And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.— Bible, Isaiah 59:14 (King James Version)
As legislative and judicial actions continue to undermine Civil Rights advancements from the last 60 years, many Black communities are suffering aggressive policing policies and unjust legal rulings as lobbyists, advocates of expanded law enforcement powers.
And profiteers from the prison industrial complex, powerful and connected interest groups often dismiss local solutions to crime and violence that could otherwise establish mutually beneficial police-community relations.
The disregard and indifference for the value of Black life in America’s criminal justice system leaves few avenues for families when it comes to getting accountability, resolution and real justice.
“Equal Justice Under Law,” is enshrined in the U.S. Supreme Court building for the world to see, but, in Black America, a significant number of people have suffered loss and endured the indignities of harassment, violence and abuse or indifference.
Arkela Lewis, who moved from Mississippi to Georgia long before her son’s death, told The Final Call in a telephone interview, that a Jackson Capitol Police officer fatally shot her son Jaylen Lewis, 25, after he stopped his vehicle at a four-way stop sign while driving with a female friend in the evening of September 25, 2022.
Ms. Lewis said her son had been a college student in Jackson and worked for his grandfather who owned a local business. He was pronounced dead on September 26.
Ms. Lewis said that to date she has received little if any feedback from MBI (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) regarding why her unarmed son was shot, and why he was left bleeding and without medical attention for almost 35 –40 minutes according to witnesses, although paramedics were present and that two hospitals were within 5 to 7 minutes away from the fatal encounter.
Jackson’s Capitol Police have been recently granted expanded jurisdiction through the controversial CCID (Capitol Complex Improvement District), a state Republican initiative that has widened their patrol authority into portions of Jackson’s Black neighborhoods near downtown (see The Final Call Vol. 42 No. 23) in areas formerly patrolled by an underfunded Jackson Police Department (JPD).
“The Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner, Sean Tindell, recused himself (in February 2023) from the investigation because he didn’t want to have anything to do with any of it,” Ms. Lewis said of the inquiry into her son’s death, which to date is yet to be forthcoming.
“I was in Georgia and got a call from my daughter and she had just told me that she and (her friend) heard that Jaylen had been shot,” Ms. Lewis recalled of the night she received word that her son was shot in the head. She said why he was shot has yet to be explained by authorities. Calls to MBI and Attorney General Lynn Fitch for information were not returned by Final Call press time.
Ms. Lewis said that no one from the Jackson Capitol Police has called or reached out to her with an explanation since that night. “I go home (to Jackson) quite often to see my grandchildren and family and I go there to see what’s going on with this case and the (attorney general’s office) always gives me the runaround and says that it’s not completed yet.”
She wants to see anyone who participated in the killing of her son to be held accountable and wants them tried and convicted in a court of law, sentenced to prison and to suffer the consequences for what they did to him.
“You took my son’s life, my life will never be the same, and my family is torn,” she said, noting that hearing nothing from investigators is too much to bear. “Sometimes, I can’t get out of bed, so I want them to be brought to justice because I have suffered.
Although I’ve seen these other women and families and husbands that are going through the same thing, I want to see these police officers, (go to prison) even the paramedics who let my son’s body bleed out for 45 minutes when the hospitals were five minutes away,” she said.
How much time and effort is a Black life worth?
Families like Ms. Lewis’ are left with unanswered questions on the status of unresolved cases like in the case of Shanquella Robinson. In October 2022 the young, Black woman was found dead less than 24 hours after traveling on a birthday celebration with one friend and five acquaintances to the resort city of San José del Cabo, Mexico.
The people with Ms. Robinson initially told her mother, that Shanquella died of alcohol poisoning. Social media revealed a video of Ms. Robinson being attacked and her mother recognized the others in the video as her daughter’s travel mates.
When the family received an autopsy report from the Mexican Secretariat of Health, it revealed Ms. Robinson suffered a broken neck and a cracked spine and there was no mention of alcohol included in the report. However, on April 12, 2023, U.S. authorities announced they would not pursue criminal charges related to her death.
Also, in Mississippi, the death of Rasheem Carter remains a mystery and unsolved (See The Final Call, Vol. 42 No. 19, No. 22 and No. 34). The 25-year-old young, Black man’s dismembered body was discovered in a wooded area a month after he disappeared near Taylorsville, Mississippi, in 2022.
Before he disappeared, he called his mother to report that three White men were chasing him in a truck. His case has yet to be solved and activists expressed their frustration with lack of transparency from law enforcement about the investigation.
In another case, controversy surrounds the death of a Black 21-year-old Chicago area truck driver, Javion Magee, reportedly tied to a tree with a broken neck—according to local media— and found September 11 in Henderson, North Carolina. His death has left many speculating as to whether or not his death was a hate crime or something else entirely.
Coupled with the state’s long history of lynching, anti-Black terrorism, and today’s climate of intense political division during a highly charged election season, varied opinions reflect a community divided over the cause of Javion’s death, though the investigation is not yet complete.
