YOU can help free Shaquanda Cotton

[Tehuti-4]

paris, texas. in plain view
March 13th, 2007 Fredric · 182 Comments

Young Black Professional Guide Shaquanda Cottonthe one thing i love most about reading online is the ability to find little nuggets of information or interesting stories without having to flip through a giant stack of recyclable paper with messy ink. yesterday was no exception when i stumbled upon a story in the tribe (may need free signup) about a small town in texas that seems to relish in its violent racial past.

paris, texas is the home of the Paris Fairgrounds, a stage where thousands of white ’spectators’ would gather to burn and lynch blacks as if at some sort of carnival. today, it is a highly segregated town that has implicity dared anyone to question how it chooses to treat blacks that live in the area.

the facts:

1. “black parents have filed at least a 12 discrimination complaints against the school district with the federal Education Department, asserting that their children, who constitute 40 percent of the district’s nearly 4,000 students, were singled out for excessive discipline�
2. the paris public schools are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department
3. 19-year-old white man, convicted last july of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, was sentenced in Paris to probation
4. judge chuck superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family’s house, to probation
5. a 14-year-old black freshman, shaquanda cotton, shoved a 58-year-old teacher’s aide at paris high school in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun. she was tried in march 2006 in the town’s juvenile court, convicted of “assault on a public servant� and sentenced by the same judge chuck superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21

yes, you read that last part right. i’ll let it sink in for a second.

so its 2007, one state is drafting formal legislation to apologize for slavery, and another is trying to flex its ‘dont mess with texas’ ego. while i complained earlier of how dismayed i was that some black blogs tend to be angry, this type of reality justifies that sentiment, and rightfully so. while i’ve never been the most articulate when it comes to expressing the complete shock of ‘in plain view’ racism, i can honestly say that this type of white arrogance and hate needs to be called out and handled swiftly. but how? the article mentions that naacp is on the case (rolling eyes), but i feel like more, MUCH MORE needs to be done.Young Black Professional Guide Shaquanda Cotton

if you get to the end of the article, the turmoil suffered by shaquanda in juvenile prison, where 95% of the offenders are repeat and violent (read: real crimes), has caused her to attempt suicide on her life 3 times. 3 times! a 14-year old, my little sister, is trying to kill herself because a racist bigot of a judge put her in prison for shoving someone. SHOVING!

so what can be done? link to this article. publicize this story. let’s see what blogging black can really do. go to the governor’s page at http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact and let him know how you feel and how this is completely bullshit.

free shaquanda cotton. NOW!

i ask that some of my more articulate readers post a statement in the comments that we can all use on the contact form on the texas governor page.

[Goddess IsIs Akkebala]

Beloved Ones:

Below, I posted comment twice on the YAHOO Groups, and below is my latest post on the YAHOO groups.
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Beloved Ones:

I AM bringing this to your attention again to remind us that where we are Now we can make a difference with a pen, paper, keyboard/computer. Our ancestors was forbidden to read and write during slavery. If we do not utilize the pen, paper, keyboard/computer, we are still in slavery by our own choice.

It is my desire that after reading my first post about this subject, some of you did take some sort of action to get this child and all Black children free from the web of wrong by communicating with those this need to be addressed to. Mine and yours could be next.

Who ever hear of someone getting 7 years for SHOVING someone? pretty soon like during slavery, we are going to be forbidden to look into the white people eyes with our head bowed down.

Take a look at the below two incidents and the punishment for each. Is there any logic, reasoning, understanding/overstanding in them?
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Fedric writes:

1. I want to direct your attention to a crazy situation happening in texas. A 14-year old black girl is in prison for 7 years for shoving someone!

2. Just a couple of months ago, a young white girl burned down her house in arson and received PROBATION!

Sounds to me like this is a Distorted schizophrenia system (mind-set), and we strive to continue to build in it and call it Our country.

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Black woman RISE TO THIS CAUSE- IT IS YOUR CAUSE. If we do not Black Woman we help to destroy the Sacred WOMB, that right of Passgae that bring forth the Black life.

Chief Osiris constantly tells us about the actions of the Only Human/Human Only Human Being, and yet we just ignore it.

Another Last Chance Mission for Blacks.

Run, Run, Run Black man and Black woman, get off our behinds, and fetch our mirror and fetch our once Divine Right minds, so we can establish a Divine environment for selves/children.

HILY/A

Goddess IsIs


http://destee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47405

One Mighty warrior writes below.

Today, 01:53 PM
cursed heart
MEMBER

It's a **** shame there were no replys here.
I mailed out 20 letters to black churches and black owned businesses so they could help organise and take action.
There is strength in numbers.
I will personally write the judge and the baby gurl tonight.
I know they read the mail in the jail system.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I ask where is the Churches when our people get into this perverted system? Every person reading this should, I am not asking, should when they attend their service in a church on Sunday ask the Leader of that church to send around a petition to the members while in the church and have them sign their name to free this Black girl, and the administrative people in the church mail it off to the address below. Please do not ignore this. It would be Vain Glory to do so.

There you have It. Another Showdown for Justice.
We are the judge, jury, and executioners
After all, what has happened, is happening and will happen happens to us.

