EXCLUSIVE: Teenager spends 3 years in jail and charges dropped

[MrScorpio]

Eyewitness News
NEW YORK (WABC) -- 20-year-old Kalief Browder may be physically free, but mentally he is still trapped behind bars on Rikers, where every day was a battle to survive.

"It's very hard when you are dealing with dudes that are big and have weapons and shanks and there are gangs," says Browder, "you know if you don't give your phone call up, or you don't give them what they want you know they are going to jump you. And it's very scary."

In May of 2010, Browder was a 16-year-old tenth grader, walking home on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx after a party. "This guy comes out of nowhere and says I robbed him. And the next thing I know they are putting cuffs on me. I don't know this dude. And I do over three years for something I didn't do."

Browder's family couldn't make the $10,000 bail on the robbery charges, and he had a legal aid attorney. Browder is now represented by a civil rights law firm.

"Someone who did not know Kalief Browder, and simply told the police officer, 'Officer I was robbed two weeks ago and that kid did it', that's where it ended. That was the identification," said Browder's attorney, Paul Prestia. Browder said that at the time, the stress was overwhelming, and at some point he tried to commit suicide.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?id=9317078

[Scuba]

1. Hope Kalief sues their asses.

[rhett o rick]

4. Sue who? A law suit wont teach anyone a lesson. The taxpayers end up paying the

bill. And do we really know who is at fault? The police, the jail, the system? Something should be done but no one in power gives a crap if someone in the lower classes is treated badly. Georgie Bush was proud of not pardoning anyone. I'm sure he thought, what difference does it make if the peons are guilty or not, they are expendable.

[Scuba]

5. Three years behind bars and you think he should receive no compensation?

[giftedgirl77]

2. Such a sad state of affairs

That this happens more often than not. Then they release with a my bad like that makes it ok. This kid is now traumatized for life & behind the curve when it comes with the opportunity for success.

I hope he sues the shit out of them & makes the best out of it.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. This might go over like a lead balloon

But when law enforcement, prosecutors and yes - even judgest make mistakes likes this -

Jail time, fines, and the never being able to have their jobs again should be par for the course. Three years! Three years! Whatever happened to a speedy trial? There was a CHILD in jail at freaking Rikers and he never even got his day in court.

Everyone who touched this case oughta be ashamed of themselves AND lose their jobs.

Maybe when it starts hitting their personal economy they will understand how awful and horrible what they did to this kid (now young man) is. They will keep doing it unless they have to pay some sort of price for their actions.

[EOTE]

8. Just where do you think this is, FR?

I fully support jail time for anyone involved in putting this kid away for years. If prosecutors, judges etc. actually knew there were repurcussions from locking away innocents, they might think twice when doing it next and it might actually keep a lot of people out of the professions who shouldn't be there in the first place. Every time I hear about someone going free due to some piece of evidence not coming out years ago, I immediately think to the people who put that person there in the first place and how they'll most likely avoid any punishment fitting of their crime. We let people get away with this shit far too often.

[JustAnotherGen]

9. Sometimes - it goes a bit there

Sometimes in the quest to be uber hip and liberal people want everyone to have their day in court and to be treated with star shine, sparkles, rainbows, hugs, kisses and kid gloves.


By virtue of the fact that after three years they released a child from a jail he never should have been in -tells me they are guilty guilty guilty.

That's where it goes over like a lead balloon. I want them begging and poor in the streets and losing hearth and home for what they've done. Maybe when they are the last, the least, the lost they will get it. Maybe. But they'll just whine it's his fault still.

I hope he sues, wins, and every single one of them works for HIM for the rest of their lives.

[EOTE]

10. Agreed. nt

[PowerToThePeople]

12. Yes. His life will be ruined from their actions. n/t

[Jim Lane]

6. The real issue here is the abuse of the bail system.

Prosecutors (looking to pad their statistics with a high "clearance" rate) know that someone in jail has a harder time preparing a defense, and is more likely to plead guilty to something (even if innocent), than someone who's out. They use bail to keep people, especially lower-income people, in jail, so they can extort guilty pleas.

The Village Voice did a great article about this last year, "Bail is Busted: How Jail Really Works". The article described one attempt at reform, the Bronx Freedom Fund, a nonprofit that put up bail for some low-income defendants who met its criteria. From the article:

But the really shocking revelation of the Freedom Fund experiment was this: More than half of the fund's clients eventually saw their cases either completely dismissed or knocked down to some noncriminal disposition. Not a single one ever went back to jail on the charges for which they were bailed out.

Without access to a bail fund, defendants in similar positions pleaded guilty to criminal charges 95 percent of the time. The fund's numbers made wincingly clear what everyone had already vaguely known: The current bail system has the direct effect of slapping criminal convictions on poor people who would otherwise win their cases.

Alas, the Freedom Fund no longer operates. The government managed to shut it down based on the argument that "the fund was illegal because it was effectively operating as an uninsured bail-bond company."

[MrScorpio]

7. Wow, simply wow!

Thanks for this.

[dickthegrouch]

11. San Jose, CA has The Innocence Project

which helps people get out of jail sentences they should never have been given. They have quite a good track record, although nowhere near enough funding to address all the suspected screw-ups.

San Jose Mercury News does a great job of publicizing them. I wish this program could go Nationwide.