Criminal Justice Committee

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By Bobbie Lammers Campbell
Co-Chair		 Recently Death Row inmate Steven Smith was exonerated by the Illinois Supreme Court, which found the evidence against him to be unreliable and insufficient to sustain his conviction. Smith was the 78th person nationally to be released from Death Row. In Illinois, 161 are on Death Row, ten of them Chicagoans allegedly tortured by Jon Burge and his associates (while Richard Daley was State’s Attorney) in the 1980s.

Members of the Criminal Justice Committee are participating in two national demonstrations against the criminal justice system. The first is April 24 Philadelphia march supporting the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning journalist former Black Panther, has been on Pennsylvania’s Death Row for 17 years, framed for killing a police officer. The second is May Day march of the Progressive Labor Party in Washington, D.C., on May 1. This march is not only against racist police brutality and courts but according to the press releases, also against war in Yugoslavia and Iraq and for the establishment of an egalitarian communist society organized without money.

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