7 people who deserve pardons more than Donald Trump
“If they’re mad at you, make sure they’re furious.”
— Jesus, probably
Winfield Madison II offended everyone.
He drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes. He used profanity in mixed company and cussed at children. While everyone who knew him disapproved of his tactics, the educator affectionately known as “Poncho” spent three decades as a teacher at Arrington Middle School in Birmingham, Alabama, and won multiple titles as the school’s head coach for the football, basketball and girls’ softball teams.
Everyone loved Poncho.
Perhaps his most endearing quality was the compendium of quotes, aphorisms and words of wisdom he dispensed to his students and athletes. His impeccable memory allowed him to quote each maxim word-for-word. Yet, when sharing his words of wisdom, he would invariably attribute his motivational speeches to a random scripture in the Bible. Anyone who played for Poncho has heard him ascribe Teddy Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech to one of Jesus’ apostles. Of all the non-Biblical proverbs that Poncho has ever shared, one stands out most of all.
In 2014, after I was nearly arrested for protesting the death of Eric Garner, Poncho showed up on my doorstep. He didn’t say that he was there to console me or to offer solidarity — he just came. I was concerned that my decision to block traffic during the busiest shopping day of the Holiday season might have negative repercussions. Perhaps I should have talked to some local activists or community leaders before taking matters into my own hands. Puffing on one of his signature Salem 3000s, Poncho just smiled through a cloud of menthol smoke.
“Fuck’em,” said the local activist and community leader Winfield Madison II. “Like it says in the Bible: ‘It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.’” While I am still searching for the scripture where the Apostles cussed out Pontius Pilate, Poncho was preaching about a principle that has been around since the year 1 BC (Before Caucasians).
Pardons are for white people.
Whether it’s Confederate insurrectionists, election-denying Caucasians or crack-smoking sons, a 2021 study of 287 presidential pardon cases found “there is no question that non-Hispanic white petitioners as a group were more likely to receive a pardon than did Black petitioners.” Yet, for some reason, the thieves who have been pardoned from paying reparations for slavery, Jim Crow and 130 years of race-based education embezzlement are suddenly outraged that President Joe Biden used his presidential pardon powers to protect his son from the whims of vindictive, vengeful incoming MAGA administration. Meanwhile, fine, upstanding Christians like Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., have suggested that Biden show Trump the power of grace by forgiving the president-elect for his legal sins. As it says in the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Poncho:
“Nah, Fam.” — Poncho 3:16
Here are seven people who deserve pardons more than Trump.
Marcus Garvey
Convicted of: Being a Black man with too much power.
Martin Luther King Jr. described Marcus Garvey as “the first man of color in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement.” The FBI called him an “undesirable alien.” But legal scholars consider him a “victim of a clandestine political conspiracy.” Now we know that Garvey’s 1923 mail fraud conviction was the test run for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s counterintelligence program targeting Black liberation movements.
According to the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center, “the totality of the circumstances strongly suggests that Garvey was wrongly convicted.”
Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne
Convicted of: Not killing a police officer.
In 2001, a jury of their peers found Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne not guilty of murdering a Waverly, Virginia, police officer. Fearing a lenient sentence, federal prosecutors filed and convicted the men of an additional charge of selling crack cocaine. During the sentencing phase, Judge Robert E. Payne used a legal maneuver called “acquitted conduct sentencing,” which essentially allowed him to sentence the men as if they were murderers, even though they were acquitted of the charge.
After receiving life sentences, Richardson and Claiborne discovered that police had hidden exculpatory evidence, including the victim’s deathbed description of his killers and another eyewitness. Neither description fits Claiborne or Richardson.
And because they are not guilty of murder, technically, Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne have served 23 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense.
John “Grandmaster Jay” Johnson
Convicted of: Not fucking around.
No seriously.
John Fitzgerald Johnson is the leader of the “Not Fucking Around Coalition” — an armed Black militia group. Federal agents claimed they were blinded by a flashlight attached to Johnson’s rifle during protests over the 2020 death of Breonna Taylor and accused him of pointing his gun at them. In 2022, a federal judge sentenced Johnson to seven years in prison after a jury found the 59-year-old Ohioan guilty of “assaulting, resisting or impeding” and “brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.” A Kentucky court sentenced him to a year in prison for the same crime.
Johnson also suffers from a “rapidly deteriorating heart condition.”
Marilyn Mosby
Convicted of: Stealing her own money.
Former Baltimore City prosecutor Marilyn Mosby is serving 12 months of home confinement and three years of federal probation for scamming former Baltimore City prosecutor Marilyn Mosby out of money that legally belonged to former Baltimore City prosecutor Marilyn Mosby.
In May, a federal jury convicted Mosby of two perjury charges after she claimed hardship to withdraw money from her retirement account to purchase a retirement home. Prosecutors also charged her with one count of mortgage fraud, alleging that Mosby falsely claimed her husband gave her $5,000 to get the home loan when, in reality, the money was hers. Fortunately, Mosby’s plan to borrow money from a bank and pay it back with interest was foiled when prosecutors discovered that she was using money that she actually earned. And she would’ve gotten away with too …
If it wasn’t for that meddling DOJ.
Abraham Jenkins
Convicted of: Using a fire extinguisher during a fire.
Either federal prosecutors don’t understand how fire works or Abraham Jenkins is the worst arsonist in history.
In 2021, a judge sentenced Jenkins to 18 months in prison and three years probation after the 25-year-old youth worker pleaded guilty to arson and inciting a riot during a 2020 protest in Charleston, S.C. “Evidence presented in court showed that Jenkins stood on top of a Town of Mount Pleasant Police vehicle, damaging it; sprayed a fire extinguisher at police officers who were patrolling Charleston on two separate occasions; and threw a water bottle at a patrolling officer” the indictment noted. “Jenkins also took a burning T-shirt and threw it through a broken back window of a Charleston police cruiser, causing damage to the cruiser.”
Tia Deyon Pugh
Convicted of: Helping people.
When police officers used the “kettling” technique and pepper sprayed protesters who were trying to leave a demonstration in Mobile, Alabama, Tia Pugh took matters into her own hands.
Pugh allegedly disabled a police vehicle that had caged the demonstrators in, allowing people to leave. But because the police had to redirect traffic on an interstate highway, prosecutors used an arcane law to charge Pugh with a federal crime. She was sentenced to time served but remains a convicted felon.
America
Convicted of: Being a racist country.
“America be lying.” — Poncho
Michael Harriot is a writer, cultural critic and championship-level Spades player. His book, Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America, is available in bookstores everywhere