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In America, they're mostly poor Blacks or Latinos denied due process and judicial fairness by a corrupted prosecutorial system rigged to convict even known innocent defendants like Troy Anthony Davis.
Author Michelle Alexander calls America's mass incarceration "The New Jim Crow." Murdering innocent Black victims highlights it.
Colorblind America never existed. Certainly not in Georgia, a state once infamous for chain gangs.
The 1932 film, "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," was based on Robert Elliott Burns' autobiography titled, "I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang."
Their brutality helped turn public opinion against a system that included keeping prisoners in rolling cages to hold them close to work sites. Inmates were also flogged on roadsides, bound head to toe in chains.
New prison repression replaced old Georgia practices. State-sponsored murder existed earlier and today, notably against poor Blacks. Innocence is of no consequence. Only guilt by accusation matters.
Davis was wrongfully charged for killing off-duty Savanah, GA policeman Mark MacPhail. Arrested on August 23, 1989, he was indicted in mid-November despite no evidence proving his guilt.
In August 1991, he was convicted and sentenced to death. Subsequent appeals were denied.
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