If the Jamaican Government is [not] build­ing addi­tion­al jail cells to house mur­der­ers, not build­ing new court hous­es and hir­ing more staff to pros­e­cute crim­i­nals, and not recruit­ing, train­ing, and pay­ing the right peo­ple to be police offi­cers, how can it seri­ous­ly claim to be fight­ing crime?
By the way, do you know why Jamaica has become so vio­lent and crime tol­er­ant? Corrupt polit­i­cal lead­er­ship that has refused to put the full bootheel of the state on the neck of vio­lent crim­i­nals!!!
If you have chick­ens, you need chick­en coops, and dogs need ken­nels. Criminals need jails.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​n​-​s​y​s​t​e​m​-​i​s​-​u​n​a​b​l​e​-​t​o​-​t​r​y​-​c​a​s​e​s​-​i​n​-​a​-​t​i​m​e​l​y​-​f​a​s​h​i​o​n​-​i​t​-​i​s​-​b​a​d​-​a​l​l​-​a​r​o​u​nd/

Whenever the top­ic of jails and pun­ish­ment comes up, some peo­ple oppose the con­struc­tion of jails.
My ques­tion to them is, what do you pro­pose we do with the crim­i­nals mur­der­ing entire fam­i­lies, includ­ing babies?
What, if any­thing, are your sug­ges­tions for the ever-grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple who have decid­ed that a life of crime is the path they want for themselves?
Should we allow them to con­tin­ue to do as they please, as we have basi­cal­ly done with our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem since Jamaica sup­pos­ed­ly became inde­pen­dent and has earned the dubi­ous title of the mur­der cap­i­tal of the world?
“Yes, I said the mur­der cap­i­tal of the world’. I said what I said!!!
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​c​o​w​a​r​d​i​c​e​-​a​l​o​n​e​-​i​s​-​s​t​o​p​p​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​g​o​v​e​r​n​m​e​n​t​-​f​r​o​m​-​h​a​n​g​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​o​u​s​-​s​c​u​m​-​d​e​s​t​r​o​y​i​n​g​-​l​i​v​es/

Have you noticed that politi­cians oppose more scruti­ny of how tax­pay­er funds are allo­cat­ed? Under what cir­cum­stances does an employ­ee gets to tell his employ­er the para­me­ters for employment?
Huh, Delroy Chuck?
If you do not like the rules find anoth­er line of work.
You are not enti­tled to pub­lic ser­vice; serv­ing is an hon­or, and you are not a king. That goes for Chuck and oth­ers, regard­less of polit­i­cal par­ty, who believe that they have the right to deter­mine whether there is trans­paren­cy in our government.
The only peo­ple served by the sys­tem in JAMAICA are the vio­lent mur­der­ers, their cohorts, and defense attor­neys who make a liv­ing from them.
No one both­ers to ask where the mon­ey comes from to pay the high-priced vul­tures who rep­re­sent those killers with vim and vig­or? The gen­er­al under­stand­ing is that the shot­tas have the dough to pay for their defense.
Despite all of this, nei­ther the gov­ern­ment nor the PNP, which has oper­at­ed as a sup­port group for the Island’s crim­i­nals, has tak­en proac­tive steps to get out ahead of this scourge legislatively.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​e​-​a​w​a​i​t​-​t​h​e​-​v​e​r​d​i​c​t​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​c​l​a​n​s​m​a​n​-​g​a​n​g​-​t​r​i​al/

Our coun­try is seri­ous­ly com­pro­mised. On the one hand, there are peo­ple like Delroy Chuck call­ing on cit­i­zens to tell what they know and mak­ing the case in June for more intel­li­gence gath­er­ing using CCTV and oth­er meth­ods, while he is direct­ly involved in let­ting mur­der­ers off the hook if they only plead guilty.
Delroy Chuck’s approach allows mur­der­ers to plead guilty, and fifty per­cent of the penal­ty they would received is removed. We all know that a mur­der­er is most like­ly to receive sev­en years for tak­ing a life, so fifty per­cent leaves the mur­der­er with three and one-half years to serve. If that mur­der­er served a year in jail before being let out on bail by the crim­i­nal-lov­ing judges, he would receive time served for that, so he is down to two and one-half years, and with good behav­ior, that scum­bag is out in a year.
Welcome to the dystopia we call Jamaica. Jamaica, no fuck­ing problem.
Yah…
We spend a great deal of time laud­ing our ath­letes as we should. They con­tin­ue to car­ry the nation’s flag high, but some pre­tend that ath­letes win­ning races eras­es the coun­try’s danger.
It does not!!!!

