The latest indicator of the racially benighted status of the criminal justice system in the United States is the wildly disparate sentences handed out to persons convicted of voter fraud. Four white men who voted in the names of deceased relatives received sentences ranging from probation (three cases) to three days incarceration. These men knowingly violated the law, and one even used his crime as a pretext to further his campaign for voter suppression.
Other persons, mostly of color, were sentenced to years in jail for mistakenly believing, in good faith, that they were entitled to cast a vote. If these outrageously unwarranted prison terms are not overturned, or substantially reduced by appellate courts or the governors of the involved states, the stain of this injustice will undermine public confidence in the judiciary for years to come.
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