Another slap in the face

Yet another display of the attack on Black youth by the U.S. criminal injustice system occurred on Oct. 12, when eight former boot camp guards were acquitted in the death of a 14-year-old.

Videotape footage showed Martin Lee Anderson being punched and kicked by guards at the Florida juvenile detention center. According to the Associated Press, “Aside from hitting Anderson, the guards dragged him around the military-style camp’s exercise yard and forced him to inhale ammonia capsules in what they said was an attempt to revive him. The nurse stood by watching.” (Oct. 12)

The defense argued that the guards thought that Anderson was faking illness to avoid exercise. It turns out he had undiagnosed sickle cell trait, which can prevent blood cells from carrying oxygen during physical duress.

Former guard and defendant Henry Dickens claimed that the youth “wasn’t beaten. Those techniques were taught to us and used for a purpose.” (AP, Oct. 12)

Those “techniques” are taught along with a mentality that Black youth are always criminals; that what most would automatically perceive as a medical emergency—a person collapsing while running laps—is an instance of “faking.”

After an initial autopsy alleged that Anderson died of natural causes, a second one was ordered which found that Anderson had been suffocated by the use of the ammonia tablets and the guards’ covering his mouth.

An all-white jury took just 90 minutes to decide that the guards were “not guilty.” The doctor who conducted the first autopsy, Charles Steibert, told AP he was going to celebrate with some of the guards that night. (Oct. 12)

The defendants had faced at most 30 years in prison for aggravated child manslaughter. Compare this to the 15 years that the African-American Jena Six still face for a fight in which no bones were broken, where their white opponent went out and partied after the fight.

Outside the courthouse, the lawyer of Anderson’s mother, Benjamin Crump, summed it up: “You kill a dog, you go to jail. You kill a little Black boy and nothing happens.” (AP, Oct. 12)

The criminal injustice system, which is packed with bigoted district attorneys and judges, seems to think it can keep getting away with instances like these, throwing them in the face of those who are coming out in increasing numbers to protest. And, indeed, 150 students from Florida A&M protested after the verdict. The establishment would do well to remember the many rebellions that have occurred throughout the U.S. in the face of police brutality and repression.