Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop Weekly studios. You are still tuned in the civic cipeer Iromy host Ramsy's Jock he.
Is Rams's jah I am q Ward. Thank you for continuing into an inna civic sycy. Yeah, we really do appreciate it, and we still got some more for you. We're gonna be talking about Ronnie Long. This is the gentleman who's been making headlines.
Lately for getting released from prison after forty four years for a wrongful conviction and then being awarded seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and saying, you know what, that's not right because forty four years of my life is not worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Even what he what he ended up getting, is still still not enough. Yeah, four years of his life, but it's a lot less insulting.
There you go.
And so we're going to spend some time talking about him and indeed the prevalence of cases just like that, where you know, people are innocent but they end up doing prison time. But before we get there, it's time to discuss ba BA Becoming a Better Ally Boba and Today's bob A sponsored by Friends of the Movement, can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well
as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot com all right, and today's story comes from the Black Information Network. According to GBP, businesswoman and philanthropist Ronda Striker.
Should look her up.
She's like God, she's a billionaire and he's white. If you go those in Ona and her husband William Johnston, chairman of Greenleaf Trust, donated one hundred million dollars to Spellman, marking the largest single donation ever made to an HBCU. That's historically black college or university, all right. Striker, a Spelman College trustee since nineteen seven ninety seven, hopes to empower women through higher education and create more opportunities for
marginalized groups. According to a press release of the one hundred movie and dollars, seventy five million will go toward in doubt scholarships for future students in hopes of removing financial barriers that prevent qualified individuals from attending Spellman and twenty five million will be used to help create an academic focus on public policy and democracy, improve student housing, and provide flexible funding meet critical and strategic needs.
Quote.
We are invigorated and inspired by this incredible act of generosity, Doctor Helene Gail, President of Spellman College, said in the press release. This gift is a critical step in our school's mission to eliminate financial barriers to starting and finishing a Spellman education. We can't thank Ronda Striker enough for her selflessness and support as both the trustee and friend. There is no doubt that Spellman College is better because
of her. And that is an ally if I ever saw one, especially because as of late, as you well know, and probably going to talk about it next week, there's been so much pushback for DEI inclusivity, affirmative action, and really black access to a better life.
Shout out the Spellman College and the entire ACU.
All right, let's talk about Ronnie Long.
So we painted a little bit of a picture for you, But I'm going to share a bit from CBS News. A man wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for forty four years, has reached a twenty five million dollars combined settlement with a central North Carolina city and the state of North Carolina involving a lawsuit accusing authorities of misconduct, the man's
lawyer said Tuesday. The settlement, which will end a wrongful incarceration lawsuit filed by attorneys for Ronnie Wallace Long in twenty twenty one, also included a public written apology from the city of Concord for its role in his imprisonment. The city, located about twenty five miles northeast of Charlotte, has agreed to pay twenty two million dollars. In the settlement quote, we are deeply remorseful for the past wrongs that caused tremendous harm to mister Long, his family, friends,
and our community, The city statement read. While there are no measures to fully restore to mister Long and his family all that was taken from them through this agreement, we are doing everything in our power to write the past wrongs and take responsibility. Long now sixty eight, was a young black man living in Concord when he was
accused of raping a white woman. An all white jury in Caberis County that Long's attorneys said was handpicked by local law enforcement leaders convicted Long of burglary and rape in nineteen seventy six at age twenty one. Long received two life sentences. Long was helped for years in its criminal case appeal by a wrongful convictions clinic at Duke
University's law school. Long's attorneys had said that more than forty fingerprints collected from the scene were never shared and did not match lungs Seamen's samples also were never disclosed to the defense. They later disappeared. A state commission awarded Long seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, initially by the law,
the state's top compensation for victims of wrongful incarceration. He then sued in federal court and rally and in part accused Conquered police officers of extraordinary misconduct that led to his wrongful conviction and imprisonment in violation of his civil rights. As part of the settlement, Long also received three million dollars from the State Bureau of Investigation quote as reculte sorry as a result of the SBI's role in hiding evidence from mister Long and his legal team that proved
his innocence. And I want to read this statement just because I think it helps make this live a little bit more because remember how young he was at age twenty one. I know my mother and father died with a broken heart. He said, I'm going to tell them now when I visit the grave site, your son is clear. Okay, so there's a whole lot here. Q. Let's get your your initial take on this one before we break it down even further.
It has long been the position of people in power, be it legislators, policymakers, or law enforcement two, as you said in our previous topic, doubled down on their wrongs, especially when those most affected by those wrongs look like us, rather than do the work, and in this case, did the work and ignored their findings just to maintain their
position that this young man was by nature criminal. Right, because you have to remember that these trials in the Deep South of people that look like us, when law enforcement does not, when law enforcement is entrenched in white supremacy, there is an assumption of guilt from the very beginning. And the idea is, even if we didn't get the right person, we got one of them. We got one and they would have likely probably done it anyway, done something anyway, right, real quick.