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The Jamaican system cannot try cases in a timely fashion; it is bad all around…It destroys lives, and, more importantly, the inability of the justice system to deliver timely justice for the Jamaican people is contributing exponentially to the continued rise of violent crime.

It is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble for a defen­dant to receive a fair and just tri­al in Jamaica under the present sys­tem that delays tri­als for years, some­times decades. One of the build­ing blocks of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is that defen­dants have a right to a speedy tri­al. It is dif­fi­cult for any­one to counter that as far as that right goes, Jamaicans are not being abused by the system.
Shortages of court­rooms and court staff, i.e., pros­e­cu­tors, stenog­ra­phers, judges, etc., are a part of the rea­son the back­logs are so sig­nif­i­cant, result­ing in post­poned tri­als and jus­tice being denied all around.
There is anoth­er press­ing issue that has impact­ed jury tri­als, and that is find­ing jurors to try cas­es. According to the Supreme Court’s own assess­ment and opin­ions writ­ten by judges of the supreme court, cas­es are adjourned (sine die), mean­ing adjourned with­out a tri­al date being set, but that the case may be brought back before the court when cir­cum­stances atten­dant to the adjourn­ment are ironed out.
A grow­ing vol­ume of cas­es over­whelms pros­e­cu­tors who can­not take action against cer­tain sus­pects, who then com­mit more crimes. Victims or wit­ness­es become less will­ing to tes­ti­fy as time pass­es and their mem­o­ries of events grow fog­gy, weak­en­ing cas­es against per­pe­tra­tors. I believe this goes to the heart of the nation’s dan­ger­ous­ly high vio­lent crime rate.

In 2011 a high court judge wrote his rea­son for adjourn­ing a case sine die.  The crim­i­nal case was brought before the court as far back as 1999; since then, the case has had 38 tri­al dates. In 2011 when he adjourned the case with­out set­ting a new tri­al date, the cir­cum­stances that caused the pre­vi­ous adjourn­ments still exist­ed. The Deputy Director of Public Prosecution informed the court that the sub­stan­tial rea­son for the adjourn­ments was the insuf­fi­cien­cy of the jurors.
Those who worked in law enforce­ment know what hap­pens to cas­es adjourned sine die; they are sel­dom resus­ci­tat­ed. The Prosecutor’s office moves on to new cas­es, and that crim­i­nal defen­dant is off the hook regard­less of the seri­ous­ness of the offense he committed.
The myr­i­ad rea­sons pre­vent­ing speedy tri­als are not lost on [crim­i­nals]; nei­ther are they lost on their defense attor­neys, who find inge­nious ways to get the courts to adjourn cas­es repeat­ed­ly. In fair­ness to some defense attor­neys who are not act­ing as con­sigliere to mur­der­ous gang­sters, pros­e­cu­tors some­times come up lack­ing in get­ting their case ready for trial.

The tragedy for the defen­dants who are caught up in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, inno­cent or guilty, is that the sys­tem is inca­pable of arbi­trat­ing their guilt or inno­cence in a time­ly fash­ion, and that has con­tributed to the high crime rate in the country.
For exam­ple, the police offi­cers labeled a death squad in 2011 still have not had their tri­al start­ed. The offi­cers were demo­nized by Carolyn Gomez and the crim­i­nal-sup­port­ing reac­tionary groups oper­at­ing in Jamaica under the cov­er of human rights, Jamaicans for Justice (FFJ) chief among them. These offi­cers were charged with mur­der aris­ing from police action In Clarendon as far back as January 2011.
Charges of mur­der were brought against them by the anti-police head of INDECOM Terrence Williams in April 2014, which result­ed from the death of Clarendon Most Wanted* (at the time) Martin Shand o/​c Froggie died dur­ing a police spe­cial oper­a­tions in the woods of New Longsville District Clarendon where police con­front­ed him in January 2011.
At the time of his death, Martin was want­ed for sev­er­al gun-relat­ed crimes com­mit­ted in North Clarendon, includ­ing being want­ed for the killing of one of his broth­ers in the New Longsville area.

