Play Show
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Segment Producer: Jasmyne Cannick
BACKGROUND
On June 5, voters in Los Angeles County will select from 6 candidates the next District Attorney to replace Steve Cooley. The District Attorney prosecutes felony and misdemeanor crimes, including decisions involving the death penalty, life, and life without the possibility of parole, that occur within the jurisdiction of Los Angeles County, the largest local prosecutor’s office in the United States.
According to California’s Public Policy Institute, African Americans are dramatically more likely to be imprisoned than are other groups. Among adult men in 2010, African Americans were incarcerated at a rate of 5,525 per 100,000, compared to 1,146 for Latinos, 671 for non-Latino whites, and 43 for Asians. Among women, African Americans were incarcerated at a rate of 342 per 100,000, compared to 57 for Latinas, 66 for non-Latina whites, and 5 for Asians.
133 death judgments, or 49 percent of the L.A. County’s total, have been against black defendants. The county has handed down 43 death judgments against black defendants for killing white victims and two death judgments against white defendants for killing black victims. Black defendants, additionally, are serving 45 percent of the county’s life-without-parole sentences.
Monday, June 4, the candidates themselves will be on the Front Page to make their case to African American voters, but today, we here from some of Los Angeles’ most respected criminal defense attorneys–the lawyers who argue against the D.A. in what we as voters should be looking for in the next District Attorney.
GUESTS
NANA GYAMFI
A graduate of UCLA’s Law School, since 1994, Nana Gyamfi has been a criminal defense attorney. In addition to being an attorney, Nana is a professor of Pan African Studies at Cal State Los Angeles.
Email: nanagyamfi@aol.com
JAAYE PERSON-LYNN
At 29, Jaaye Person-Lynn is a graduate of Hampton University and Howard University School of Law. Currently, he works for the L.A. Public Defender’s Office.
Email: jpersonlynn@gmail.com
Twitter: @jaayeesq
JAMON R. HICKS
Jamon R. Hicks practices law in the areas of civil litigation and criminal defense, representing plaintiffs in state and federal courts for the Cochran Firm. His civil litigation experience involves wrongful death, serious personal injury, and police misconduct cases. He also has litigated numerous felony and misdemeanor criminal cases such as attempted murder, assaults on peace officers, terrorist threats, driving under the influence, drug and gun possession matters. Mr. Hicks received his undergraduate degree with honors from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001 and his J.D. from Loyola Law School in 2004.
Phone: (323) 931-6200
Email: jhicks@cochranfirm.com
May 28, 2012 at 7:05 am
I’m leaning toward voting for Danette Meyers for L.A. County district attorney. 1) She’s female, so she’d be the first to hold the post. That’s good because we need more women in these roles. 2) She’s also black and seems to be tough but somewhat fair. 3) She seems to be qualified with 25+ years experience and semi-decent compared t0 others. She goes after non-whites hard so I like this. I’m doing a little more research to be sure. In the alternative, I might go with Lacey. I’ll know for sure when I listen next Monday to them on KJLH and see how they come across, what they are talking about and what they’re all about. But my choice is definitely between Meyers and Lacey as of right now.
One thing I discovered by researching the candidates on my own is that Danette Meyers is the female district attorney who prosecuted crazy Lindsay Lohan. Good for her. But she didn’t seem very hard on Lohan. And I wonder if Meyes just used this celeb case to get her face out there and to step up into this role.
There was a shown down in the courtroom on TMZ that I saw between she (Meyers) and Lohan’s attorney Shawn Holley (former public defender and attorney who worked with the legend Johnnie Cochran).
Anyway, Lohan should still be sitting in jail right now, the only reason why she’s gotten so many breaks is because she has a great attorney (Holley) and because Lohan is a white woman with money. If Lohan was an African-American woman in all that constant trouble, she would have been under the jail by now.
Check it out here:
http://www.tmz.com/videos?autoplay=true&mediaKey=5431f1ac-15e3-4bf8-aa04-0618fa7eae02
May 28, 2012 at 7:09 am
My bad….I wrote in the above post…that Meyers goes after “non-whites” hard but meant to write that she goes after “non-blacks” hard…
We don’t need somebody who is just into locking up blacks at any costs and to advance his or her career. There needs to be alternatives to prisons.
May 28, 2012 at 11:34 am
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