A murder case in Northern California has local civil rights activists crying racism. A 22-year-old black man will go on trial for a murder that everyone, including law enforcement, knows he didn’t commit. Renato Hughes was charged under a rarely-used legal doctrine called the California Provocative Act, which allows a person to be charged for murder if it can be proven that their illegal actions caused a series of events that would lead to bloodshed.
According to police, Hughes and two of his friends broke into the rural NoCal home of (white) Shannon Edmonds, where they demanded marijuana and beat the man’s stepson, who is now brain damaged, with a baseball bat. Edmonds shot the two friends in the back while Hughes got away. Hughes, whose mother said he went to the house to buy weed, not break in, .
The Rev. Amos Brown, head of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP and pastor at Hughes’ church, said the case demonstrates the legal system is racist in remote Lake County, aspiring wine country 100 miles north of San Francisco. The sparsely populated county of 13,000 people is 91 percent white and 2 percent black.
Brown and other NAACP officials are asking why the homeowner is walking free. Tests showed Edmonds had marijuana and prescription medication in his system the night of the shooting. Edmonds had a prescription for both the pot and the medication to treat depression…
The district attorney said that race played no part in the charges against Hughes and that the homeowner was spared prosecution because of evidence he was defending himself and his family, who were asleep when the assailants barged in at 4 a.m.
The new Jena Six? The Lake County One? Probably not. I’m mad that a young black guy who didn’t kill his two friends — or anyone, for that matter — is probably going to jail for murder. I’m also mad that I’m being put in a position to sort of a defend a guy who barged into someone’s house at 4 am, beat a 19-year-old with a baseball bat until he was brain-damaged, and got away with his life while his two friends ended up dead — which is something one can reasonably expect to be a possibility when you enter someone’s house with baseball bats and start beating up their family members. And this was all for some weed.
I hate to sound all Bill Cosby (no, really, I hate it), but we all know the legal system is racist. It just is. And while we have every right to expect equal treatment under the law, we all know it doesn’t always happen. The only way to fix this is to fight for equal rights and call attention to inequalities, but it also puts us in the position of frequently having to side with criminals, some of whom commit heinous crimes. It’s a messed up situation that civil rights activists are in. So — and here’s where I get Cosby — STOP COMMITTING CRIMES. There’s your solution. It isn’t a solution, really, because people are always going to commit crimes — for a variety of reasons — and a fair system needs to be set up for when they do. But the justice system can’t treat you unfairly if you make a concerted effort to keep yourself out of it. So no. My heart’s not exactly bleeding for Renato Hughes. Sorry. He’s definitely not the first person to be tried for murder under this provision. They didn’t invent the law just for him. And, unlike his young friends, at least he’s alive. I’ll just let the Northern California NAACP fight this one.
I have read your blog for awhile now and had to comment on this post. I agree with you completely. Committing crimes and getting angry at the way the system treats you is getting a little old now. Everyone knows that if you are black you will receive a harsher punishment than the next man, so why not think about that before you decide to break into someone’s house and then watch your friends beat a boy with a baseball bat to the point of brain damage?
Not sure what the hub-bub is about this. If you plan and commit a robbbery, and people die in the course of it, even if you weren’t the shooter or if you didn’t plan for there to be shooting, you are liable for the deaths because you put the chain of events into action. That’s fairly common across the country. I’m not feeling a lot of sympathy for this guy.
Your commentary is spot on. The whole situation is tragic - the young man lost his two friends and the man’s son is permanently brain damaged. This chain of events was reasonably forseeable by these men. I understand the catch-22 of wanting equal justice under the law for all, but not wanting to defend criminals who committed terrible acts.
I have an idea, its pretty novel and innovative, so be prepared…..How about black people just………(wait for it)…….STOP COMMITTING CRIMES!
Lauren said: …we all know the legal system is racist. It just is. And while we have every right to expect equal treatment under the law, we all know it doesn’t always happen. I believe that the only way to fix this is to fight for equal rights and call attention to inequalities, but it also puts us in the position of frequently having to side with criminals, some of whom commit heinous crimes.
Anovelista: I don’t mind sounding Cosby-esque at all.
Wouldn’t it be nice if innocent black crime victims got the same attention as these guys? I have never heard about the Dunbar Village rape victim or her 12-year-old son (who was brutalized with her) having a criminal background, but I’ll bet that if her attackers ever get to trial, there will be far more concern about how the legal system treats them than concern for the victims.
