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June, 2020



Tennessee Is Still Trying to Execute Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman Despite Undisputed Evidence of Racial Bias

In an interview with The New Yorker published on June 1, Bryan Stevenson reflects on the recent protests happening across our nation in response to the murder of George Floyd, stating:

We need to reckon with our history of racial injustice. I think everything we are seeing is a symptom of a larger disease.

According to Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, more than eight in 10 American lynchings between 1889 and 1918 took place in the South, and more than eight in 10 executions carried out in this country since 1976 have been in the South. 

In 1903, the Memphis Commercial Appeal noted that, “Life in this community is cheap: The life of a negro is so valueless that it is freely taken without fear of the future punishment in this world.”

Against this backdrop, Tennessee is litigating the case of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, who has spent three decades on death row. His case provides a glaring example of how racial bias continues to infect Tennessee’s legal system and the State’s resistance to addressing it.

In 1987, Tennessee sentenced Abdur’Rahman to die after the prosecutor improperly prevented Black jurors from sitting on the case and committed multiple acts of misconduct in the trial, including withholding evidence and altering testimony. 

In August 2019, Davidson County District Attorney General Glenn Funk declared that:

Overt racial bias has no place in the justice system. Further and most importantly, the pursuit of justice is incompatible with deception. Prosecutors must never be dishonest or mislead defense counsel, courts, or juries. 

District Attorney Funk recommended that Mr. Abdur’Rahman be resentenced to three life sentences, and the trial court agreed.

But a few weeks later, in an unprecedented move, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery ignored the racial bias and prosecutorial misconduct and appealed the court’s decision to the Tennessee Supreme Court. He declared his intention to seek an expedited process to move forward with Mr. Abdur’Rahman’s execution. 

Today, eight of the jurors who sentenced Mr. Abdur’Rahman to death say they would not have done so if they heard all the facts.

BREAKING NEWS: On Tuesday, June 9, 2020, at 9:00 a.m. CT, the State of Tennessee will argue before the Court of Criminal Appeals that Mr. Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence should be reinstated.

To observe these proceedings, see the information below:

Live Stream https://www.youtube.com/user/TNCourts/videos 

To learn more about this case visit, https://www.justiceforabu.org/

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