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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA sweeping majority of the nation’s federal public defenders – including for the Southern District of Indiana – are calling with a unified voice for reforms of a criminal justice system they say “turns a blind eye to oppressive structural racism.”
The statement on the killing of George Floyd was signed by 79 top federal defenders in U.S. Court districts nationwide, including executive director Monica Foster of the Southern District of Indiana’s Federal Community Defenders.
Floyd died last week after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. Four officers have been charged.
“While we can kneel in solidarity with Mr. Floyd, we also must stand up and demand that racism, overt and implicit, be acknowledged and confronted,” the statement says.
“As federal public and community defenders, we represent the overwhelming majority of those charged with crimes in federal court, most of whom are minorities, of all colors and orientations. We have witnessed ‘wars’ on drugs and crime become dog whistles for hate and racism. Intentions to make communities safe are hijacked by other insidious agendas. The war on crime is a new Jim Crow that permeates our criminal justice system. Daily, we see charges that are too harsh, sentences that are too long, and a system that turns a blind eye to oppressive structural racism because it seems to fear ‘too much justice,’” the statement continues.
“George Floyd died face down, gasping and begging to breathe. It is well beyond time for us all to say, ‘Enough.’”
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