Everyday Injustice Davis Vanguard

When Michael Owens was an angry and traumatized young man, he committed a horrible crime and was sentenced to Life Without Parole (LWOP). For a long time, while in prison, he continued to engage in self-destructive behavior.

But even while he has no guarantee he will ever see the outside of a prison again, Michael has been able to turn his life around. He has gotten education while behind bars. He has become a mentor to younger incarcerated people but also youths on the outside in danger of making the same mistakes he has.

Listen to a remarkable story about transformation and rehabilitation by a man condemned to die in prison.

One of the problems with mass incarceration is that we end up incarcerating people who at one point committed violent and dangerous crimes long past the point at which they are no longer a danger to society.

The case of Arturo Luna is instructive, raised in a tough environment, he committed crimes at a young age. But now has become a mentor, become educated is a completely different person from the one who entered prison.

Listen as he tells an amazing first hand account of transformation and redemption.

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk with Angie Gordon. Angie is a 39-year-old trans woman serving a 48-years-to-life sentence in the state of California.

Convicted of multiple violent felonies in 2009; so, in April of 2024 she will have served fifteen years of her sentence.

Before coming to prison, Angie was a high school dropout, but since her incarceration, she has devoted her time to furthering her education. She received her GED in 2013, completed multiple associate degrees in 2019, and in 2022 was part of the first graduating class in the Transforming Outcomes Project at Sacramento State, a bachelor's level program in communication studies offered to incarcerated students in California prisons.

Despite the limited degree tracks available to incarcerated students, Angie also pursued an autodidactic trajectory in post-graduate level scholarship, focusing her attention on transgender studies, corrections, and queer criminology.

A Department of Justice study found that, nationally, trans individuals report having been the victims of sexual assault while incarcerated at a rate ten times higher than non-trans prisoners.

A study conducted in California prisons found that trans women housed in male-designated facilities report having been the victims of sexual assault while incarcerated at a rate thirteen times higher than male prisoners.

A congressional study found that prison rape often goes unreported, and that "most prison staff are not adequately trained or prepared to prevent, report or treat sexual assaults."

In 2013, Carman Guerrero, a trans woman incarcerated at Kern Valley State Prison, was murdered by her cellmate only nine hours after she was forced into the cell with her killer by prison staff against her will.

In 2017 at Valley State Prison, an incarcerated trans woman was found dead in her cell, a pencil lodged into her ear and neck; subsequently, the local district attorney's office declined to pursue the case as a murder, claiming a lack of sufficient evidence.

Listen as Angie Gordon explains why she chose to transition and why she chose to remain at a male prison.

It is described as: “A riveting and heart-wrenching story of violence, grief and the American justice system, exploring the systemic issues that perpetuate gang participation in one of the wealthiest cities in the country, through the story of one teenager.”

Professor Laurence Ralph, tells the story of Sito, a relative of his and the tragedy of his life - first wrongly accused of murder and then five years later, the brother of the slain teen exacts his revenge.

Listen as Professor Ralph describes this tragic account but also how he relates it to the overall tragedy and the need for transformational reform of the justice system.

Stephanie Marudas and Emily Previti have joined forces to launch the podcast series, Obscured.

Marudas is the founder of Kouvenda Media and co-creator of Obscured. Prior to founding Kouvenda Media, she reported for WYPR in Baltimore and WHYY in Philadelphia.

Previti is executive editor and co-creator of Obscured. Before joining Kouvenda Media, she covered voting rights and election administration for NPR affiliate WITF and The GroundTruth Project during 2019-2021.

Listen as Marudas and Previti talk about the need for hard-hitting journalism projects focusing on under-reported topics and coverage gaps.

They also explained what the series looks like and why they chose law enforcement trauma survivors as the subject for the first series of Obscured.

This week on Everyday Injustice Jarrett Adams – himself exonerated of a wrongful conviction – is seeking to undo a massive injustice in Virginia.

Despite the fact that a jury found Terrence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne not guilty of murder, a judge was able to sentence them to life in prison. They have currently spent 22 years behind bars, but Jarrett Adams is trying to free them, having recently argued before the Virginia Supreme Court.

“The Court’s decision to sentence Terrence and Ferrone to life in prison despite being found not guilty robbed due process of its very meaning,” said Jarrett Adams. “The U.S. Supreme Court must do away with its ruling in U.S. v Watts, which gives a judge the discretion to make a jury’s finding meaningless, and prevent further miscarriages of justice from occurring like the one we see in this case.”

Listen to Adams describing this remarkable and unthinkable injustice in the criminal legal system.