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California Prosecutors Using Lynching Law To Silence Activists And Protesters (PICTURE)
Beneath Maile Hampton’s tattoo, it text reads: ‘Have faith in me.’ Her optimism will be tested when she appears in court on 9 April facing a charge that carries the possibility of four years in prison. Photograph: Anita Chabria
Maile Hampton. (photo: Anita Chabria/Guardian UK)
Black Woman’s ‘Lynching’ Charge: an Unsettling Tactic to Punish Activism?
By Anita Chabria, Guardian UK
05 April 15
California law was passed in 1933 to prevent mobs from taking people from police custody but case of Maile Hampton and others suggest harsher attitudes toward those who speak up in the wake of Occupy and police brutality protests
aile Hampton, the African American activist who was arrested for “lynching” after trying to pull a fellow protester away from police during a January rally against law enforcement brutality in Sacramento, has a large black butterfly tattooed across her neck……..MOREHERE
Below it, scrawling script reads: “Have faith in me.”
It means: “Have faith that I am here to change the world,” said the 20-year-old with a youthful mix of passion and innocence. She got it about a year ago, around the same time she began to be politically active, she said.
That optimism will be tested when Hampton heads into court on 9 April, facing a charge that carries the possibility of four years in prison and a lifetime of being labeled a felon.
Video of the rally shows police tussling with a protester in the street while activists on the sidewalk yell: “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?”
A woman who appears to be Hampton enters the street, carrying a bullhorn. She grabs the handle of a sign held by the protester being detained by police and attempts to pull it away from an officer who is also holding it. She is then pushed away by other officers.
Hampton’s arrest – and sensational-sounding charge – made headlines. California’s lynching law was put on the books in 1933, to prevent mobs from forcibly taking people from police custody for vigilante justice.
But the statute has long been used against protesters as well, by police if not prosecutors. In 1999, anti-fur protesters in San Francisco who blocked access to a Neiman Marcus store in Union Square were charged under the lynching law. Prosecutors declined to take the case to court. MOREHERE
The police an government server a piece of paper. The paper has no will, so they can do whatever they want. It’s inanimate. They do not serve us. Just another BS loophole for retarded proportions.