I think there are enough innocent black people in the criminal justice system to defend to call out these inequalities. The Innocence Project comes to mind)
Correction…
I think there are enough innocent black people in the criminal justice system to defend. They should be used as the examples to call out the inequalities. The Innocence Project comes to mind.
“I’ll just let the Northern California NAACP fight this one.”
Hey, that’s me!! And, it’s the first time I’ve heard about this case. The NAACP chapter that I joined does a terrible job of letting ppl know what they are doing. Not that I would be coming to this guy’s defense, but still.
It’s a big day for Civil Rights activity…
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITI.....index.html
This is a conversation that I have with my clients on a daily basis. If you didn’t actually have drugs in your car or on your person, then we would have a much better case to challenge the police for their unreasonable search and seizure. I have a hard time having sympathy for these guys as well. We keep expecting for things to change in the justice system, but each and every day the evidence mounts that they don’t give a fuck about you. The best way to end it is to stop committing crimes like most of us have stated. I’ve gone 28 years without committing one (well, at least I haven’t been caught).
I didn’t even know about this march. I do agree with workingblkgirl, but I do believe that if the status quo is unjust, you fight it. It would be a hell of a lot easier if these people made good choices from the get go. I’m really not against harsh punishments for violent offenders. Just give the harsh punishments to everyone. When some white ex-con who got of far too early commits some atrocious crime, everyone is surprised. You’ll notice this with all these people who rape and kill little kids around the country. They’ve been to jail and were let out early. Non-white criminals are seldom let out in 3 years for armed robberies, yet those two men who raped and killed a family in CT this summer got just that. Same goes with crack vs. cocaine sentencing disparity. Both are linked to a great deal of crime so be even handed.
Although I agree it’s hard to have sympathy for the man the essence of our democracy is justice–regardless of the fool involved. I, too, am sad that during the civil rights era people were being locked away for marching for the right to get a damn *education* or *vote* and now we’re stuck with these morons.
@M: Damn, even I had to laugh at that.
You know, I have a hard ass time trying to support what I feel, quite frankly, is dumb n**ga shit. I may get flack for what I’m typing but I dont care. He shouldn’t have broken into the guy’s home and beat his stepson nearly to death. He wouldn’t be in this situation if he hadn’t done that.
I need something a little bit better than this to support.
He should be in jail for something, but not murder. I do agree that this is “dumb n**ga shit,” but white people do their share of this same dumb n**ga shit without being subject to unfair punishment.
Speaking of that. I love those dumb criminal TV shows. The dumbest ones are always people w/o too much melanin, but then I guess I shouldn’t be too proud that we’re smarter in that field. Never mind. Ha.
okay, even if civil rights activists want to defend known criminals because of unequal treatment, how about doing it on a scale system — e.g., help truly innocent people first, then people who did small things and got incredibly unfair punishment, and finally, save for last, if you have time the folks deliberately involved in heinous crimes who are getting slightly exaggerated charges.
summer, you know Al and em are only attracted to the sexy cases. Defending innocent people doesn’t fall in that category. I wish people would do more with the Innocence Project. It seems like it’s mostly law students digging up old cases. Generally, the people’s lawyers don’t really give a shit.
If we took the “race” of the victims and the perps out, it would more than likely be a non-story. The media holds much of this blame for even reporting such a stupid story in this “racial” manner. I have been black for 37 years, and the NAACP stopped being relevant to me and most African Americans I know a long time ago (right with Jackson and Sharpton).
I really don’t care if this guy gets more jail time, I am tired of the NAACP going to the defense of criminals, Mike Vick etc., while they ignore the real problems within the African American community that need to be dealt with.
This guy was committing a crime and got his friends killed in the process, I see nothing racial about this, a man can defend his house, that is a basic right.
The media needs to stop putting Jesse and Al as our so called leaders, I didn’t vote for Jesse or Al, and know a few African American leaders inside the community who are doing real work without the media hype. I guess since they are dealing with things that may not involve a “white person”, they can’t get camera time.
The fact is that if we don’t protest about the injustices done to the least among us, all of our rights will eventually be compromised. The brother was obviously involved in a horrible crime, but that doesn’t make him any less deserving of equal justice under the law.