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Black leaders point out Trump’s contradictions in criminal justice as he rails at guilty verdict

By AARON MORRISON & MATT BROWN 6-7 minutes, 01/06/2024

NEW YORK (AP) — As Donald Trump lambasted the guilty verdict of his hush money trial this week, he stood inside a Manhattan courthouse that was the site of one of the most notorious examples of injustice in recent New York history. And he had a part in that.

The same courthouse is where five Black and Latino teens were wrongly sentenced in 1984 for the raping and beating of a female white jogger. In the wake of the 1989 attack, the former president took out an ad calling for the execution in New York City. The case sparked racial tensions in the city and many cite it as proof of a criminal system that is biased against defendants of colour.

On Friday, just a day after becoming the first U.S. President to be convicted in a criminal court of felony offenses, Trump called out that very same criminal justice system for being corrupt and rigged.

He said, “This is a fraud” of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, led by Alvin Bragg – the first Black person to hold the position – and overseen Judge Juan Merchan who is of Colombian descent.

This is a rigged case. The trial shouldn’t have taken place in this venue. The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, said on Friday that the judge shouldn’t be there.

Irony was found by some Black Americans when Trump railed against his own conviction in a courtroom where five Black and Latino teens were wrongly convicted for a case Trump so loudly supported. Trump’s initial foray into hard-line crime politics was the Central Park Five case, which preceded his populist persona. Many people believed that Trump used dog whistles and overtly racism during both of his public lives.

Trump’s outreach to Black and Hispanic Communities has recently adopted the language used by criminal justice reformers. He says that Black Americans and Latinos are able to relate to him, because prosecutors have been trying to catch him just like they’ve done to many men and boys from their communities.

“Donald Trump’s conviction will be a problem with him among many Blacks because, guess what? Many Black people don’t like people who break our criminal laws,” Maya Wiley said, a New York civil right attorney and CEO of Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“Black people are disproportionately victims of crime.” They don’t just support people who have been convicted.

Wiley, who unsuccessfully ran for New York City Mayor in 2021 said that the city’s Blacks and Hispanics also remembered Trump’s remarks about the Central Park Jogger Case.

Wiley stated that “they haven’t forgot the fact Donald Trump ran a full page ad suggesting death penalty for Central Park Five who were exonerated, and who were victims of an abusive legal system.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a supporter of the five men who were exonerated called Trump’s conviction as a symbol of justice for them.

Sharpton stated that “this is the same building where Antron McCray and Kevin Richardson passed, day after day as they endured show trials for crimes they did not commit.”

Now the shoe is on its other foot. “Donald Trump is the criminal and these five men are exonerated,” said he.

Salaam, who was elected to the New York City Council last summer, said that he did not take pleasure in Donald Trump’s guilty verdict, “even though Donald Trump had wanted me executed, even when I was proved innocent.”

In 2002, evidence connected another person with the crime. The convictions of Salaam and other young men were vacated. In 2019, , Trump refused to apologize for the exonerated men.

Salaam posted a message on Thursday, March 29, to the social media platform X. “But we Americans should be somber because we have an ex President who has been convicted on 34 separate felonies.”

We have to be better than that. We are better than that,” he wrote.

Judith Browne Dianis is the executive director of Advancement Project Action Fund, a civil rights organization. She said that Trump hasn’t experienced the same unfair treatment as Black and Hispanics in the criminal justice systems.

“He wasn’t arrested violently by the police. He didn’t spend a night on Rikers Island, because he couldn’t afford bail. He didn’t go to jail.” Dianis stated that he could hire a number of lawyers and pay for an appeal.

Racial justice activists are also taking advantage of the historic moment to remind people that Trump and associates tried to undermine the will and vote of voters in districts with a high percentage Blacks and Latinos by contesting the results of the 2020 presidential elections. Derrick Johnson of the NAACP said that the hush-money trial was only one part of an overall narrative about electoral justice. He called the verdict against Trump a “monumental step towards justice for the American People.”

Johnson, after Thursday’s verdict, said: “Whether it was an attempt to steal elections or overthrow the government, one thing is clear. Donald Trump does not represent American democracy.”

Johnson, the leader of the oldest civil rights group in the country, believes that Trump’s criminal conviction should disqualify him for the Oval Office.

He said that “as Black Americans are denied basic human right due to less offensive crime, any attempt to promote Donald Trump’s presidential nomination would be a gross advance of white supremacist policies.”

Sharpton warned against gloating about the verdict.

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