I want to say something for those that missed the Way Black History Fact. We do a Way Black History Fact on the show every week. We just talked about Fanny lou Hamer and she went to a doctory to have a uterine surgery and they forced sterilization on her during that procedure against her wishes without her knowing. So this is not like this way of thinking, at least we got one of them, or got one off the street, would eventually done something that goes beyond law enforcement. This
is and that's that is not an isolated story. That's not even isolated to black people. There have been population control measures that have been forced on Puerto Rico comes to mind. I know that our Hispanic brothers and sisters they've had issues with this as well, but please continue.
So we have to live with that reality. This man almost literally lived the entirety of his life.
In prison.
You commit a crime that is a very impossible thing to reconcile. That's why you see people react to sentence, to harsh sentences the way that they do, even though found guilty when all the evidence pointed to them, and there's a likelihood because we don't know without being able
to actually prove it ourselves. We don't know, right, but even in instances where you'd be so inclined to believe this person is guilty, forty four years is a lifetime, sure, even for a crime you committed to try to daily reconcile for forty four years, something that you are absolutely certain that you did not do and that you probably assumed upon your arrest.
Or the evidence will Yeah, I'll be funny.
Yeah, the evidence is going to show very very swiftly that I had nothing to do with this is the way that a normal person would react. We have to go into it kind of like, man, this could really go bad.
No matter what you're gonna love.
You have to say if all the evidence shows that this wasn't me. It's really hard to try with the amount of time that we have to articulate how it feels to know this singular truth. Unfortunately for us, we know that it's not singular, which makes it far worse.
So that's what I want. There's two things I want to say. One I'll get to eventually, but the first one that I want to say is that on this show, we use examples like this as a way of illuminating or giving you an aperture into understanding data. We are not two black men who got an hour of radio time and thought, hey, why don't we just complain about isolated incidents.
No, this show was put together meticulously.
And rather than us spouting out numbers of rates of incarceration, rates of whatever bad that is affecting marginalized people in this country, we often enough do our best to share stories that let you know what the real world implications are, and that explain that data to you in a way that humanizes it and that allows you. We're assuming that you are potential allies or maybe well established allies. If you're listening to us on this radio station, this gives you some insight into.
The numbers.
In other words, we're not just talking for the sake of talking. We don't think this stuff is cool. You know, we're not trying to bum in everybody out. This is what allows us to make the numbers live, right, And I will.
Another thing that you said, and this is the other point I wanted to make.
When you talk about a normal person getting himmed up by the police, right, normal person who's innocent would think to themselves, oh, you know what, I'm innocent I'll just explain it to the police and they will understand that I'm innocent of this crime. Everything is going to be okay, or I just want to survive this interaction, right, No, No, that's us. I'm talking about a normal person.
Right, No, No, I'm or yeah, you were.
Just the idea is I can't of course, I can't explain myself about this. I'm being arrested, right, So, Okay, I see what you're saying. So let me just get through this because eventually they're going to see that I'm I wasn't even there, or it was him I saw him, or video or the fingerprints or something like, there's no way this was me.
I'll be fine, yeah, right, okay, So normal person says that normal person, so let me not say normal.
Let's say heterosexual. Straight. I guess that's the same thing.
Christian white, healthy man, Okay, might have this type of thinking.
Okay, let me just talk to the police. It'll be fine. I'll explain everything to them. We'll be good.
Well, according to a certain superintendent, what you just described is normal.
Yeah.
Yeah, so this is what Yeah, so this is what I'm trying to say. We have to so thank you for that to conform to the normal.
Well said, So that's what this person is thinking, right, and that makes sense if indeed he is innocent. Nothing to see here. Let me just explain it to them and it'll be fine. For people who don't fit that specific description, it can be more problematic. The darker you are, the more problematic it is. And there's other factors. That's like a scale, you know, the more this you are, the more problematic those interactions can be. So much so
that we actively teach people on this show. If the police are talking to you, it's like you know, name and rank and that's it. Like you're showing me your ID. If I'm being detained, I request my right to legal counsel, you know, if I'm being arrested, whatever you know? And the most basic of questions, because the truth of the matter is that the police are so well equipped to take words. If you think you're explaining words to them and use those words against you, you could be guilty
of a crime that you don't even know exist. It's their job to know all ten thousand laws that you may have broken. I didn't just make up that number. That's a real number. Their job is to know that, and they'll catch you on something. Hey, you were riding your bike and it didn't have a light on the front of it. You see what I'm saying, And then they can they have the right to detain you as a result of that. And now you're detained and being questioned, and if you say the wrong thing I was, I
was coming from here and I was going there. Oh, well, you know, and then you're in a world of mess right now. The thing is the reason we know this, So I didn't just learn this doing the show. I've been knowing this. The reason I know that is because I've lived a black life. I'm gonna take it a step first.
It's urban myth that most black Americans could be paralegals just from that interactions with law enforcement.
So watch this this next step.
