"THEY STOLE THE TRUTH" says woman convicted for crime she did NOT commit

This 6th-grade photo of Geneva France
was the only REAL evidence used to convict her.
She got 10 years hard time, no early release.
Then the Truth saw the light.




This case is yet another example of a completely broken judicial system. It highlights the difference a poor defendent (95% of all cases) will face vs a well financed defendant. Sometimes we need to take a step back on the primaries and remember there are real problems out there, that affect real people, rich & poor.

Anyone who could afford a $5000 dollar attorney would have never even seen pretrial.

From the Blog of a Metro Reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/01/they_stole_the_truth_says_woma.html

NOTE: Cleveland.com requires you to complete an AGE/ZIPCODE form to read, not a full survey.

SNIPS, with thanks to Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer

Geneva France walked out of federal prison with $68 and a bus ticket home. That's all the government had to offer a woman who had served 16 months of a decade-long prison sentence for a crime she didn't commit.

The mother of three returned to her family, but her youngest child -- who was 18 months old when France was sent to prison -- didn't recognize her.

And France, 25, had no home to return to. Her landlord had evicted her from the rental during her incarceration, and everything she owned had been tossed on the street.




She was convicted of being a drug courier -- a crime prosecutors now acknowledge was built on lies. A judge released her in May. Her case was part of a massive operation to stem the flow of drugs in Mansfield.

Today, federal prosecutors will meet with a judge to discuss throwing out the convictions of 15 men imprisoned in the same tainted investigation -- including the case against a man serving 30 years in prison.




At 6 a.m. Nov. 10, 2005, federal agents pounded on her door. She opened it, and authorities burst in, placing her youngest daughter, Leelasha, on the couch as they searched for drugs. They found nothing.

"I didn't know what to think," France said. "I was getting my children ready for school when all of a sudden people start screaming, 'Where are the drugs?' There were no drugs."

They dragged her to court for her first appearance, and she didn't recognize many of the people around her, even Ronald Davis -- the person police said she ran drugs for. It was her first trip to a courtroom and she was bewildered.





Lucas and Bray identified her from a photo Mansfield authorities provided.

"As soon as a sheriff's deputy showed me the picture, I said, 'That's the girl I bought from,' " Lucas testified at France's trial Feb. 14, 2006.

The picture was France -- her sixth-grade class picture, taken 13 years earlier.

No surveillance photos, which are standard in tracking drug dealers, were taken in France's case.

It was her word against Lucas'.





If not for a cousin, her children would have entered the foster-care system.

France split her time between prisons in West Virginia and Kentucky. Her fellow inmates mocked her, telling her that once federal agents arrested her, there was no such thing as leaving prison early.

She pored over books she could barely read in law libraries and thought of her daughters. Her family couldn't afford to visit or call.

France cleaned the prison for 12 cents an hour, allowing her to save up for a phone card to call home. For every three hours of work, she earned enough money to pay for one minute of talking to her daughters on the phone.





Recently, her 3-year-old was nearly dismissed from preschool because France couldn't afford a $20 certified copy of the girl's birth certificate. A school official paid for it, and the child is still enrolled.

Lucas, the DEA agent, has declined to speak of the case. Bray has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for perjury and violating civil rights related to the Mansfield cases. He is cooperating with the U.S. Justice Department's internal investigation of the case. His attorney, John McCaffrey, has urged a detailed look into how the DEA handled Bray.

In the entire mess, France wants to know the answer to one question:

"Why me?" she said. "Why would anyone be so mad at me? Of all the women in Mansfield, why me? Because I didn't go out on a date? Why do that to me over something so dumb?"

But she is not the only one.

There are tens of thousands of people that are in prison over the ridiculous "drug courier" law.

One is a man who held a job and was raising a family. A co-worker mentioned that he needed a ride to a Burger King after work. The man said sure, I go right by there. Then he offered to sit in the car and wait while the man ran into the burger place. "He needed a ride home, I figured that I'd wait cuz his house is close to mine."

The driver had no idea that this man was bopping into BK in order to conclude a drug deal. But Federal Agents did.

A judge sentenced him to a stiff long mandatory term, crying as he did so. He explained to a reporter: "It's the law, and I cannot deviate from it. Should I decide to do so, they will relieve me and someone else will hand him the same sentence."

Women are often named by drug pushers who remember their name and remember how angry they are that the young women would not date them.

during the time of the Nazi. Their explanation was it was the law. There is justice, but it takes time. This occurs because the system is broke ... thinking..

Make no mistake, the judges do play a small part in releasing some.

in stalinist Russia.

Neither way is it any good.

K & R

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2729853

Welcome to the police state -- USAmerika...

Thank God he never spent a day in jail. But I believe that William Kristol will explain for us how proper it is that Ms. France went to prison, and that it was perfectly justified in his fucked-up world view.

Interesting town. Decent-sized African-American population in a sea of white rural Ohio.

Funded the city expansion.

I went to college in Mt. Vernon down the road, and we often heard the worst stories of what happened to people there.

fueled law enforcement funding, which arrested more people, which created more prisons to grow the next backwater town, which will create more crime, etc etc etc etc on and on.

http://www.hr95.org/tulia.htm

the google produced 1,750 from tulia texas injustice: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=tulia+texas&hl=en&num=30&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=injustice&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&cr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images