From: Michael Greven
Columbus
America and Americans have come to learn very clearly that the criminal judicial system and prison system are racially unjust. Indiana is no exception to that truth and it is time to correct the injustices of the past. A very clear example of this is the continued incarceration of two Black men, John Cole and Christopher Trotter.
In 1985 Cole and Trotter were sentenced to 88 and 142 years respectively for leading a prison uprising at the Indiana State Reformatory, now known as Pendleton Correctional Facility. The uprising was a direct result of prison guards beating black inmates nearly to death. The guards included members of the Sons of Light, a white supremacist group. Cole and Trotter interceded directly when the prison guards were beating Lincoln Love with illegal batons and bats while he was in chains. Cole and Trotter did what I would like to hope all of us would do when we see another human being in distress — they took action. The action they took was unacceptable to the Indiana prison system, but had they not interceded, Lincoln Love likely would have been beaten to death.
At least one Indiana state prison guard testified that the Sons of Light existed in the prison and that what they were doing was extremely wrong and raising tensions to a very high level in the prison. However, such testimony was suppressed in the 1987 trial of the leaders of the uprising. Rather than eliminate the rot that was in the prison system the men who stood up for their fellow human being were given prison sentences they would never be able to finish. And the guards who were members of Sons of Light were not reprimanded and likely are today enjoying their Indiana pensions.
This wrong and many others need to be addressed by our criminal justice system. There are many people in prison who have been wrongly convicted or sentenced to prison for extreme lengths of time. I urge our legislative leaders and the governor to establish an independent panel to review and listen to the requests for new hearings. This needs to be an independent group as the existing parole boards have been fundamentally compromised by years of immersion in a corrupt system.
Allowing people to languish in prison who should not be there is a terrible wrong. It is time to make a change in Indiana. Cole and Trotter both deserve to be released immediately.
