Hurricane's Last Wish

David McCallum kisses his mother after being freed from prison

"When I walked through the doors of this office in January, I inherited a legacy of disgrace with respect to wrongful conviction cases." -Ken Thompson, Brooklyn District Attorney

"A Brooklyn man convicted of murder was ordered free Wednesday after he spent 29 years in prison for crimes he did not commit. The convictions of David McCallum and his late co-defendant, Willie Stuckey, were overturned by a judge at the prosecutor’s request." -International Business Times

Related: In The Palm Of Some Fool's Hand?

Free Cecily!

A Jury Of Her Peers

Justice For Cecily

Letter via The Guardian

A Vision Of The Future

"The verdict in the biggest Occupy related criminal case in New York City, that of Cecily McMillan, came down Monday afternoon. As disturbing as it is that she was found guilty of felony assault against Officer Grantley Bovell, the circumstances of her trial reflect an even more disturbing reality – that of normalized police violence, disproportionately punitive sentences (McMillan faces seven years in prison), and a criminal penal system based on anything but justice. While this is nothing new for the over-policed communities of New York City, what happened to McMillan reveals just how powerful and unrestrained a massive police force can be in fighting back against the very people with whom it is charged to protect." -Molly Knefel, The Guardian

Justice For Cecily's statement

The Gifted Hunter... One Aim, One Destiny

Chokwe Lumumba

1947 - 2014

"Capitalism, at its rankest form, is not a humanistic economic system. It allows the most powerful to tear into the economic fabric of the least powerful. It allows people with big money to control people with no money, low money and small money in many ways including politically because the people with the money the determinant of who runs for office." -from Jackson Free Press interview

In The Palm Of Some Fool’s Hand?

"You may remember me from my other life as a middleweight boxer. But fate had other plans for me; I was wrongly convicted of a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, and spent 19 years in prison trying, along with generous friends and good people from every walk of life, to right this wrong and gain my freedom. I am now quite literally on my deathbed and am making my final wish to those with the legal authority to act. My single regret in life is that David McCallum of Brooklyn — a man incarcerated in 1985, the same year I was released, and represented by Innocence International since 2004 — is still in prison. I request only that McCallum be granted a full hearing by the Brooklyn conviction integrity unit, now under the auspices of the new district attorney, Ken Thompson... McCallum was incarcerated two weeks after I was released, reborn into the miracle of this world. Now I’m looking death straight in the eye; he’s got me on the ropes, but I won’t back down. I ask Thompson to look straight in the eye of truth, a tougher customer than death, and not back down either." -Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, excerpted from Hurricane Carter’s Dying Wish (NY Daily News)

Watch: Reasonable Doubt: The Story Of David McCallum (trailer)

Justice for Daryl Kelly Sr.

"My father, Daryl Kelly Sr., has been in prison since 1998 for a crime he never committed — based on a lie I told. When I was just 8 years old, my drug addicted mother forced me to make an accusation of sexual abuse against him. But the truth is that my father had never laid a finger on me. Even my mother has admitted she forced me to lie about this during one of her drug binges. But my father is still in prison, 15 years after being wrongfully convicted… My dad needs to be freed and this wrong must be righted. I will not stop until it is. So far, all of his appeals have been denied  — the courts need to listen or Governor Cuomo should grant my father clemency" -Chaneya Kelly

Sign Chaneya's petition

Endless Contempt

"I refused to testify at that time based on the assertion of my First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights, as I will be doing again for the duration of this grand jury." -Jerry Koch

"After being held two hundred and forty-one days in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correction Center without being charged with a crime, Judge John Keenan decided to answer a motion filed by [Jerry Koch's] lawyers last month and release Koch on the grounds that the state would not be able to coerce him into cooperating with a federal grand jury… The judge issued a 20-page decision granting his release pursuant to a Grumbles Motion, so-called after the grand jury resister who first successfully employed the argument that since they would never agree to testify, their incarceration had become punitive, in violation of their rights." -Shawn Carrié, The New School Free Press

Photograph via Jerry Resists