Racism Is Alive And Well in Jackson, NJ

COALITION FOR BRANDON C. JACKSON

In this technologically advanced year of 2012, it is indeed sad that we still have a very long way to go with regard to basic human justice FOR ALL (as our Pledge of Allegiance alludes too). Injustices continue to take place daily in our nation, and for people of color, they are, unfortunately, more frequent and often more blatant. Brandon Jackson has been caught up in a web of legal incompetence, cover-ups and blithe indifference. A law-abiding young African-American man who had never been in any sort of trouble in his life, he is proof positive that the Land of Oz is not the only place where unbelievable things happen. A New Jersey native, he has experienced the type of nightmare one would think had transpired in the Deep South in the 60′s. To get to the point of this letter, Brandon Jackson has been incarcerated unjustly, for a 12-year term, after alarmingly lackadaisical legal representation by mainly “go-along to get-along” public defenders and private attorneys in Jackson, New Jersey. A series of other cover-ups regarding his case which, in a nutshell, involves his self-defense in a racial attack upon him in October 2006 (yes, this dragged on for five years), when he was 21 years old, by a group of white individuals who yelled “kill the nigger” and other racial comments, in which no other person was charged. He was convicted, without any evidence, of the aggravated assault of two of his attackers, who testified against him at trial. Although the responding officer classified the incident as a racially-motivated attack/bias crime at trial, which took place during the height of the Zimmerman incident, the judge said such comments were not important in Ocean County, New Jersey, a predominantly white county. So, what do we tell our African-American and Latino sons — that they are an endangered species? Where is the basic American justice for Brandon Jackson and those like him?