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PI Week Honorary Fellow Crump describes the legacy of police brutality

February 26, 2016

Public Interest Week Honorary Fellow Benjamin Crump gave a presentation titled “We Can’t Breathe: The Struggle to Resuscitate Due Process in Civil Rights § 1983 Police Brutality Cases.”

By Kathy Zhang C’17

On February 23, Penn Law hosted Public Interest Week Honorary Fellow Benjamin Crump for a presentation titled “We Can’t Breathe: The Struggle to Resuscitate Due Process in Civil Rights § 1983 Police Brutality Cases.” The Toll Public Interest Center awards an Honorary Fellowship every year during PI Week to an attorney whose work contributes significantly to a public interest legal issue.

Crump is a partner at Parks & Crump, LLC in Tallahassee, Florida; president of the National Bar Association; and counsel for Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. Joining him for his presentation were Jannie Ligons and Sharday Hill, two of the women he represents in the case against former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who was convicted of 18 counts of rape and sexual assault.

After introductions by Penn Law Dean Ted Ruger and Penn Black Law Student Association President Allanté Keels, Crump discussed the parallels between today’s police brutality cases and past forms of institutionalized racism, such as segregation and lynching.

As part of his presentation, Crump showed videos of police violence in the cases of Dontrell Stephens, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, and Marlon Brown. All but Dontrell Stephens died. All were black men, and all were unarmed.

“[For] each one of these cases, there are at least fifty more that nobody ever talks about, and nobody knows their name save their family and loved ones,” said Crump.

According to Crump, the problem is not only the excessive use of violence by law enforcement on people of color, but also the criminal justice system — specifically, the failures of the judicial system in holding law enforcement officials accountable for their actions.

“If you get a chance, go back and read some of the things Martin Luther King, Jr. said about our obligations as moral people to oppose unjust laws,” said Crump. “It’s not easy. All the laws are set up to protect the government and corporations and so forth. But you know in your heart of hearts what the right thing is to do.”

Towards the end of his presentation, Crump spoke briefly on the current vacancy left by the recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. According to Crump, many Supreme Court justices either “represent corporate interests or were prosecutors,” and the last Supreme Court justice to truly represent “the people” was Thurgood Marshall.

“Maybe in this room one of you will ascend to be a justice on the Supreme Court one day,” he said. “I hope if that happens, that you’ll have had the experience of representing individuals like Jannie Ligons or Sharday Hill, that you’ll have represented individuals who have suffered an injustice and had to fight to try and make the injustice just, to change the narrative. We all have an obligation to try and change the narrative. And so, as the next generation of great lawyers, that is your homework.”

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