you,
Speaker 1: as always for tuning in to Civic Cipher once again.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, ramses.
Speaker 2: Joh and I again am in your show with the
Speaker 2: ups stomach because a lot of this information is just really,
Speaker 2: really hard to digest, especially after having the benefit like
Speaker 2: us of being in so many other places in the
Speaker 2: world and experiencing life from the perspective of people who
Speaker 2: don't see us as by nature beneath an other.
Speaker 1: Well, the truth is is that we got a long
Speaker 1: way to go, but fortunately we're walking for you, and
Speaker 1: we're walking for each other. I appreciate you every week
Speaker 1: you and I know that you always thank me. That matters,
Speaker 1: So we'll ask you to come back and rock with
Speaker 1: us again next week. In the meantime, hit us on
Speaker 1: all social media at Civic Cipher and until we talk
Speaker 1: again piece