"When the person in your death machine requires a booster seat-maybe you should reconsider....."

[kpete]

Pursuing Justice for All
DEC. 21, 2014
Charles M. Blow

....................

He is tried for the murders just a month after the arrest. An all-white, all-male jury is empaneled. That same afternoon, the trial commences. It lasts only a few hours. The white lawyer assigned to Stinney’s defense cross-examines no witnesses and calls none of his own. The jury deliberates for only 10 minutes before finding Stinney guilty. That same day, the boy is sentenced to death by electrocution.

(Note to humanity: When the person in your death machine requires a booster seat, maybe you should reconsider what you are about to do.)

...................

This was a victory of sorts: a 70-years-too-late admission that the justice system failed that black child, and that the failure culminated — in short order — in the taking of his life. Yet something about it feels hollow and discomforting, like the thunder that rolls long after the lightning has cracked the sky and split the tree.

It boldly announces itself in all its noisy nothingness. It was the white flash that did the damage and produced the splinters.

That is all too often what “righting” racial injustice looks like in this country: a hollow pronouncement that follows the damage but doesn’t prevent its recurrence.

the rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/charles-blow-pursuing-justice-for-all.html?smid=tw-share