Eight years after they were charged crim­i­nal­ly, those offi­cers still do not have a tri­al date set so that the charges against them can be heard, and they may have their names cleared.
On the 18^th of July 2022, the offi­cers who were last in court two full years ago were once again told by a judge, Leighton Pusey, that they would have to wait anoth­er three years to have their case brought up again. Judge Pusey indi­cat­ed there was a seri­ous back­log of cas­es, and he does­n’t see this case start­ing before 2025.
Attorneys for the accused police offi­cers Churchill Neita Q C and Mrs. Valerie Neita-Roberts Q C. asked the court to expire the tri­al date under pri­or­i­ty. The judge was asked to look at ear­li­er dates but indi­cat­ed the attor­neys should make a pri­or­i­ty application.
In the mean­time, the lives of those police offi­cers con­tin­ue to be on hold as they await their day in court. This is not jus­tice by any measure…

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

This inci­dent report­ed­ly hap­pened in Half Way Tree square a short while ago. According to sources, there was a police involved shoot­ing involv­ing at least one man who was tak­en to the hospital.
More to come…

This report­ed­ly occurred yes­ter­day at the Vernamfield Aerodrome in Clarendon. The inci­dent hap­pened at Drag Rivals, a drag rac­ing event being staged at the airstrip. One of the cars in action veered off the track and ran into the crowd stand­ing on the side­lines after launch. At least four peo­ple, includ­ing a female whose con­di­tion is con­sid­ered severe, were tak­en to the hos­pi­tal for injuries.

The fol­low­ing sto­ry seems fan­tas­tic, so much so that we pub­lish it with the great­est of cau­tion. Nevertheless, I will not be the judge as to the verac­i­ty of the sto­ry, suf­fic­ing to say we will await the out­come of the inves­ti­ga­tions like every­one else.
I wish to reit­er­ate that we have not inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied the verac­i­ty of these alle­ga­tions and, as such do not wish to point fin­gers at anyone.
Notwithstanding, it is imper­a­tive that as it per­tains to these alle­ga­tions, it behooves the JCF lead­er­ship to inves­ti­gate this inci­dent with the great­est of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and alacrity and make a full report to the Jamaican peo­ple as the inves­ti­ga­tions progress. Anything short of the fore­gone will fur­ther erode what­ev­er lit­tle trust the peo­ple have remain­ing in the agency.
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Murder and attempted murder.

Forty-Nine (49) years old Phillip Wallace, Tiler of 3 Green Glide Close Red Hills Road St. Andrews, was shot and killed in front of a bar along Red Hills Road in Saint Andrew on Saturday, July 16, 2022, at about 10:41 am.
Monique Ellis, 29 years old Bar Owner of the same address as the deceased, nar­row­ly escaped death in the same incident.
According to the police, Monique Ellis was inside the bar while mis­ter Wallace was under a shed out­side talk­ing on his cel­lu­lar phone. A White Toyota Axio motor vehi­cle pulled up, and three men alight­ed from the vehi­cle armed with hand­guns and opened gun­fire at Mister Wallace. Wallace suf­fered gun­shot wounds all over his body.

The men also fired sev­er­al shots at Miss Ellis before escap­ing. Ms. Ellis report­ed­ly ran out through the back door and man­aged to escape unhurt onto near­by premises.
Monique Ellis alleged to respond­ing offi­cers that the three men who mur­dered mis­ter Wallace and attempt­ed to kill her were police offi­cers from the Constant Spring Police Station who arrest­ed and charged mis­ter Wallace on Thursday, July 14, 2022, at about 6:00 pm dur­ing a raid. She also report­ed that she gave them fif­teen thou­sand dol­lars as they request­ed a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand not to take the case to court.

Ellis told police that Wallace, who is her com­mon-law hus­band, report­ed the mat­ter to Inspector Ewan Campbell of the Constant Spring Police. Inspector Campbell is report­ed­ly the offi­cer who led the oper­a­tion. Ellis said Wallace told Inspector Campbell that a mem­ber from his team took fif­teen thou­sand dol­lars from her to drop the case.
She said the Inspector called a Corporal who alleged­ly received the mon­ey and asked him about it.
Ellis said that while Wallace was being processed, an offi­cer whom she iden­ti­fied as Dennis asked him for an addi­tion­al fif­teen thou­sand dollars.
She said her com­mon-law hus­band refused because he was already writ­ten up and charged for an offense.