You mentioned something about if you're black and you're interacting with the police and you get arrested and you're hemmed up. That's a very different situation because there's a chance you might not make it out, even if the evidence is
in your favor, even if you are completely innocent. Well, you have to survive the interaction first, I mean literally, ye that first, you have to not have your life taken just during the interaction, even for something as benign as your tail light is out or you didn't signal before you got over, like imagine that that's what you Even we do videos of people dying because of the
stuff like that. All did was not signal before changing lanes, and the result of that interaction, the subsequent interaction, was that you died. Because they go around with guns and they get scared so easily. And Q always says he doesn't really think they're scared anyway.
I know that that's not fear.
Yeah, I try to give the benefit of the doubt because I know there's people that will push back, not because I sincerely believe that there's some things that just are objectively like not scary anyway. And if they are scary, you shouldn't be an officer. We should not call you a brave hero that protects us or whatever. It contradicts that narrative. And then even back to what I'm saying, I want to talk for a second about plea deals. Why would an innocent person accept.
The plea.
Rhetorical or you want some fee?
No no no, no, no no no, I'll I'll make the point. I know you know, I know you got it. Don't jump on.
Look man, y'all, y'all may not notice, but Q is from Detroit. He knows these stories better than well about the same rest of us.
How about that, But Q it got them Detroit stores. My older brothers on the other side, I.
Don't want to say yeah so so yeah, I can know exactly what that is.
Well, a lot of insight as to why someone innocent of a crime would do such a thing.
So watch this. Here's the data for you. Okay.
This comes from the Innocence Project, so you can check this out for yourself.
Innocenceproject dot org.
Okay, fifty seven percent of the people who have been freed from prison for a crime that they did not commit, fifty seven percent of them were black.
How many what percentage of black people are there in this country? Roughly fourteen? There you go.
Fifty seven percent who have been exonerated were black.
Okay.
Of those exonerated after a guilty plea was entered, seventy five percent were black and brown people. In other words, you see how an innocent person could enter in to the record a plea of guilty or to accept the plea deal because their chances of fighting that either they don't have the money, they're not in the best legal position to have as much strength going into that, or they realize that they could lose even if they're innocent.
So let me just explit the difference. I'll accept the plea I'll be home in two years, five or whatever the number is, and what does that do? That pads the incarceration rates and that adds to the narrative that black people and brown people are criminals and so forth. How about this? So the Georgia Innocence Project projects this studies or says this studies estimate that four to six percent of incarcerated people are innocent.
Right, So.
We have a criminal justice system as deeply flawed. But Brian Stevenson is a person who're a big fan of on this show.
He's the.
Head guy of the Equal Justice Initiative, So check him out. Brian Stevenson an Equal Justice Initiative. He says something that is very potent, and we've said on the show before as well, these are often enough life and death situations and circumstances. Would you get onto an airplane if you knew that four to six percent of airplanes crashed.
Why do we not have that?
Would we allow an industry to exist if four to six percent.
Of the airplanes crashed? Right?
But we allow this in the criminal justice system because we've written these people off. And he believes that we've written these people off unfairly because the criminal justice system in and of itself is biased. It's not so simple as just don't do the crime, right, because as we see, you don't have to do the crime to lose forty four years of your life and then get an insulting seven hundred and fifty thousand.
When you say the next statistic, four to six percent sounds like a very very small number, and I think some people, given the data like that would accept that as a risk they would take.
Right.
Car accidents are a far higher percentage of that We get in our car and drive every day. So make that live a little bit better if you could. I got you, Doug, So watch this. That means one out of twenty cases result in a wrongful conviction. And I want to take the last second to add this. There's this number that you may have come across if you're really like in the social justice like me, and Q thirteen fifty or thirteen fifty two. The idea there is
that it's a racist trope. But the idea is that these people will say, well.
Thirteen percent of the population commits fifty percent of the crime, or fifty two percent of the crime.
That's the thirteen fifty two.
So when you factor in poverty rates, when you factor in access to necessities, when you factor in over policing, because it's not that these people commit that much crime, it's they get arrested that much crime.
Right, black people used of that much crime there is charged with that much crime.
And then you add to it the fact that these wrongful arrests exist and disproportionately overwhelmingly in most instances, affect black people. Now you're starting to get those numbers a little bit more consistent with those of our white brothers who often espouse this number thirteen fifty or thirteen fifty two. So there's your food for thought for the week, and we'll leave it right there. I'd like to thank you, as always for tuning in to Civic Cipher once again.
I'm your host, ramses.
Joh and I again am in your show with the ups stomach because a lot of this information is just really, really hard to digest, especially after having the benefit like us of being in so many other places in the world and experiencing life from the perspective of people who don't see us as by nature beneath an other.
Well, the truth is is that we got a long way to go, but fortunately we're walking for you, and we're walking for each other. I appreciate you every week you and I know that you always thank me. That matters, So we'll ask you to come back and rock with us again next week. In the meantime, hit us on all social media at Civic Cipher and until we talk again piece