# Jim Crow era convictions need to expunged, and the victims need to be compensated **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 30, 2010, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831 "2010-12-30T15:55:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/101 "2011-01-02T02:22:13Z")
No no. fuck that shit. each japanese american interned in our federal concentr… happy camps during WW2 needs to be compensated far more than the 1.6 billion they received. let’s up the compensation rate to 100 billion dollars per day of incarceration. after all, there’s no price for human rights. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/102 "2011-01-02T02:32:47Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Do you know what Jim Crow laws were? They had nothing to do with juries and the denial of voting rights. Jim Crow was about segregation - they were the laws that said black people couldn’t share facilities like schools, drinking fountains, restaurants, and public transportation with white people. Jim Crow was a bit more expansive than segregation in restaurants, water fountains, and trains cars. Poll taxes and literacy tests were specifically created to disenfranchise black voters and are included under the broad umbrella of Jim Crow. ---
**Author:** ![Honesty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f04885/32.png) [@Honesty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honesty)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2011, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/103 "2011-01-02T02:55:02Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > The jury that acquitted the police officers in the Rodney King case was _mostly_ white, not all white. > > On the flip side, the jury that acquitted O.J. had something like nine blacks on it. > > I’d argue that a 9/12 jury of blacks is _not_ a representative cross section of society in most jurisdictions, whereas a _mostly_ white jury would be. (Whites are almost 80% of the U.S. population, so in most jurisdictions I’d expect a jury would be mostly white–de facto prohibitions against specific minorities serving on a jury is obviously racist and terrible, but we shouldn’t expect juries to not reflect the majority status of the majority “race” in America.) Listen, I’m not advocating that there be affirmative action in jury selection. I’m pointing out that the relationship between all-white juries and acquittals in the US Courts isn’t a casual one. It’s a real, bona-fide phenomenon. - Honesty ---
**Author:** ![Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pierrot_Le_Fou)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/104 "2011-01-03T00:24:38Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > As stated elsewhere, this guy is not still in prison, but let’s assume he was. > > Your statement does not mean that his innocence is in question. Were all-white juries unfair? Absolutely. But unless you’ve got step #4 in my question above, then I’m not willing to invest the state’s money to compensate this guy, or anyone else. > > What if 60 black witnesses, including ministers, nuns, monks, and the leaders of the community testified in front of the all white jury that they saw him kill someone? What if he confessed on the witness stand? Should he still get $50 billion? A person is innocent until proven guilty in a fair trial. Defendants that were denied a jury of their peers didn’t get fair trials. Whether the defendant was actually innocent is irrelevant. Every defendant deserves a fair trial. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/105 "2011-01-03T00:35:14Z")
The murderers of Emmett Till were given a “jury of their peers”. So obviously they were fairly aquitted. No doubt that the jury was unbiased, and the trial was completely fair. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/106 "2011-01-03T00:46:03Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Jim Crow was a bit more expansive than segregation in restaurants, water fountains, and trains cars. Poll taxes and literacy tests were specifically created to disenfranchise black voters and are included under the broad umbrella of Jim Crow. But disenfranchisement and segregation were two seperate issues. You also had the black codes, which restricted black employment; miscegenation laws, which outlawed interracial relationships; redlining, which restricted where blacks could live and start businesses; and lynching, which was terrorism directed against blacks. There were several distinct (I’m tempting to say seperate but equal) methods used to discriminate against blacks. This was why civil rights was not just a battle - it was more like a war being fought on multiple fronts. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/107 "2011-01-03T05:50:59Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Jim Crow laws as I understand the term refers to laws which segregated blacks from whites, and which discriminated against whites in various ways. These laws existed throughout the North after the Civil War. When they ended and to what degree they existed of course varies from place to place. > > My only issue is what I feel was a very blanket “since there weren’t Jim Crow laws in the North” statement, I didn’t feel that, given its position in the post in question it was properly indicated that you were only talking about a specific place or a specific time. > > In some states in the North Jim Crow continued up until not too long before it started to go out in the South, in many Northern states it had long since been eradicated. (Segregated schools in New York were shut down once and for all by Theodore Roosevelt when he was governor, well over 100 years ago–and even then I believe it only impacted two schools that were in operation.) Since the question was about people currently in prison, laws that went out of effect before anyone now serving a sentence was tried seemed to be irrelevant. And while there were no officially segregated schools in New York, there were de facto segregated schools. Though it was only three blocks from the beginning of a predominantly black neighborhood, my elementary school had maybe one black person in it. My junior high may have had none - I’d have to check my yearbook to see. I’m hardly saying Northerners were angels. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/108 "2011-01-03T06:48:47Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > But disenfranchisement and segregation were two seperate issues. You also had the black codes, which restricted black employment; miscegenation laws, which outlawed interracial relationships; redlining, which restricted where blacks could live and start businesses; and lynching, which was terrorism directed against blacks. There were several distinct (I’m tempting to say seperate but equal) methods used to discriminate against blacks. This was why civil rights was not just a battle - it was more like a war being fought on multiple fronts. I do not believe they are as separate as you think. They were all designed to ensure that white supremacy reigned and that blacks continued to stay in their “proper” place. Permitting blacks to participate in civil government was not conducive to maintaining white supremacy. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/109 "2011-01-03T14:13:54Z")
But as legal issues (and we are talking about laws) they were seperate. A court ruling which overturned segregation in public restaurants, for example, would have no effect on voting. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/110 "2011-01-03T15:41:58Z")
