By: Angel Harris, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project

Ida B. Wells said it best, "Our country's national crime is lynching."

Last week, we were reminded of this when the Equal Justice Initiative released its report, "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." A gruesome history of these carnivals of torture and death from the Civil War until World War II, the report documents the racial terrorism designed to keep black Americans across the South destitute and powerless.

As I read EJI's report, my mind immediately went back to an interview Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, gave to the Los Angeles Times last summer. The interview was stark evidence of our failure to recognize how race distorts our criminal justice system up until the present day. I cringed at the following exchange:

Why have most other Western countries abolished the death penalty?

Most of these countries have in their recent past abused it. I'm not really surprised or unhappy that Germany has outlawed the death penalty. They sort of misused it within living memory, so they probably ought not to be trusted to have one…. In this country by and large we've had executions done with due process. We've had a sad history of lynchings in the South, but in the Wild West they had trials, some measure of due process. It's not that we're guilt-free, but we have less to account for than other countries.

That is clearly not the case as EJI shows in ghastly detail. Lynchings cannot be dismissed as a footnote to our criminal justice system. They were cruel, widespread, hate-driven acts of terrorism, with an enormous social cost we're still paying for today.

Until the 1950s, lynchings were advertised and attended like they were state fairs. People came from all around to witness the torture, humiliation, and murder of human beings. Individuals purchased lynching postcards and traded them like baseball cards. Children were permitted to attend the "show," to watch the mutilation of another person. Photos were taken, souvenirs gathered from the chopped, charred, and often castrated bodies.

EJI documented 3,949 racial terror lynchings of African-Americans between 1877 and 1950 across 12 southern states, including an additional 700 lynchings that were previously unknown. Georgia and Mississippi had the highest number of verifiable lynchings of African-Americans – 586 and 576, respectively. We will never know how many African-Americans disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. Clearly, what we do know belies the suggestion that that America has "less to account for than other countries."

If we are to ever fix our broken criminal justice system, we must first acknowledge the baggage it carries.

This must begin with acknowledgement of our torrid, bloody history of executions without a semblance of due process. Lynchings were a method of organized, socially accepted extra-judicial violence that terrorized millions of African-Americans across the South for nearly a century. We also need to be honest that no one has ever been held accountable for these horrific crimes. No white person was ever convicted for the lynching of an African-American during the period covered in the study.

And yet the unjust execution of African-American men thrives today on the same soil as the lynching trees: Only now the noose has been replaced with the needle. African-American men are over-represented on death row, in executions, and in exonerations. To boot, African-American jurors are systematically excluded by prosecutors in jury service. Race is one of the most disturbing explanations for innocent men, like Glenn Ford in Louisiana and Henry MCollum in North Carolina, ending up on death row for crimes they did not commit.

We cannot continue to ignore the racial injustice of our death penalty system, past or present. I do agree with one comment made by Judge Kozinski, "we ought to come face to face with what we're doing. If we're not comfortable with what we're doing we should not be doing it."

It's time to get uncomfortable.

Every Election Day, when many of us take our right to vote for granted, there are roughly 1.5 million people in Florida who do not have the ability to vote because of Florida’s Civil War-Era ban on voting by individuals with prior felony convictions. But this year, you have a chance to be a part of changing that.

Give the right to vote back to Floridians who have served their time!

The ACLU of Florida, along with a coalition of organizations, is collecting signatures petitioning to end the lifetime voting ban with an amendment to Florida’s state constitution.

This amendment updates our criminal justice system to match the standards in other states, so that after a person convicted of a felony completes all terms of their sentence — including parole or probation — they earn their rights back. Currently in Florida, even after individuals complete their sentences, they must wait five to seven years, depending on their offense, before they can request a review of their application to restore their rights. Americans believe in second chances and that people should be able to earn forgiveness, but the ban on voting for ex-felons doesn’t reflect this important American value. Restoring a person’s right to vote gives them an opportunity for redemption and a chance to become full members of their community again.

Here’s what you can do to help restore the rights of your fellow Floridians:

1. Download and print your petition here
2. Fill out the required information and sign your name. (Please make sure that all information is accurate and that you include EITHER your Voter Registration number OR your Date of Birth)
3. Mail your completed petition to the ACLU of Florida Tampa Office, PO BOX 25477, Tampa, FL 33622

The ACLU of Florida has worked for decades to end this policy, because no Florida citizen should be permanently shut out of our democracy. Help us fix this broken system that keeps too many Floridians from making their voices heard.

Welcome to the 2015 legislative session and your weekly update. While the Florida legislature is not technically in session yet, committees are meeting to hold hearings and pass bills and we want to start sharing information with you now. Check back to the ACLU of Florida blog every week to find out what your representatives and senators are up to.

We have both good and bad news about the past week in the state capitol. On Monday, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee held a very important oversight hearing with the Department of Corrections.  In preparation for legislation that would try to reduce the prevalence of abuse and neglect in Florida prisons, the Senators grilled the Secretary and Inspector General of the Department of Corrections about the failure to provide health care to inmates, the inability to arrest corrections officers for criminal abuse of those in their custody and a general failure of accountability in the entire system.

Senator Evers (R-Pensacola) went so far to recommend that all health care contracts with private corporations that are cutting corners with our inmates’ health be cancelled and rewritten with some sort of accountability for their abject failure. On a surprise visit to one prison he was appalled to find that only one health care worker was available to treat 1400 inmates.

Corrections Secretary Julie Jones even admitted that at the current rate, it would be fall before she gets a handle on how anyone is held accountable for abuse in the prisons and that she wouldn’t be able to make any recommendations for changes until next year. That is simply unacceptable.  Both democrats and republicans on this committee are tenaciously pursuing reform and the legislation has many hurdles to go. We will push to make sure that bill – which is an excellent start on reform – includes accountability mechanisms that are swift and iron clad.

The bad news is that the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a novel bill that would permit access to one’s “digital assets” such as their email, photos, social media accounts and all other online activity after they die. Right now, federal law and corporate practice dictates that the privacy protections you enjoy in life follow you when you die.  Meaning that unless you make explicit arrangements otherwise, your Facebook account, your email account and all your other digital information is inaccessible. This bill, SB 102 would allow whoever is the executor of your estate – perhaps a lawyer, parent, spouse or other family member – to access all those accounts.

While advocates of this bill describe it as a way to track the money and settle an estate, it is much broader than that. This bill impacts your online dating profile, the posts you make to blogs, the documents you save in the cloud, all your texts and emails, and the photos you store on line. In the coming weeks we will ask you to contact your representatives in opposition to this unprecedented invasion of privacy.

This week, the House Criminal Justice Committee will hear a bill that would require police departments that use body cameras to announce regulations regarding their use.  Read my op-ed here about how those policies should deal with privacy and accountability for recorded abuse. Check back here to see how this bill emerges from its committee consideration and how you can help make sure this very important police practice oversight tool is implemented right.