Authorities
“There are questions, and if they have resources available to investigate, then every avenue, every possibility, should be investigated,” said Student Minister Amon Muhammad of Muhammad Mosque No. 34, of Durham, North Carolina, a city about a 40 minute drive from Henderson.
“Anything that would lend to getting the actual facts for the family’s satisfaction and those who are concerned about that young man, as we all are, they should be exhausted,” he told The Final Call.
A September 13 press release by Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame, whose jurisdiction included the location where Mr. Magee’s body was discovered, said in part:
“The Vance County Sheriff’s Office continues to investigate the death of 21-year-old Javion Magee. This morning, Sheriff Curtis R. Brame, members of his command staff, and detectives met with Javion’s family to express our condolences and to walk family members through the details of our investigation to date.
Investigators offered to take Javion’s family to Vanco Mill Road where his body was found. Javion’s family requested to see and were shown evidentiary photos. Local minister Pastor Opie Terrell also attended the meeting and led a word of prayer.
Sheriff Brame wants to ensure the public his office is being as transparent as possible, while most importantly, being respectful of Javion’s grieving family,” the media statement said.
It further stated that: “The North Carolina Chief Medical Examiner’s Office conducted an autopsy and concluded Javion did not have defensive wounds, and there were no signs of physical or sexual assault. Javion did have hemorrhaging around the soft tissue of the neck.
Toxicology results are still pending; therefore, autopsy results are not complete at this time,” it said, leaving Javion’s family with more questions than answers.
The seemingly “rushed” dismissal of concerns about possible foul play by authorities have raised concerns.
Attorney Harry Daniels, a member of the legal team representing the Magee family regarding the death of Javion, said during a September 18 media conference in front of the Vance County Sheriff’s Department that it was too early to rule Javion Magee’s death a suicide and that it was inappropriate to do so.
“This is an absolute tragedy no matter how it pans out. You’ve got a 21-year-old bright, rising star, independent, young Black man from Chicago, Illinois, who had taken a path to be independent of his parents,” Atty. Daniels said during the press conference.
“The work as an over-the-road trucker and (he) was doing a phenomenal job. He found himself in Vance County and the facts are still working their way out and we do know that he was found hanging from a tree,” he said.
“I know there’ve been statements from the sheriff, concerning what’s considered a lynching or a hanging, but I assure you that the pictures that we saw, were very clear that he was hanging, not in the manner of what you saw in the 60s or the 20s and 30s,” Atty. Daniels explained. “We are here for one reason and one reason only, (to) get justice for Javion and the Magee family, to ensure we get transparency in this process.
“The sheriff turned this case over to the State Bureau of Investigation (NCSBI) and the Attorney General for further investigation,” he said. “At this time, let me be very clear, the manner and the cause of death has not been determined, so any suggestion that and anybody stating that it was a suicide would be grossly premature, but we do know that we have a young Black man hanging from a tree in North Carolina.”
Family attorneys insisted for the public to withhold drawing any conclusions until all investigations, including those of the NCSBI, are exhausted.
Separate and be saved
Attorney Sadiyah A. Evangelista-Karriem, of Houston, Texas, is a criminal defense lawyer and member of the Ministry of Justice through Muhammad Mosque No. 45, the Southwest Regional Headquarters of the Nation of Islam.
She told The Final Call that America’s long history of mistreating and abusing Black people, not only through laws but also through those who see fit to take the law into their own hands, makes the need for transparent investigations all the more important if trust is to be maintained through any civilization’s social contract.
“The first thing you want to do is to be transparent about what happened to the loved ones who lost their person, but what you (often) find is these law enforcement agencies are covering down and protecting themselves,” Atty. Evangelista-Karriem explained about long and drawn-out cases like those experienced by families such as Jaylen Lewis’s in Jackson, Mississippi.
“If they’re going to protect the police officer, they’ve got to make sure that the evidence is not going to be revealed to the family,” she said, noting why it is important for victims or their families to retain legal counsel as quickly as possible.
“The only answer really is separation, and if we don’t do for self and we’re still integrating into a society that was never built for us, then the gap is going to continuously widen,” Atty. Evangelista-Karriem said speaking about a fundamental teaching of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam.
“We’re taught that the brain is meant to think right, so when we close that gap with knowledge, with knowing the knowledge of self, which is akin to the knowledge of God, then we can create these systems that are directly tied to the Lord of the Worlds, directly tied to the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and we have to not only physically separate ourselves, but if we can’t, then we’ve got to mentally and spiritually and intellectually separate and create,” said Attorney Evangelista-Karriem.
“The Program of ‘separation’ is given by God, and backed by God as the only solution to the toxic relationship between Black and White,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, explained in a message delivered October 15, 2017, on the occasion of the 22nd Anniversary of the Historic Million Man March and Holy Day of Atonement held at Newark Symphony Hall in Newark, New Jersey.
