This originally aired on The Final Straw

Earlier this month, the United States Sixth Circuit Court heard oral arguments in the appeal of Ohio death row prisoner Bomani Shakur who’s government name is Keith LaMar. Bomani is one of the five prisoners prosecuted as the Lucasville Five. Targeted as leaders of the weeks long prison uprising that occurred in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility that occurred in Lucasville Ohio in 1993. If you do the math you realize, this is a twenty one year old legal battle, so far.

Bomani was identified, targeted, prosecuted and condemned to death, strictly on the testimony of other prisoners. There existed no security footage, no DNA, no fingerprint evidence. Only the accounts of other convicted felons, who may or may not have had their own motives to lie, who may or may not have attributed their own criminal behavior to Bomani. While hundreds of prisoners were involved in the uprising, investigators only collected the statements it seems from less than a hundred of them. So we must conclude that hundreds of prisoners have no idea what occurred, suffering mass amnesia, or investigators simply chose not to take note of their accounts.

Bomani himself has written extensively. His account was published last year, entitled, Condemned. It’s an excellent read, and very revealing with regard to the tactics the state used in its frame up of targeted prisoners in the aftermath of a riot. I sent my copy to Governor JWow, who never even had the courtesy to write me back and tell me what he thought of the book. What an ingrate. Continue reading →