A King and a crown of gold

Luis Felipe, "King Blood" Today is Dia de los Reyes Magos'Three Kings Day, marking the feast of the Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, and a journey of three wise men, mages or astrologers to visit Bethlehem. Celebrated throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and even in our own New Orleans with a slice of King Cake, it is a time of joy.  

This is not the tale of those biblical three Kings'Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar'nor the story of a baby in a manger who wound up a King on a cross with a crown of thorns who ascended into heaven. It is the tale of a King whose crown of gold named him King Blood. There is no joy in this narrative.

The thorns he wears are of barbed wire and he lives in hell.

His name is Luis Felipe.

He is not a household name for most of you. Yet, as King Blood, leader of a New York street gang known as the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation ((ALKQN or Latin Kings), he is reviled by "good people." Dubbed a sociopath by criminologists. Punished. Criminal. Murderous. One of those nightmares we see on prison porn shows.

According to the conventional wisdom he is an animal who deserves neither our compassion nor our understanding nor justice. For many his punishment is not enough and they cry for death.  

We save compassion for the innocent and the victims. We dole out our charity to those most deserving.

We, on the left, sign petitions and lobby for the rights of those we dub political prisoners. How dare they be tortured and kept in solitary? We demand justice for those we deem worthy of it.

It's so easy to defend those we have deemed "not guilty." If we dig a bit more into our charity we will perhaps question the course of justice in America and embrace worthy efforts like The Innocence Project for the wrongfully convicted. And once we have done those good works we can sleep at ease in our beds.

There is little interest shown in solving the economic disparities that create gangs and gang violence. The current solution is to pass harsher laws and build more prisons.

Gangs

According to the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment released by the National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC), approximately 1.4 million gang members belonging to more than 33,000 gangs were criminally active in the U.S. as of April, 2011. The assessment was developed through analysis of available federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement and corrections agency information; 2010 NDIC National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) data; and verified open source information.

'Gangs continue to expand, evolve, and become more violent. The FBI, along with its federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement partners, strives to disrupt and prevent their criminal activities and seek justice for innocent victims of their crimes,' said Assistant Director Kevin Perkins, FBI Criminal Investigative Division.

Last Sunday, writing about the fear of and fears of young black men, I was asked, "What do those young men aspire to?"  

For thousands, it is to find a family, a place in a society that has locked them out, and locked them up. Many find a place in a gang.

Luis Felipe is currently the recipient of the harshest prison sentence ever levied in the United States in recent history.  

Life imprisonment (plus 45 years) in solitary confinement. No visitors. No letters, no phone calls, except to his lawyer. He has no contact even with corrections officers in the Supermax facility.

Lawrence K. Freitell, Felipe's lawyer, has argued that the conditions that Felipe has been subjected to have contributed to a deteriorating mental and physical condition. Felipe has experienced a loss of sleep and appetite so severe that has had to be medicated with antidepressants. He reportedly weeps constantly and uncontrollably. Most importantly, Freitell argues that existing in this state of forced isolation and surveillance has caused Felipe to literally lose his ability to communicate verbally with others. At his sentencing Felipe prophetically declared to Judge Martin 'You accuse me of killing people, but you'll be killing me every day'

The NY Times reported in Testing the Limits of Punishment; Unusually Severe Life Sentence vs. Society's Need for Safety:

Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School who studies the effects of solitary confinement, said the conditions went too far. ''I could imagine a sober society living with capital punishment,'' he said, ''but I can't imagine a civilized society living with the punishment of driving a prisoner insane.''

I disagree with Grassian about the sobriety of capital punishment.

From my perspective Felipe's treatment is cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Brennan wrote, "There are, then, four principles by which we may determine whether a particular punishment is 'cruel and unusual'."

    The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity," especially torture.
    "A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion."
    "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."
    "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."

Luis Felipe, imho, is being tortured.

And the fact that the judge now will allow Felipe to take his one hour exercise a week and have monitored conversation with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh (executed in 2001), which Felipe rejected, does not mitigate the severity of his incarceration.

Those who have made him both a martyr and a hero to young people on the streets are doing a great job convincing young people of color that there is no justice in America for them. We violate our much touted Constitutional principles with impunity and only serve to underscore our deep hypocrisy.

The unconstitutional incarceration treatment of street brothers like King Blood does not serve as a deterrent to gang formation. It is a goad.  

The warehousing of more and more of our youth of color in jails and prisons across this nation serves as factories to produce yet more and more gang members on the streets.

The War on Drugs has been successful in undermining progressive change in Latin America, displacing populations, creating war zones in poor neighborhoods and filling prisons.

The irony in all this is that while we have a national passion and adulation for larger than life gangland crime figures on the silver screen, like Brando in The Godfather, or TV series like The Sopranos, we cower in fear of the tattooed gang bangers who serve as a warning to all nice middle class folks that you don't want these thugs in your neighborhood so lock em up and throw away the key. And if life in prison is hell, a common reaction is "tough shit'they deserve it."

(Continue reading below the fold.)