Walking around campus, it is hard to overlook the social awareness and proactive nature of our student body.
Endless streams of flyers and petitions implore us to take notice of different worthy causes. Countless student groups and university-sponsored lectures seek to open previously closed eyes to ignored problems. Tufts students themselves optimistically enlist the help of the community in trying to ameliorate local, national and global situations.
As noble as these efforts are, however, they often focus on such overwhelmingly intractable conditions (the genocide in Darfur, the degradation of our environment and generalized discrimination) that it is difficult for an individual to grasp how he or she can feasibly help.
Yet, with fear of sounding cynical, the sheer magnitude of these tragic situations often precludes our abilities, as college students, to effect true change. Vigils, meetings, groups on Facebook.com and teach-ins simply do not do anything in the end.
In attempting to solve the problems of the masses, a job that ultimately lies in the hands of more powerful entities (states, diplomats, peacekeepers, multinational corporations, etc), we forget the plight of the individual. We lose sight of the tragedies that we can relieve, and we fail to lend the help that we are most able to give. While not as epic as ending poverty or warfare, changing the course of an individual's life for the better is equally as honorable.
With that said, I want to turn the attention of the Tufts community to an individual desperately in need of our support. Serving a life-sentence term in a Texas prison, Mr. Tyrone Brown is the victim of a gross violation of justice under our nation's legal system.
A victim of domestic abuse during his childhood in Dallas, the 17-year-old Brown and an acquaintance engaged in armed robbery and pointed a gun in the face of an unsuspecting man, robbing him of $2 on a February night in 1990. Pleading guilty to his crime, Brown was sentenced to 10 years of probation.
While thus far pedestrian, Brown's story sadly becomes more interesting. One month after his initial hearing, the teenager was picked up for smoking marijuana. Back in court, again facing Judge Keith Dean, Tyrone Brown was sentenced to life in prison. The judge offered the young defendant the words "good luck" before leaving the bench.
But this would not be the last time Judge Keith Dean would offer a defendant 10 years of probation. Five years after Tyrone Brown's case, John Alexander Wood, a wealthy member of a prominent Texan family, appeared before Dean charged with murder. Allegedly, after having exchanged $30 for sex with Larry Clark, a male prostitute, Wood shot Clark during an altercation. Forensic evidence would later prove that Wood shot Clark in the back, calling into question his claim of self-defense.
Towards the end of his 1996 trial, Wood reversed his initial plea of "not guilty" in exchange for 10 years of probation, the same sentence that Brown received six years earlier.
Three years later, Wood was caught using cocaine. Two years after that, Waco police found crack cocaine in the car Wood was driving, a car that belonged to U.S. Representative Chet Edwards (D-Tex.).
Despite the prosecutor's wishes, Judge Keith Dean refused to revoke Wood's probation. In 2001, Wood again failed a mandatory drug test, and again in 2002.
As a reward for his behavior, Judge Dean reduced the severity of Wood's probation, no longer requiring the convicted murderer to meet with his probation officers in person - an informative postcard from Wood each year was deemed sufficient. Today, John Wood is a free man living in Waco, Texas.
For the past 16 years, while in prison, Tyrone Brown has been a part of a gang, attempted suicide and is currently trying to clean up his act. Brown spends most of his time reading and writing poetry, yet he still feels abandoned and has almost lost all hope.
In an interview with the Dallas Morning News, Brown stated that he was on "the verge of giving up completely, because I am tired of holding on to nothing." Although Brown is up for parole in 2009, we cannot understand three more years in prison.
In our minds, three years fly by, whereas, for Brown, another three years of frustration and hopelessness will seem like an eternity. Even though Brown is up for parole, there is no telling if he will actually get it.
It is not clear why Tyrone Brown has now rotted in prison for 16 years while John Wood has been lucky (and I emphasize the word "lucky") enough to breathe fresh air every morning. Maybe it is a case of classism: Wood was wealthy and presentable whereas Brown was poor and unpalatable. Maybe it was racism: Woods was a white victim of circumstance and Brown just another black threat to society. Maybe it was a case of legal representation: Wood had access to the finest lawyers and enjoyed the wildly popular Texan pastor O.S. Hawkins as a character witness, while Brown, for lack of financial resources, was given court-appointed lawyers during the trial and the appeal process. And maybe it was a case of Judge Keith Dean's partiality or malice: two equally vile attributes in a judge.
Regardless of why Tyrone Brown sits in jail today, his imprisonment is unjust, unfathomable and an assault on the judicial process that we as Americans defend and trust.
Thus, we cannot stand idle, complacent in this crime, as every second that passes is another second during which Brown is victimized by a system that has betrayed him. This is an instance in which we as a community can make a difference.
And so, we have a choice: collectively stand up, apply pressure and start the process of returning Tyrone Brown the freedom that he has so wrongfully been denied, or wither in the face of injustice.
Let us now choose.
Anyone who would like to be of help in this process, please contact me at matthew.ladner@tufts.edu or Karan Ravishankar at karan.ravishankar@tufts.edu.
For more information on the imprisonment of Tyrone Brown, read Brooks Egerton's article in the April 23, 2006 edition of The Dallas Morning News, available online.
Matt Ladner and Karan Ravishankar are sophomores who have not yet declared majors.
