The Story of Prisoner F95488
Written by Annie on July 14th, 2009The Story of Prisoner F95488 - http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=4300383
” One’s a rising soccer star. The other’s a self-described jealous boyfriend. One had no physical evidence linking him to a rape. The other had matched DNA and teeth marks. One’s black. The other’s white. One was convicted. The other was never a suspect.” - Digg
A friend of mine posted this link on Facebook through Digg, and while I normally don’t read links that people send, I read it, and it makes me angry. The article is about Eric Frimpong, a black student/soccer player at UC Santa Barbara, who was convicted of rape of a white woman, with virtually no hard evidence, DNA that points to someone else, and the testimony of the accuser who had a .2% blood alcohol level at the time of sampling. And possibly an incompetent defense lawyer, who knows. He’s been given six years in jail.
Now, reading one article might not give the whole story, but I don’t think Eric Frimpong was given a fair trial.
People compare this trial to the Duke lacrosse players, except you switch the races of the accused/accuser, but in this case, the accused aren’t from rich families with powerful lawyers. For me, it reminds me a bit of the Scottsboro trial from the 1930s, with a possibly prejudiced all-white jury from a mostly all-white city.