She said she left the Constant Spring Police Station at about 11:41 am, and there­after she received a tele­phone call from a male per­son, tele­phone num­ber 876−880−0059. The male iden­ti­fied him­self as Dennis and asked her about the mon­ey. She said Dennis request­ed $150,000.00″.

We have a seri­ous prob­lem in Jamaica with law­less­ness and the gov­ern­ment, mean­ing those elect­ed to the par­lia­ment have not done any­thing about it for as long as the prob­lem has persisted.
Part of the law­less cul­ture that has per­sist­ed in our coun­try is the belief by many Jamaicans that they have the right to resist arrest, fight, and assault police offi­cers when offi­cers attempt to arrest them.

There are mis­de­meanor penal­ties under our penal code to deal with them. Still, the con­se­quences are so infin­i­tes­i­mal that peo­ple ignore them and in most cas­es, the crim­i­nal-cod­dling judges absolve and dis­charge those charges.
In addi­tion to INDECOM, which fur­ther chills the police’s abil­i­ty to deal with Jamaica’s crim­i­nals, this embold­ens Jamaicans to resist arrest, assault, and even cause seri­ous injury to police offi­cers while they car­ry out their sworn duties.
Neither Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Opposition leader Mark Golding, nor any oth­er politi­cian or self-serv­ing judge are forced to absorb ver­bal and phys­i­cal assault for exe­cut­ing their duties,[ what­ev­er it is that they do].
This begs the ques­tion; why are police offi­cers who try their best to keep every­one safe, even at the per­il of their own lives, being asked to absorb this kind of abuse with­out protection?

There is no ques­tion that Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Golding both see these video clips. I tru­ly believe that the Prime Minister has under­gone a meta­mor­pho­sis regard­ing his views on vio­lent crim­i­nals. Is he where some­one like myself is? Not a chance! However, I believe the weight of the office he holds has final­ly informed him of his most sacred duty as our coun­try’s leader, which is to pro­tect its citizens.
Where are the laws mak­ing it a felony to touch a police offi­cer? Before the advent of cam­era phones, the crim­i­nal cod­dling judges would admon­ish and dis­charge assaults and resist­ing charges, which they claimed were con­vic­tions, when they did­n’t dis­miss the charges out­right. The truth is that even if we agree that admon­ish and dis­charge is a con­vic­tion of sorts, there is no seri­ous penal­ty attached to ser­i­al offenders.
The same peo­ple sum­mar­i­ly do the same thing again and again with­out consequence.
This seems to delight the crim­i­nal cod­dling judges who see noth­ing wrong with vio­lence being vis­it­ed upon our police officers.
One thing that sep­a­rates my time from today is that the offend­ers who would raise their hands to a police offi­cer knew well who to try that with back when I was a serv­ing member.
You put your hand on me, and you will regret it for the remain­der of your nat­ur­al life.
Offenders who assault the police and are admon­ished and dis­charged are not pre­clud­ed from get­ting a US visa or get­ting a gov­ern­ment job, so the prac­tice is an entrenched part of our cul­ture, fight the police all you want, lit­i­gate your case in the streets with vio­lence against the police, even when you are not involved in what the police is doing…

Bruce Golding, the PNP, and the for­eign agi­ta­tors who oper­ate in Jamaica under the guise of human rights devised INDECOM, the so-called Independent Commission of Inquiry that inves­ti­gates mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces; they do not care about the assaults on our police offi­cers; they do not care now.
The leg­is­la­ture has a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pass leg­is­la­tion that strength­ens the penal­ty for such assaults and resist­ing arrests. This can­cer of resist­ing arrest must be stopped now.
We can­not have a coun­try where offi­cers are pun­ished for mis­takes while offend­ers who assault them walk away with­out con­se­quence because judges refuse to sanc­tion them and the laws are too lenient in the first place.
The aver­age per­son has a right to ver­bal­ly assault offi­cers exe­cut­ing their duties (free­dom of speech) even when what is hap­pen­ing does not con­cern them, but when they inter­vene phys­i­cal­ly and get too close, to the point of touch­ing an offi­cer, all bets are off. What we are wit­ness­ing in these videos is not even peo­ple touch­ing offi­cers; they are active­ly fight­ing and try­ing to kill our police offi­cers. Where is the legislature?
On January 7^th of this year, one of the crim­i­nal­i­ty enhance­ment lob­bies oper­at­ing in our coun­try (JFJ) berat­ed the police and demand­ed puni­tive action against a police offi­cer who was video­taped respond­ing to an offend­er who inter­ject­ed him­self into law­ful police actions.
The sanc­ti­mo­nious crim­i­nal sup­port­ers issued a lengthy state­ment pub­lished in one of the dai­ly papers demand­ing actions while issu­ing forked tongue plat­i­tudes about the rule of law. We know what those char­la­tans are; they do not respect the rule of law. They are bot­tom-feed­ers whose very exis­tence is fed by the per­cep­tion that the police are cor­rupt. If the per­cep­tion of the bad police is removed, they have no rel­e­vance. No one should be sur­prised about their con­tin­ued dili­gence in high­light­ing any­thing resem­bling police mis­con­duct. They need to be able to demo­nize the police to con­tin­ue receiv­ing for­eign funding.
Nowhere in the state­ment did they speak to their crim­i­nal fol­low­ers about the need to obey our laws and refrain from inter­fer­ing with the police.

