The Circus

Kevin Byrd was convicted of raping a woman in 1985. Although at the time of the assault she told police that a white man with unusual, honey-colored skin raped her, four months later while shopping she identified Kevin Byrd as her attacker…A black man. He served 12 years of a life sentence before it came out that Houston Crime Lab’s DNA testimony was false, and re-testing cleared him. He was exonerated in 1997.

I didn’t take more time to tell his story because, well, fuck, we know how it goes. Over and over and over again Harris County convicts, incarcerates, and is finally forced to release these men it has branded as sex offenders. The names change, but never the circumstances.

If you think it couldn’t happen to you, you’re fucking crazy. These men are being plucked off the streets because of the hats they wear, or because they live near the location of the crime, or because they just chose the wrong damn day to go to the grocery store. What the fuck, Texas? Why are we so eager to sacrifice our young men for some false feeling of security? The police, the DA, the government, they can’t protect you or your family from violence.

They’ll care for the victim as well as they can, and try to make it look like they’re catching the bad guys, but they know they can’t actually stop a crime from occurring. They’ll grab some random guy, charge him & convict him, then pack him away to prison; they’ve removed a generation of men from their families, their support systems, their lives.

They must have wet their pants the day they got a shot at South Park Mexican. Finally, a well known figure in the community! Finally, some publicity and wide-spread acclaim! He was just scary enough to get the voters to pay attention, just rich enough to make people hate him, just screwed-up enough that they could build a circumstantial case before the jury was even chosen. It’s not every day the DA gets to run his own little media circus.

And run it they did, with scientific acrobatics, psychologists clowning for the cameras, and a fat, fancy ring master cracking the whip. The audience ate it up and paid for it all with a guilty verdict. Now that’s entertainment!

This mess took a lot of people to put together, and there is nothing that any one person can do to fix it. Even if the little girl, now a young woman, came forward and said it didn't happen, that's not a get-out-of-jail free ticket. The DA's office would fight it, because they've done it in the past. For Carlos Coy to recieve justice, it's going to take a massive amount of people standing up and making their voices heard by those in power. As we spread information about SPM's case we need to understand that we're laying the foundation for that to happen. That's why I have that little blurb in the side bar about God's timing. Everything will come together smoothly, but not until that moment when it will be perfect.

Please, continue spreading the word; we'll get there.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Kevin_Byrd.php