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A man who was found not guilty of armed robbery will still serve up to seven years behind bars after a judge ruled he had breached the rules of his probation sentence for another crime.
Ramad Chatman handed himself in to police when he found out he was a suspect for an armed robbery at a convenience store in his hometown of Georgia in July 2014.
The 24-year-old was already was serving a five year probation term (a court order served outside prison through fines and community service) for his first ever offence, breaking and entering an apartment to steal a television worth $120 in 2012.
The following February, a judge decided it was likely he did commit the robbery and as a result Chatman was re-sentenced for the original crime of stealing a TV and ordered to serve 10-years behind bars, back dated to the day of the crime.
Court documents nonetheless showed he did everything asked of him during his probation, including checking in, paying restitution and finishing his community service. He was also holding down a job.
But when the armed robbery trial came to court in August, he was found not guilty.
It later emerged that ahead of the trial Chapman[sic] tried to enter an Alford plea on the charge of aggravated assault in exchange for the armed robbery charges being dropped.
An Alford plea means the defendant enters a guilty plea, but maintains his innocence. It is often used when a defendant feels like despite his innocence, he will lose at trial.
The judge refused to accept the deal, so the case was heard before a jury - who ruled he was innocent of the crime.
Presiding Judge John Niedrach, disagreed with their verdict however.
So despite the fact police never recovered the weapon, stolen money, or any other evidence connecting him to the robbery, he declined to release Mr Chatman, who remains in prison for violating the terms of his first probation order.
Original Submission[Edit: [sic]'ed the Independent's typo - FP]
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:27PM (10 children)
Spoken like a white dude, who believes that punitive excess directed towards Black people is an extraordinary myth, not a statistically demonstrable norm. The extraordiary circumstance is when race bias is NOT an element.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:44PM (4 children)
Your statistical argument might have more weight than a pingpong ball were it not for the demonstrable disproportion of blacks committing vastly more crime compared to the general population.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:47PM (1 child)
Where is your proof that blacks commit more crime? What we have proof of is that blacks get arrested more often, charged more often, and convicted more often. As this case demonstrates, that's not necessarily proof of committing crimes. Supposing we knew for certain, for all crimes, who committed which crimes we could make your claim, but we don't so you can't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:14PM
Nice try, Skippy. Picking the statistics that suit you and dismissing anything contrary neither validates your argument nor invalidates mine.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by compro01 on Thursday May 25 2017, @09:09PM (1 child)
And how do you know that? Because the "justice" system convicts them more often? And you don't see anything circular about that reasoning?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @04:30AM
Not the original AC, but just as a point of logic, the reverse reasoning, that we know the justice system is biased because there are more minorities convicted of crimes is also circular reason. Neither of the assumed causations, minorities commit more crimes or the justice system is unfair to minorities, can really be proved by the that statistic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:52PM
Spoken like someone with no evidence except to make personal attacks. I am absolutely shocked at this turn of events, who could have possibly predict it?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:13PM (3 children)
We don't need stats. The truth is that white people also get shot and abused by police. Specifically, poor people on the wrong side of the tracks, vagrants, and other undesirables as far as LE is concerned.
It's also the truth that minorities, specifically black men, are abused several times more than white men. The "myth" that people abused people, especially black people, turned into truth the moment Japan started helping make cameras ubiquitous in America. Evidence is fucking everywhere now. Black boys (not men) running away from officers and being shot in the back. A picture can say a thousand words, but with video sometimes no words need to be said. You don't need stats with all of the videos. What happened to Rodney King was a wake up call for America.
Like you said, if anyone needs to prove anything, it's LE proving to us that they actually serve our interests. Prove they are not an abusive organization of men and women that have unique legal protections and strong group representation to resist reforms, oversight, and punishments. The Judicial has also been caught several times in for profit prison scams to increase populations. Entire counties in the South are dependent upon prison revenue.
I was cynical about police abusing black people until the videos kept piling up. A couple a week at one point. Then another one. Then a few more. Abuse over black men gets the media attention, but the fact that a LOT of white people are being abused at the same time gets forgotten quite often.
The videos are showing us that the police are not there for us. All of those "myths" we heard in the past are telling us that this is not something new. Our ability to record evidence and share it, that is what is new.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:43PM (2 children)
Look at proportional and per-capita rates for US prisons.
The expressed bias of America's legal systems and by extension, its society and norms, is evident. Anomalies in these statistics don't occur on orders of magnitude.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @09:31PM (1 child)
> Look at proportional and per-capita rates for US prisons.
In 2010 black men were 6x more likely to be incarcerated than white men. [pewresearch.org]
If white men had the same rate of incarceration as black men, our justice system would be fixed overnight.
Anyone who says that white men get the same treatment from the police — I'm looking at you eddie — is willfully ignorant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @04:47AM
Derp derp he literally said black people are several times more likely to be prosecuted, he wasn't ignoring the fact just trying to jeep the conversation balanced and make it a conversation about LE problems and not only a racism problem.