Their web­site has the fol­low­ing state­ment; The Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) pro­gram work is made pos­si­ble through a com­bi­na­tion of dona­tions and grant-fund­ed projects from var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment part­ners, foun­da­tions, and oth­er part­ners. JFJ does not accept con­tri­bu­tions from polit­i­cal par­ties.
In due course, we will for­mal­ly request Jamaicans For Justice pro­vide us with full dis­clo­sure of all their donors, where they are from, and why they are donat­ing mon­ey to JFJ?
We should have no prob­lem receiv­ing such infor­ma­tion under the free­dom of infor­ma­tion Act. If for­eign mon­ey is flood­ing into our coun­try to fund out­side caus­es, we need to know who is behind the money.

https://​www​.face​book​.com/​g​a​r​y​.​a​i​t​c​h​e​s​o​n​.​5​4​/​v​i​d​e​o​s​/​1​4​1​8​5​8​1​5​6​8​5​9​0​317

We need to see body-worn cam­eras for our police for account­abil­i­ty and to dis­pel lies about police abuse. Body-worn cam­eras are also help­ful to police in iden­ti­fy­ing at a lat­er time those who should be arrest­ed for inter­fer­ing in their work.
Police offi­cers need tasers, a non-lethal tool to appro­pri­ate­ly deal with arrestees who active­ly fight and resist arrest and those who would inter­fere in law­ful arrests.
Jamaica is one of the most vio­lent nations on earth; the homi­cide num­bers speak for them­selves. The coun­try can no longer say it can­not afford to give the most basic tools to police offi­cers on the front­lines fight­ing the scourge of vio­lent crimes. Allowing this scourge to con­tin­ue is, by default sur­ren­der­ing the nation to the rule of thugs. Mister Holness, we are watching.
We are already extreme­ly close.…..

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Reports Suggest Police Switched Bullets In His Case.
In a just soci­ety in which the rule of law applied to every­one, the cops who com­mit­ted this egre­gious crime, if alive, would be head­ing to prison for the rest of their nat­ur­al lives. No one should be under any illu­sion that any­thing will be done, the tax­pay­ers will foot the bill, and it will be busi­ness as usu­al.

The City of Detroit reached a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar set­tle­ment, end­ing a law­suit claim­ing three decades ago mem­bers of its police force switched out bul­lets tak­en from the body of a mur­der vic­tim to link the evi­dence to a sus­pect. The con­vict­ed man, who was ini­tial­ly sen­tenced to 30 to 60 years, always main­tained his inno­cence and says he is “thank­ful” for the agree­ment. The recent­ly exon­er­at­ed Desmond Ricks spent the major­i­ty of his adult life in jail for a crime he did not com­mit. On Sept. 23, 1992, the then-21-year-old was con­vict­ed of sec­ond-degree mur­der and ille­gal use of a firearm, pinned to the death of his friend Gerry Bennett, who was fatal­ly shot out­side of the Top Hat restau­rant in Detroit in March of that year, as described by research com­piled by stu­dents from the University of Michigan’s Law School.