How many black people convicted of crimes under Jim Crow are still in prison? ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/111 "2011-01-03T17:39:50Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > But as legal issues (and we are talking about laws) they were seperate. A court ruling which overturned segregation in public restaurants, for example, would have no effect on voting. As legal issues they certainly are separate. However I brought it up because of something you said. > [@](#): > > Do you know what Jim Crow laws were? They had nothing to do with juries and the denial of voting rights. Jim Crow was about segregation - they were the laws that said black people couldn’t share facilities like schools, drinking fountains, restaurants, and public transportation with white people. Laws that fall under the auspices of Jim Crow include more than just segregation as they include laws designed to disenfranchise black voters, limit the mobility of blacks, keep them from sharing the same facilities as whites, etc., etc., etc. You are wrong that Jim Crow laws had nothing to do with the disenfranchisement of blacks. Odesio ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/112 "2011-01-04T04:09:50Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Laws that fall under the auspices of Jim Crow include more than just segregation as they include laws designed to disenfranchise black voters, limit the mobility of blacks, keep them from sharing the same facilities as whites, etc., etc., etc. You are wrong that Jim Crow laws had nothing to do with the disenfranchisement of blacks. Jim Crow obviously isn’t an official term. But it generally refers specifically to segregation laws not just any law that discriminated against blacks. You can generalize the term to include black disenfranchisement but you could also generalize the term further to include laws that discriminated against hispanics or asians or native americans. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/113 "2011-01-04T16:31:05Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > Who here has family members that were abused by the Jim Crow system? > > For those that did not, how would you expect the government to compensate your son if they took away his freedom for the majority of his life without due process? I have family members that lived under a similar system under Imperial Japan and there simply isn’t enough money in the world to make up for what happened. How do you compensate a woman for getting raped? How do you compensate a man who spent his entire life in forced labour in Siberia for throwing rocks at Japanese soldiers? You don’t. There is simply not enough money in the world. I’m not saying “just get over it” but compensation in these cases can never make you whole, the most they can do is give you enough to get your life back together. I am firmly against lump sum payouts to guys who spent the last 40 years of their life in jail, they’ll burn through it faster than MC Hammer and their life will suck again. I think annuities work a lot better and I think that anything more than a few million dollars is exorbitant unless you can prove they would have earned more during their time in jail. But most importantly, I think these folks deserve closure. They deserve to see the people who bore false witness against them go to jail for perjury. They deserve to see the judges that ignored due process defrocked. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/114 "2011-01-04T16:34:23Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > Give me your honest answer: at 20 years old, how much money would you have required to agree to spend 45+ years in prison without due process? Would you have agreed to do it for $50 billion? The fact is no amount is really enough. We should error on the side of a really high number. Then why not eleventy jillion dollars for every second spent in prison? At some point you are throwing money at an issue that cannot be resolved with money. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/115 "2011-01-04T16:39:07Z")
> [@Mr.Miskatonic](#): > > All of them? You really have a very simplistic view of the world, don’t you? In the South, yeah, ALMOST all of them. Even if they were guilty, they generally got longer sentences than their white counterparts, plea bargains were generally less generous than they were for their white counterparts, public defenders generally cared less about the fates of their black defendants than their white defendants. I think the OP goes WAAAAAY over the top on the whole compensation issue but lets not whitewash the south under Jim Crow. It wasn’t just some black folks getting their feelings hurt because people were calling them nigger. It was real institutional prejudice and injustice that manifested itself in the justice system. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/116 "2011-01-04T16:42:36Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > You’ve got a fair argument about the jury of their peers thing, actually. But the expense of just retrying all those cases would be enormous, nevermind the absurd amounts of money you made up. Amounts that would dwarf the BP settlement or any comparable case. And I have no idea how you think anybody could get a reasonable retrial at this point. You’re also redefining when Jim Crow ended, which makes it difficult to even figure out who _did_ get a fair trial. I think the whole “billions in compensation” argument is a bit far fetched but since when did we think taht keeping innocent men in jail was a good idea because the cost of a trial was too high. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/117 "2011-01-04T16:45:43Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > I made up numbers I thought were fair. There is no formula. What do you think is a fair number? I think this is the biggest problem people have with your OP. You made up numbers without really thinking about it. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/118 "2011-01-04T16:54:34Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I could see a re-examination of those still in prison - but they’d have to have been in for 45 years, which implies a murder conviction. That might be feasible. Batson v Kentucky was decided in 1986, 25 years ago. Race is STILL a factor in convictions and prison terms. The conviction rate among black defendats is significantly higher than similar white defendants. The prison sentences are longer. The parole rate is lower. We are closer to being fair but we’re not there yet just because we have a black president. For example, Alan Crotzer spent 24 years in jail for robbing a liquor store and was denied compensation after he was exonerated. > **[What do states owe the exonerated?](https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0530/p01s02-usju.html)** > > States' compensation for wrongful imprisonment ranges from zero to millions of dollars. I remember a florida case where a promising college bound black high school football player got 10 years in jail for getting blow job from a 16 year old white girl. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/119 "2011-01-04T16:56:43Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > Requiring re-trials would not be an _ex post facto_ violation nor would compensating the victims. > > Seeking convictions of the state perpetrators would not be a violation if we can find laws that were on the books were the statute of limitations has not run. Despite all appearances, the constitution was in fact “on the books” back then, the problem is the statute of limitations, its almost never that long except in the case of murder and rape. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831/120 "2011-01-04T18:19:09Z")
> [@HRoark43](#): > > As a Libertarian I must also point out that the State subjected these black people to exactly the kind of oppression that you can come to expect from having too much Government around. Jim Crow was not a consequence of too much government, it was a consequence of too much racism. It took government at the federal level to stop it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jim-crow-era-convictions-need-to-expunged-and-the-victims-need-to-be-compensated/565831.md?page=7)