Clinton's hypocritical "Hurricane" comments

According to National Public Radio, President Clinton said that he 
admired Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's "persistence" in maintaining 
his innocence and eventually winning his freedom. Carter, a Black 
man, was wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury of murdering 
two white men and spent 19 years in prison. His story is the 
subject of the new Hollywood film "Hurricane." Clinton made his 
comments on Carter's persistence after seeing the film.

The hypocrisy here is that Clinton recently approved a law that 
would have made Carter's persistence futile. The "1996 Anti-
terrorism Bill and Effective Death Penalty Act" severely restricts 
the kind of appeals prisoners can make to federal courts, 
specifically barring so-called ITAL habeus corpus END appeals 
(appeals of state convictions to federal courts) years after the 
original trial. Unfortunately, the movie, which does successfully 
dramatize the willfull injustice of the state in this case, also 
does not mention the fact that such late ITAL habeus END appeals 
are no longer permitted.

People who go to see "Hurricane" should keep the following in 
mind. (a) Rubin Carter's case is one among millions tainted by 
national oppression and the racism that permeates Amerika's court 
system. (b) Because he was vindicated, Carter is an exception. He 
is such an exception that, if his appeal came up today, he would 
still be in prison. Many innocent people have not been as lucky as 
he was. And as more and more men -- disproportionately from 
oppressed nations -- are locked away for more and more time for 
petty crimes like drug possession, innocence or guilt becomes 
unimportant. What is important is the role Amerikan prisons play 
in violently controlling Blacks, Latinos, First Nations, and other 
oppressed groups.

--MC206