Local prosecutors shape outcomes

After Joseph Paul Franklin was arrested in 1980, prosecutors all over the country were waiting their turn to try him for murder. After a federal prosecutor failed to convince a jury that shooting a man just for being black was a civil rights violation, they lost their confidence. But Joseph Paul Franklin was desperate to get out of the federal prison where he was serving his first few life sentences.

Sources:

Mel Ayton, Dark Soul of the South: The Life and Crimes of Racist Killer Joseph Paul Franklin, Potomac Press, Inc., 2011

Thomas Martinez, Brotherhood of Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of The Order. McGraw Hill, 1988

Jessica Mitford, Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business, New York, Vintage Books, 1973

Devins, Neal, "Reagan Redux: Civil Rights Under Bush" (1993). Faculty Publications. 429.
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/429

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https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/28/us/senate-committee-rejects-reynolds-for-justice-post.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/07/us/us-rights-official-discounts-tension.html

https://virginiamercury.com/2019/04/22/can-a-local-prosecutor-decide-to-just-stop-prosecuting-marijuana-cases-the-va-supreme-court-will-decide/

https://www.hcpros.org/case-vault-1

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/09/us/slayer-faces-trial-in-2-apparently-racial-killings.html

https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_v._Lanza

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-5/dual-sovereignty-doctrine

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https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4403054/mitchell-v-roberts/

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-08-02-mn-747-story.html 

https://people.umass.edu/~kastor/ceml_articles/cu_in_us.html 

https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC3_scans/3.journal.prisons.prisoners.griffin.1993.pdf 

https://concrim.asc41.com/wp-content/uploads/j32.pdf 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/10/23/murders-of-blacks-baffle-us-officials/f8eefeac-1ca3-48de-85a0-4b9db645b01e/ 

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/24/us/study-accuses-justice-dept-of-waging-attack-on-civil-rights-laws.html 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/10/marion-prison-lockdown-thomas-silverstein-how-a-1983-murder-created-america-s-terrible-supermax-prison-culture.html

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