Knowing he did not com­mit the crime, he and his legal team appealed the deci­sion. It was denied. It would be 25 more years before a court would con­cede to review old evi­dence with new eyes. In 2017, he was released from prison after years of hard work from stu­dents at the Michigan Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School and gun experts combed through the state’s evi­dence and craft­ed a defense that would be irrefutable to any judge. Now, after Ricks filed a law­suit claim­ing that DPD offi­cers switched evi­dence cru­cial to his inno­cence, lawyers from the city have agreed to set­tle for $7.5 mil­lion. After the City Council approved the set­tle­ment on Tuesday, July 13, Ricks, now 56, says he is pleased with the out­come. “I’m not greedy. I’m thank­ful,” he said of the com­pen­sa­tion The Associated Press reported. 

During the case, police made these .38-cal­iber bul­lets cen­tral to the case, stat­ing the mur­der weapon was Ricks’ mom’s gun and he stole it from her to kill Bennett. Experts tes­ti­fied that the bul­lets the police pre­sent­ed in the Wayne County Circuit Court in 1992 could not be the two “small lead slugs” a med­ical exam­in­er retrieved from Bennett’s brain and spine. But the road to vin­di­ca­tion was not quick­ly achieved. In 2008, the Michigan State Police shut down the Detroit police crime lab after an audit exposed the agency’s bal­lis­tics test­ing was wild­ly erro­neous. Two years lat­er, armed with this infor­ma­tion, Claudia Whitman, founder of the National Capital Crime Assistance Network, agreed to take on Ricks’ case. A part of their dis­cov­ery was a change of opin­ion by David Townshend, a bal­lis­tics expert from his orig­i­nal tri­al, that tes­ti­fied to Ricks’ cul­pa­bil­i­ty at tri­al. In 2010, after meet­ing Ricks in prison, Townshend now believes the bul­lets he exam­ined dur­ing the tri­al were in “near pris­tine con­di­tion,” mak­ing them impos­si­ble to have been fired from the actu­al firearm. He not­ed that the bul­lets had no blem­ish­es usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with ammu­ni­tion removed from a mur­der victim’s body. Nor was there any hair, blood, bone, or human mate­r­i­al on the bul­lets he was asked to review. 

Townshend not only reversed his tes­ti­mo­ny, but he helped Whitman and her team locate the records from the tri­al and dis­cov­ered that he even messed up with his notes on the case, fur­ther dam­ag­ing Ricks’ orig­i­nal case. Another extra­or­di­nary find­ing by the expert was that the evi­dence was not sealed in the case, mak­ing him believe the actu­al bul­lets the med­ical exam­in­er extract­ed from Bennet may have been swapped out. The stu­dents start­ed work­ing on the case in 2012, and in 2015 they received dig­i­tal pho­tographs of the actu­al bul­lets from the crime. They sent them to Townshend, and he com­pared them to the ones he was giv­en dur­ing the tri­al and saw that they were rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent. The bul­lets in the pho­to were “severe­ly muti­lat­ed,” and he assessed that they were so dam­aged from being fired and hit­ting Bennett, it would have been impos­si­ble for the bal­lis­tics team or police agency to link them to a weapon.

To dri­ve his the­o­ry home, the Innocence Clinic con­tact­ed Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic, chief med­ical exam­in­er for Oakland County, for him to re-exam the autop­sy report. His find­ing was that because the orig­i­nal ME describe the slugs as “small,” they prob­a­bly were .22- or .25-cal­iber bul­lets, can­cel­ing the nar­ra­tive that Ricks used his mother’s .38-cal­iber gun to mur­der Bennett. As a result of their dili­gent work, the late Judge Richard Skutt of the Third Circuit Court grant­ed Ricks anoth­er tri­al, CBS Detroit reports. The city, after review­ing the evi­dence, agreed that the bul­let analy­sis from 1992 was not accu­rate and the pros­e­cu­tion decid­ed to drop all the charges. The direc­tor of the Innocence Clinic, David Moran, said of the case, “It was lay­er upon lay­er upon lay­er of police mis­con­duct. It was a tru­ly egre­gious case.” Separately from the recent set­tle­ment, Ricks received over $1 mil­lion from the state for the wrong­ful con­vic­tion, receiv­ing $50,000 for each year he was incar­cer­at­ed. Ricks says he is hap­py to be free and around his fam­i­ly. “It’s a bless­ing to be alive with my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren,” he said. “It was a bless­ing to not lose my life in there [prison].” “I’m not bit­ter. I’m not angry. I’m just relieved. I want to get a job. I want to pay tax­es,” he stat­ed in an inter­view after the approval. “I just want to be a nor­mal citizen.”(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed (@ Atlantablackstar​.com)