Inmate death points to longstanding racial injustices: Column

On Friday, nearly five years after Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic black male serving time for cocaine possession, died in a prison shower, Miami-Dade County prosecutor Katherine Fernandez Rundle announced that she would not charge the guards who locked the inmate in the stall for almost two hours.

The prosecutor pushed out a 101-page report that deemed Rainey's death an accident, though witnesses said he begged to be released from the water (said to have been set at 160 degrees, 40 degrees above the state limit).

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In spite of the fact that jail staff and inmates confirmed prisoners were routinely abused (including inmates who stated showers were used to scald and freeze them as punishment), Florida Gov. Rick Scott has not publicly demanded Rundle do more to hold the officers accountable for Rainey's death, nor has he pulled her from the case.

That's a stark contrast to what the governor did the day before when he removed Orange County prosecutor Aramis Ayala from a case in which a cop was killed, after Ayala's decision not to seek the death penalty.

"I am outraged and sickened by this loss of life," Scott said in a statement about the case of Markeith Loyd, a black man who is accused of fatally shooting the officer.

He also stated that Ayala "has made it clear that she will not fight for justice and that is why I am using my executive authority to immediately reassign the case."

One wonders whether Scott cares about justice for all of his citizens.

The contrasting reactions by Scott (and decisions by the prosecutors) don't make sense until you look at the two cases through the lens of race. The comparison shows the devaluing of life that has plagued black male victims of violence for decades.

Suspicious prison deaths

Ayala is one of the nation's few black prosecutors who was elected following the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. A national protest ensued after a white prosecutor, who recused himself from the case, had been accused of declining to prosecute George Zimmerman, Trayvon's killer. Zimmerman was eventually acquitted by a jury containing only one minority.

Since 2012, the year that Rainey died in the Dade Correctional Institution, more than 1,000 inmates have died in the Florida prison system. Of those, about 30 were deemed homicides, and 31 were labeled accidents. By 2015, the number of suspicious prison deaths in Florida was so high that human rights organizations came together to request a Justice Department investigation.

Black prosecutors — severely underrepresented in a criminal justice system that has a disproportionate number of black and brown people in its clutches — seem more willing to hold police accountable while protecting the complex communities they serve.

In a news conference, Ayala gave a sound and reasoned explanation for her decision to no longer pursue the death penalty in cases brought before the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida. She stated that her research revealed the death penalty neither deterred killings nor protected police. She cited the financial cost and length of time between sentencing and execution, usually more than a decade, adding, “Punishment is most effective when it happens consistently and swiftly. Neither describes the death penalty in this state.”

Rundle, and other longstanding state attorneys, haven't charged a police officer with using deadly force in Florida for 20 years.

In the Rainey case, Rundle seemed to ignore the lawsuits that have resulted from the incident. Instead, she concluded that the 50-year-old black male prisoner died because of his mental illness, heart problems and being confined in the shower.

Hold officers accountable

The decision by Gov. Scott to remove Ayala from the Loyd case comes at a time when emphasis on "law and order" and efforts to to increase punishment for killing officers (a crime that already elicits greater punishment in many states) has intensified.

In February, President Trump issued an executive order aimed at reducing crimes against cops that encourages the Justice Department to make attacks on police officers a federal offense. California and Mississippi are among states that have introduced legislation making officers a protected class of people and categorizing attacks against them as hate crimes.

This increased protection for cops seems to ignore the need to protect the vulnerable civilians who are much more frequently victimized by law enforcement.

Last year, nearly 1,100 people were killed at the hands of police, according to The Guardian's The Counted project. In 2015, the number was slightly higher, at 1,146, and about a quarter of those killed were black men. Yet, since 2005, only 77 officers nationwide have been charged with murder or manslaughter. While there are certainly times when officers must defend themselves, the idea that such a small fraction of these police killings warranted prosecution is absurd.

About 95% of the approximately 2,400 elected state and local prosecutors — those who decide whether to pursue cases involving corrections officials — are white. But in the most recent cases involving police, the strongest statements of condemnation and most rigorous attempts at prosecution have come from two black prosecutors — Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby and Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson, who died of cancer last fall.

Mosby pushed for the prosecution of the six officers involved in the Freddie Gray case. Thompson, who indicted the officer who killed Akai Gurley, issued a statement in which he said that “acts of police brutality are not only crimes against the individual victim but also are attacks on the communities in which they occur.”

If Florida, indeed America, is to survive and prosper, black men can't continue to be sacrificed in the name of justice.

Yolanda Young is executive director of Lawyers of Color and an on-air commentator for TV One's News One Now with Roland Martin.