The Seven (at least) Lessons of the Myon Burrell Case.
If you know my story, you know I passed the bar a few months after graduating law school and worked for the MN Attorney General Office. In the midst of studying for the bar, I was holding press conference and getting Black women and men charges dropped who had been brutalized by the police.
A few months after deciding not to become a prosecutor, I was asked to attend a press conference to call in Senator Amy Klobuchar for helping to put 16 years old Myon Fightingformyife Burrell away for life for a murder he didn’t commit. I almost didn’t attend the press conference but I was already working on a similar case and thought I should lend my voice. During this time I was President for the @minneapolisnaacp The press conference went viral. It led to more efforts like eventually shutting down Senator Klobuchar’s campaign rally. She finally took a meeting with us and published a statement with the demands Nekima Levy Armstrong presented–
1. Myon’s case should be reviewed
2. We need Conviction Integrity Units in the state of MN because this isn’t a isolated issue
3. An independent panel should review Myon’s case
To make a long story short and say the MN Pardon Board pardoned Myon in December 2020.
He is home with his family but only partly free. That’s why Shaun King promoted his gofundme because we are still working to prove his actual innocence.
I’ve been working on a case similar to Myon’s for almost two years now and I have faith we are almost to the point of proving his innocence but the question reminds HOW MANY MORE? There are too many wrongful convictions to count. This reminds me of that movie 12 years of slavery, but it’s been way more than that. So when I say @dontcomplainactivate it’s not a caption or talking phrase, it’s a lifestyle.
My heart is heavy on a daily basis thinking about the lives that have been stolen.
The Seven (at least) Lessons of the Myon Burrell Case.
"The Burrell case, closely examined, is a Pandora’s box containing many of the most pressing issues in criminal justice: racial disparities, the troubling treatment of juveniles, mandatory minimums, the power (and, too often, lack) of advocacy, the potential for conviction and sentencing review units, clemency, and the need for multiple avenues of second-look sentencing. The purpose of this essay is to briefly explore each of these in the context of this one remarkable case, and to use this example to make a crucial point about criminal justice reform: To really make change, many fixes must be pursued at once, through a variety of methods. Just as it took many converging issues to create deep injustice in the Burrell case, there must be many converging paths to reform.”