
The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers - kirillzubovsky
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/10/7341077/nypd-harlem-crews-social-media-rikers-prison
======
lostcolony
'The district attorney offered him 20 years if he pled guilty, but Jelani
refused.'

'The violence changed him. "My experience on Rikers Island, that’s when I had
to show, like not just be myself," he says. "I had to turn into a beast."'

'Henry said he struggled at times to avoid taking the guilty plea.'

'Four months later, with no move by the DA to proceed, his case was finally
dismissed, almost two years to the day it began. The DA has refused to share
the document that outlines the reason for dismissing Jelani’s case with him or
his lawyer. To day, there has been no explanation and no apology for Jelani’s
detention.''

'Unfortunately, Henry’s troubles from the arrest aren’t over. He is now facing
assault charges stemming from a fight in prison. "He was innocent when he went
in there, and now he might come out with a charge for defending himself," says
Alethia.'

That, taken together, is one of the best (worst) indictments of our penal
system. It is clearly designed not to rehabilitate, not even to penalize, but
to oppress, and to self-perpetuate itself by creating 'criminals', either
those who have been turned criminal by the penal system itself, or those who
have been given plea deals with the deck stacked against them, regardless of
their innocence. We need reform, very, very badly.

~~~
valleyer
There’s a difference between being designed to oppress and being designed to
rehabilitate but extremely poorly so and oppressing as an unintended side
effect. I suspect the latter is more likely.

~~~
lostcolony
Yes yes, Hanlon's razor. My choice of words there was perhaps poor; the point
is clear, the system does not (X), but instead (Y)s, and my attribution to
malice in doing so was incorrect phrasing.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
The point is clear, but Hanlon's razor is just a bullshit adage that people
invoke when they want to stop thinking about something. It's a proverb, not a
hard scientific fact and it certainly doesn't apply to all situations. Malice
indeed exists everywhere and on a spectrum just like ignorance. People are
generally self-centered and they act on their self-centeredness all the time.

The amount of corruption in our institutions is truly staggering and playing
stupid is such an obvious and common criminal tactic that three year olds can
and do utilize it...So I wouldn't be so quick to apply Hanlon's razor.

------
bronbron
Wow. Totally crazy. My takeaways:

1) Don't be born a poor urban youth

2) If #1 is unavoidable, don't have friends (and don't go anywhere because you
might get jumped because you don't have friends)

3) Never be in any photos, even by accident

4) Never sign up for facebook/twitter/etc

5) Never talk to the police

6) Plea deals are mostly bullshit (these last two I knew already)

I'm not a lawyer, so maybe someone more well-versed can help me, but:

> But the district attorney convinced a judge that most of the time Jelani
> spent in jail shouldn’t count towards that release. She argued that days
> spent gathering more evidence, delays in testimony by a police officer who
> was on vacation, or instances where she was unprepared to make her case did
> not figure into the six-month period

Would this not be a slam-dunk lawsuit for the Henrys that his sixth amendment
rights were violated? Obviously not going to bring back lost time, but still,
that seems insane.

~~~
rayiner
Do you really not see the yawning chasm between your 1-4 and what's described
in the article? There's obviously a lot more going on here than this guy being
in pictures with gang bangers.

> While he was incarcerated, the police matched his DNA to another gun
> recovered near the scene of a gang altercation.

As for his brother Jelani, it wasn't Facebook that landed him in Rikers, it
was a witness identification. Now, that's a tragedy, but the old fashioned
kind: over reliance on eye witness identification and overly aggressive
prosecutor tactics. 20 years ago, these prosecutions would've been based on
the testimony of random people in the neighborhood about who was hanging out
with who.

~~~
e12e
> As for his brother Jelani, it wasn't Facebook that landed him in Rikers, it
> was a witness identification.

That's not what I get from the article. It was a witness that got him
_accused_ it was facebook likes that lead to him being denied bail on the
grounds of being "gang affiliated"/"part of a conspiracy".

His story wouldn't have been half as bad, if he'd just been falsely accused,
and then had the case dismissed. That's how a working justice system should
work: some innocents _will_ be caught up in it -- but they shouldn't suffer
any more for it than strictly necessary.

On another note, with such strong conspiracy laws in NY, maybe there's still
hope to get some convictions down on Wall Street?

~~~
rayiner
He was in Rikers, a jail used to hold people pending trial, because he was
charged with attempted murder on the basis of the eye-witness identification.
The article doesn't even say he was charged with a conspiracy or that the
Facebook posts were used as evidence to charge him with a conspiracy. It
appears the prosecutor uses the Facebook posts to show gang affiliation, which
is a factor in deciding whether someone is a dangerous criminal who shouldn't
be granted bail (i.e. being set free pending trial).

~~~
e12e
> It appears the prosecutor uses the Facebook posts to show gang affiliation,
> which is a factor in deciding whether someone is a dangerous criminal who
> shouldn't be granted bail (i.e. being set free pending trial).

