RONNIE LONG
RONNIE LONG FEELS CHEATED
BY STATE AFTER 44 YEARS IN PRISON
By CASH MICHAELS
Contributing writer
After 44 long years in prison serving time for a crime he didn’t commit, Ronnie Long finally got his freedom, and finally got his pardon of innocence.
What he didn’t get, he now says, is anywhere near the money the state of North Carolina owes him for wrongly depriving him of his freedom and liberty for those 44 years, and he wants the world to know it.
"North Carolina intentionally put me in the penitentiary and you tell me $750,000 is worth 44 years of my life? Long, 65, opined to WCNC-TV recently.
It was 1976, when a then young Ronnie Long was convicted for allegedly raping a white woman in Concord, and sentenced to 80 years in prison. It wasn’t until August 2020 when local prosecutors determined that exculpatory evidence that proved Long was innocent had been covered up during his original trial, and he was finally released from prison.
Gov. Cooper gave Long a pardon of innocence in December.
By law, the state is obligated to compensate wrongly convicted people $50,000 for every year that they are wrongly incarcerated. However, that amount is capped at $750,000.
That means either Long was compensated for only 15 of the 44 years he spent in prison, or the state of North Carolina only compensated him just over $17,000 per year for the 44 it kept him behind bars.
Either way, neither Long nor his attorney like it.
"You took my 20s, my 30s, my 40s and my 50s and you still talking about this is worth that?" Long told USA TODAY.
Long’s parents died while he was in prison, and he had no savings when he was convicted, his attorney, Jamie Law says.
"He entered prison healthy and left broken,” Lau said.”His ongoing financial security is the least he deserves after so much was taken over those 44 years.”
But that likely is not about to happen.
Readers will recall it is was 2012 when the surviving members of the Wilmington Ten were granted pardons of innocence by then-Gov. Beverly Perdue after over 40 years of falsely being charged with felonies stemming from the 1971 firebombing of a white-owned grocery store in Wilmington during racial unrest there.
The Ten were falsely convicted in 1972, and collectively sentenced to over 282 years in prison. Ultimately, none of them ever served their full sentences, but because the state of North Carolina never legally cleared them until 2012, all ten were still considered convicted felons for at least 40 years.
That meant while some were able to find small jobs, any hopes of meaningful careers were dashed because the felony convictions were still on their records for at least 40 years.
And when Gov. Perdue granted the pardons of innocence, the families of those Wilmington Ten members who were deceased were denied compensation for the many years that the state took from them.
Now, in the Ronnie Long case, the state’s legally instituted unfairness rears it’s head again.
“His life was stolen from him,” AshLeigh Long, Ronnie’s wife, told the News and Observer. “His parents are dead. Who knows what we would have done if he had those 44 years back.”
Attorney Law assures that he and his client are seeking to hold others responsible for Long’s false conviction and imprisonment accountable. ““whatever remedies are available for holding those responsible for his wrongful incarceration accountable, and to ensure that he is financially secure in the future.”
To say that Ronnie Long is bitter about the situation is an understatement.
“I got a dead mother and father in the ground,” he said. “You tell me what’s fair.”
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REV. BARBER WARNS
GET READY TO FIGHT
FOR NC VOTING RIGHTS
AGAIN
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
In 2013, when the Republican-led NC General Assembly passed massive legislation restricting voting rights, then-NC NAACP Pres. Rev. William Barber took to the streets in constant protest, and the courts to expose the injustice, and warn the rest of the nation than one day, it would face the same challenge.
Well that day, arguably, is here, as according to the Brennan Center for Justice, lawmakers in 47 out of 50 states in the nation have introduced 361 bills with restrictive voting provisions.
Count North Carolina, once again, as one of them, as restrictive bills have already been filed in the legislature to deal with mail-in absentee balloting, mandating that Election Day be the deadline for mail-in ballots, and not allowing the state attorney general to enter into any legal agreements affecting the election process without the Republican House and Senate leadership approval.
Now add to that the trial that commenced this week over the constitutionality of the 2018 voter ID law, and the contention that the law was passed by the NC General Assembly to, once again, inhibit African-Americans’ right to vote.
Rev. Dr. Barber says in order to combat the ever-growing threat to voting rights nationally and in North Carolina today, the same strategy as in 2013 should be employed - exert pressure in the streets and in the courts.
“NC was where much of this started in 2013 and we took them to task and created the formula for beating them,” Rev. Barber says. “There must be protest. You can’t comply with the laws and give in. You must build a interracial push back. You must do serious legal work and prove intentional racism you can’t just say it is you must prove that it is. Corporate boycotts alone are not going to stop voter suppression. Because voter suppression is not just about race it’s about control of the economic levers of our society. Dr King noted this at the end of the Selma to Montgomery March when he said, “ The threat of free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and white masses is what created a segregated society. This is what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society, a society where greed and poverty would be done away with. The battle to suppress the vote and the battle to suppress labor rights has been the tactic used by the Southern white aristocracy to hold on to their money.”
Rev. Dr. Barber continued, “I suspect the GOP will try again in NC. They know the demographics are such that they can’t win especially statewide at large in a fair election. They know the victories they have in the legislature are primarily due to bad redistributing maps. So they have to try and we have to fight back in protest at the ballot box and in the courts.”
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STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 04-14-21
KINSTON OFFICIALS PROBE POLICE BEATING OF BLACK MAN
[KINSTON] Kinston police and city officials are investigating a disturbing video of one of their officers punching a Black man on the ground at least four times Monday evening in front of. Little Caesar’s restaurant. Local media report that employees inside called police when a man identified as David Bruton Jr., 36, began to make threats. Police caught Bruton as he tried to run outside, and held him down, while one officer is seen in a video punching him on the ground. Reportedly, Bruton suffers from mental illness and has had police encounters before. The local NAACP is demanding a full investigation.
CLINICS SWITCH TO PFIZER AND MODERNA VACCINES AFTER J&J WARNING
[DURHAM] Local health clinics across the state are switching to the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines in the aftermath of reports that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has caused some rare heart problems in some of its recipients. Earlier this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned local clinics to stop administering the single-dose J&J vaccine “out of an abundance of caution” after reports of several women recipients experiencing serious blood-clot afterwards, with one of the women dying. Officials caution that the problem has happened very, very rarely, and should not dissuade anyone who hasn’t gotten their shot from getting one, especially given that there have been no reported problems with the Pfizer or modern two-shot vaccines.
STATE LAWMAKERS WANT DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME TO BE PERMANENT
[RALEIGH] A bill making daylight saving permanent in North Carolina is making it’s way through a House committee. If it makes it to the House floor and passes, it would bring North Carolina closer to joining
fifteen other states in the nation that have passed laws or resolutions seeking to move clocks up one hour ahead permanently. Those laws can only go into effect if Congress approves.
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