ANGELA DAVIS ISSUES STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE AGAINST RACIST AND POLITICAL REPRESSION ON THE WRONGFUL CONVICTION OF ANTHONY GAY IN FEDERAL COURT
National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression // @NAARPR on Twitter
MEDIA ALERT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 2, 2022
Contact: Frank Chapman, 312-513-3795, chapmanfrank74@gmail.com
On May 19th, in Peoria, Illinois, Anthony Gay was convicted in federal court and is now a political prisoner based on false charges of illegally possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon.
His first Federal trial on these charges less than a month earlier, ended in a hung jury, demonstrating that Anthony had convincingly argued that these charges were false. Even more remarkably, he achieved that hung jury pro se – that is, representing himself.
Anthony has no law degree. He learned the law through his own independent studies while spending 24 years in Illinois prisons, twenty-two of which were spent in solitary confinement.
Unjustly sentenced to prison for the pettiest of crimes – the theft of $1 and a hat, then an arrest for driving his own car without a license – Anthony’s mental health suffered. The Illinois Department of Corrections responded not with treatment, but punitive additions of many more years to his original seven-year sentence.
In 2018 he argued that he was incorrectly sentenced to serve those sentences consecutively. He convinced a local state’s attorney the sentences should have been served concurrently and won his release.
The banality of our racist system of mass incarceration is punctuated with the heroism of stories of unconquerable souls. Like George Jackson and Frank Chapman, Anthony not only educated himself in prison, but he also politicized himself.
After winning his freedom, Anthony championed those who continue to suffer in the horrible conditions in the prisons across Illinois. He crafted a bill to limit the use of solitary confinement to 10 days within a 180-day period, based on the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution, seeking to end the cruel and unusual punishment perpetrated against incarcerated people.
Before the trial began, expressed his outlook on the battles he has faced with racism. “I'm facing an uphill battle, but this is a battle that I've been cut out for. It's a battle that I think is worth fighting, and it's a battle that I'm going to fight with all I got. I won't back down from the federal government. I don't think no one should back down from corruption. I don't think no one should back down from being wrongly prosecuted. I think you should always stand up. And since that's my belief, I believe I have to lead by example.”
But unlike the first trial, in his subsequent appearance, the racist prosecution and judge collaborated to make certain that the jury was all white and pro police.
There is no physical evidence tying Anthony to the gun they convicted him of possessing. The police officer who testified that Anthony looked like he had a gun also falsified some of his testimony.
No fingerprints or DNA were found on the pistol the police found near where Anthony was arrested. Even harder to explain, there were there no prints or DNA on the bullets.
The National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression rallied in Anthony’s defense, and once again, I join with the organization I helped found to say, “Free Anthony Gay!”
To learn more about the Anthony Gay case, head to https://www.caarpr.org/free-anthony-gay