I might have been unclear. This was my point. It appears that he might have
been charged with attempted murder either way, but might very probably have
been granted bail if not for the facebook likes. So it's not a far stretch to
say that the likes landed him in jail?

~~~
rayiner
I see your point, but that's a pretty "cute" way to phrase what happened. It
makes it seem like he was arrested and charged for what he did on facebook.

~~~
e12e
It's important to remember that jail is for innocent people, prison is for
those that have been found guilty. We don't know why the case was dismissed,
but I think it is rather safe to assume that it wasn't a very strong case. So
bail might "ordinarily" have been rather likely.

I do think it is pretty bad that you can be jailed for a year because of
hanging out with childhood friends in pictures.

------
angersock
_" We are coming to find you and monitor every step you take," Joanne Jaffe,
the department’s Housing Bureau chief, told The New York Times in 2013. "And
we are going to learn about every bad friend you have."_

The boot on the face usually ends up being local.

EDIT:

 _" While he was incarcerated, the police matched his DNA to another gun
recovered near the scene of a gang altercation."_

How the does that even work? I'm calling bullshit.

EDIT2:

 _Alethia finally convinced her lawyer to file a speedy trial motion and in
November of 2013 Jelani was given bail. Four months later, with no move by the
DA to proceed, his case was finally dismissed, almost two years to the day it
began. The DA has refused to share the document that outlines the reason for
dismissing Jelani’s case with him or his lawyer. To day, there has been no
explanation and no apology for Jelani’s detention._

And more of this nonsense. It's not just the beat cops that we should be
watching closely. This is absurd.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> How the does that even work?

I _think_ it works like this: As you touch things, some of your skin cells
fall off and adhere to the thing you touched. Those cells can give up DNA to
an investigator. So it would mean that he touched the gun in question.

 _When_ did he touch it? The DNA doesn't say anything about that.

~~~
xenophonf
Nor can DNA evidence reveal intent. What if one handles a gun merely to get a
feel for it (no different from ogling someone's phone or slipping into the
driver's seat of a friend's new car)? That said, the fact that a defendant
touched a gun, plus an eyewitness account putting that defendant at a crime
scene, plus recovery of the gun from the crime scene, etc. all work together
to make the case that a defendant committed a crime with a particular weapon.
Just because evidence is circumstantial doesn't make it any less powerful in
legal proceedings.

------
bproper
Hey - I'm the reporter who wrote this story. Feel free to ask me any
questions.

~~~
vickm
How do we get excellent stories like this into the broader narrative in
America? This is a story that needs to be read carefully. If somebody were to
edit this down into a 10 second segment fit for insertion into the nightly
news I don't think it would pack as much punch.

It seems like stories on 60 Minutes are the closest I've seen to hitting the
mark.

This is one story that is part of a larger story cutting across the country. I
don't know anybody republican or democrat in America that would think being
jailed for two years without a charge is acceptable. This is the right time
for America to deal with these _moral_ issues.

I hope your story takes off.

~~~
bproper
I started the story after a friend, who is a social worker and civil rights
activist, told me that he knew several kids from a large Crew Cut raid in
Brooklyn, and that they were good kids who had left the city for college, but
been dragged back by a conspiracy indictment relating to a crew they left
years earlier. Very similar to Asheem's situation.

As I worked on the story for two years I became pretty depressed at times. I
mostly write about technology - new gadgets and startups - which keep me
feeling generally excited and optimistic about the future. With this story i
really came to grips with the way the deck is stacked against poor people,
doubly do for poor people of color growing up in high crime areas.

I didn't come away from this thinking anyone was 100% guilty or innocent. But
I certainly know, based on what I was like in high school, that I would have
made the same or worse choices as these two boys if my teenage reality had
been like theirs.

------
at-fates-hands
Keep in mind when you live in states who have incredibly harsh laws for gun
control, this is pretty common.

Remember Plaxico Burress? The NFL Wide Receiver? He spent two years in federal
prison for shooting HIMSELF in the leg with a firearm that wasn't licensed in
NY or NJ:

[http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4493887](http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4493887)

 _Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau insisted that the former New
York Giants wide receiver serve at least two years in prison for violating the
city 's strict gun laws. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had also publicly called for
Burress to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

On July 29, Burress took the rare and risky step of testifying before the
grand jury, hoping to convince the panel that the gun was not used in the
commission of a crime and that he was the lone victim. But days later, Burress
was indicted on two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of
reckless endangerment. He faced a minimum sentence of 3½ years if convicted at
trial._

I'm pretty sure in a state like Texas, they wouldn't even bother him once they
knew his connection to the gang was minimal.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Wait, so you're telling me that gun control laws are used to oppress the under
class? Even though they were passed to protect them? Because that's the
socioeconomic group that suffers most from gun violence? Well I'll be monkey's
uncle...

~~~
refurb
Many gun control laws came about to keep guns out of the hands of black
people.[1]

[1][http://reason.com/archives/2005/02/15/the-klans-favorite-
law](http://reason.com/archives/2005/02/15/the-klans-favorite-law)

------
cperciva
Seems to me that being in jail for 2 years and then having charges dismissed
without ever going to trial should constitute a priori evidence of false
imprisonment.

------
forgingahead
Very sad story. Single parent household/lack of father figure, neighbourhoods
that exist in their own separate reality, communities where the wrong things
(acting hard, etc) are valued over education, broken social services, over-
zealous prosecutors, systemic prejudice, and tech corporations and their
advertiser patrons pushing a consumerist agenda above all else.

~~~
gizmo
This injustice is absolutely not a result of a single parent household, and
insinuating that in some sense the mother is to blame here is gross. Your
other suggestion, that the community itself is at fault (because they
culturally value the wrong things) is mistaken. It's the other way around, the
larger american culture is at fault because it is biased against black
communities.

Coates wrote a very good piece about this:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-
pa...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/black-pathology-
and-the-closing-of-the-progressive-mind/284523/?single_page=true)

~~~
refurb
If the cause of all this is american culture being biased against black
communities, how come so many blacks are not doing these things?

~~~
mc32
I think it's a very complicated issue and does not have an easy answer but
consider recent African immigrants to the US and US-born and raised people of
African descent. I'd love to see a study to see if their experiences are any
different. I suspect, but am not sure, that 'culture' has some influence.

I think Americans (black Americans in this case) have all kinds of baked in
things which can be either positive or negative in their daily life
interaction with others. So someone straight from Africa, let's say, has no
preconceived notions of how one is expected to act in a given community in
order to fit in. An immigrant is for some purposes a blank slate (they bring
their own tendencies from home, of course) but not having baked in American
tendencies to interact with (part of society) might afford them a different
experience, for the most part.

If there were differences in experiences, it'd be interesting if there was
something to learn from that. For example, we have relatively recent Somali
and Eritrean communities --normalizing their experience (ie take out the
difficulties being a refugee, etc. might impose) what has their experience
been in relation to the larger community?

------
aqme28
Wow. On top of everything, this should definitely violate speedy trial
requirements:

 _But the district attorney convinced a judge that most of the time Jelani
spent in jail shouldn’t count towards that release. She argued that days spent
gathering more evidence, delays in testimony by a police officer who was on
vacation, or instances where she was unprepared to make her case did not
figure into the six-month period. The judge agreed. In a bit of Kafka-esque
arithmetic, 19 months became 83 days. Instead of finishing trade school,
Jelani celebrated his 20th and 21st birthdays in a cell._

~~~
Balgair
[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-right-speedy-
tria...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-right-speedy-trial.html)

That right is not as obvious as it seems. Also, though I cannot find a
citation, I believe that everyone typically waives those rights (in a very
murky manner) upon arraignment.

~~~
talmand
I would suspect asking for a speedy trial is a huge bet on which side can get
better prepared in time for the trial date. Possibly most defense attorneys
don't want to take that bet because prosecutors already have their evidence in
hand.

~~~
bproper
Jelani did not waive the right to a speedy trial, and in fact his lawyer filed
the motion demanding one on three separate occasions before it was granted.
This was more than one year into his incarceration.

~~~
talmand
This is just the case outside the rule, the DA was delaying likely because the
case was so shaky to begin with because of lack of evidence. The DA was
waiting for him to crack and take a plea bargain so that in the end the DA
still looks tough on crime.

Personally, I fault the entire system for the man's treatment; the DA, the
judge, all the way up to the governor.

------
trhway
it is clear that the guys would have benefited from having a lawyer or at
least from some advice. As they obviously can't afford a full legal
representation it seems that this is where technology may potentially come to
play, something like ... wait for it ... Uber for lawyers/legal help.

------
tedunangst
Did I really need to know they were born on the same day? This was way too
long for me to actually get to the part where he went to jail for Facebook
likes. Once I got to the part where he really did have a gun, I figured
there's more to it than the headline implies.

~~~
saalweachter
My reading was different. There are two brothers. The older was arrested for
possessing a gun, pled out and got probation, and then years later was
arrested for conspiracy charges based on appearing in pictures with "known
gang members". He pled out again, got jail time, and got more jail time for
being linked to a gun while in jail.

The younger brother was arrested on suspicion based on his Facebook activity,
held for a couple of years at Rikers Island, and never charged.

IMO the outrages are (1) the older brother received a harsh sentence for
appearing in pictures (his gun charge for owning an illegal, non-functional
gun resulting in probation) and (2) the younger brother was held for two years
with no trial.

~~~
tedunangst
Thanks. That's a very readable summary.