Goddess Isis
----------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.ybpguide.com/2007/03/13/p...in-plain-view/

Here is the juges’ address and phone number:
M.C. (Chuck) Superville, Jr
Judge, Lamar County, TX
Lamar County Courthouse
119 N. Main St., # 201
Paris, TX 75460
903-737-2410
903-785-3858

Want to help stop misuse of prisons?
GO HERE: Write an email to Texas Governor, Rick Perry
http://www2.governor.state.tx.us/contact/
or fax Office of the Governor: (512) 463-1849
or call Office of the Governor Main Switchboard: (512) 463-2000
[office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST]

To: Texas Governor Rick Perry

Governor Perry, My letter concerns Shaquanda Cotten, the teenager who was sentenced to 7 years for pushing a hall monitor at Paris High School. Although I can't condone Shaquanda's part in the incident, I cannot think of any justification for Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville's decision: Seven years in prison. 7 years, for Heaven's sake, she's 14 years old! She shoved someone, not stabbed them...

I am from Texas, both my parents died there and 4 of my own 5 children live there now with their families. I'm very concerned about how children are treated by Texas police officers and judges. I have four daughters and sons-in-law, 5 grandkids and 1 great-grandson that could one day come before Judge Superville, heaven forbid.

I've been reading some of his past decisions, and I have to agree with the general public that Shaquanda's case appears to be a racial judgement. Judge Superville gives all non-black citizens a bad rap. That's not safe, nor fair, particularly from a Judge! A man sits on the judge's bench because he is supposedly somehow wiser than the rest of us. But Judge Superville is obviously no King Solomon.

It's more complicated than a little girl going to prison because she's black. It's about children's futures. It's about abusing prisons and the taxpayers who build them. It's about misusing authority.

Texas is still on a bit of a hot seat for racism from the Tulia Drug Narc Farce and the Dallas County Jail nastiness. Texas prisons are overflowing and everyone is looking, Governor... Do the right thing equally for Shaquanda.. for every citizen who comes before the court, and for every overburdened taxpayer... Correct Shaquanda's legal situation and make Judge Superville get off that bench!

Kay Lee
2683 Rockcliff Road Southeast
Atlanta Georgia 30316
404-212-0690
Subject: 14 year old African American girl, given 7 years for pushing a teachers aide....

"Read to the end of the article, about the turmoil suffered by Shaquanda in juvenile prison, where 95% of the offenders are repeat and violent (read: real crimes), has caused her to attempt suicide on her life 3 times. 3 times! a 14-year old, my little sister, is trying to kill herself because a racist bigot of a judge put her in prison for shoving someone. SHOVING!"
"If you believe racism is dead....this should be an eye opener. Click on the link below, don't just read the article, this is your chance to stand for something... pass this on to as many people as you know and take the time to write a letter to our dear Gov.Perry.....and to this child to let her know that there is a GOD and that there is hope.....I did and I encourage all of you to do so as well." A.T., Texas


READ THE ARTICLE - WRITE YOUR LETTER
http://www.ybpguide.com/2007/03/13/p...in-plain-view/


Black men and black womb-genders (females). Run, run, run, and go fetch your mirror, and fetch your Divine minds. (osiris)

We who do absolutely nothing as we remain onlookers like the hangmen who are hanging of our children, tells me there is something gravely perverted in us.

The incident does not fit the punishment.

Call as I did and. Email as I did.

HILY/A

Goddess Isis

[Tehuti-4]

chicagotribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,1435953.story
To some in Paris, sinister past is back
In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.'
Advertisement

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent

March 12, 2007

PARIS, Texas -- The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place.

There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged.

Brenda Cherry, a local civil rights activist, can see the fairgrounds from the front yard of her modest home, in the heart of the "black" side of this starkly segregated town of 26,000. And lately, Cherry says, she's begun to wonder whether the racist legacy of those lynchings is rebounding in a place that calls itself "the best small town in Texas."

"Some of the things that happen here would not happen if we were in Dallas or Houston," Cherry said. "They happen because we are in this closed town. I compare it to 1930s."

There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.

There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.

The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.

Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.

"All Shaquanda did was grab somebody and she will be in jail for 5 or 6 years?" said Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who is president of the state NAACP branch. "It's like they are sending a signal to black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated."

The Tribune generally does not identify criminal suspects younger than age 17, but is doing so in this case because the girl and her family have chosen to go public with their story.

None of the officials involved in Shaquanda's case, including the local prosecutor, the judge and Paris school district administrators, would agree to speak about their handling of it, citing a court appeal under way.

But the teen's defenders assert that long before the September 2005 shoving incident, Paris school officials targeted Shaquanda for scrutiny because her mother had frequently accused school officials of racism.

Retaliation alleged

"Shaquanda started getting written up a lot after her mother became involved in a protest march in front of a school," said Sharon Reynerson, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid, who has represented Shaquanda during challenges to several of the disciplinary citations she received. "Some of the write-ups weren't fair to her or accurate, so we felt like we had to challenge each one to get the whole story."

Among the write-ups Shaquanda received, according to Reynerson, were citations for wearing a skirt that was an inch too short, pouring too much paint into a cup during an art class and defacing a desk that school officials later conceded bore no signs of damage.

Shaquanda's mother, Creola Cotton, does not dispute that her daughter can behave impulsively and was sometimes guilty of tardiness or speaking out of turn at school--behaviors that she said were manifestations of Shaquanda's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which the teen was taking prescription medication.

Nor does Shaquanda herself deny that she pushed the hall monitor after the teacher's aide refused her permission to enter the school before the morning bell--although Shaquanda maintains that she was supposed to have been allowed to visit the school nurse to take her medication, and that the teacher's aide pushed her first.

But Cherry alleges that Shaquanda's frequent disciplinary write-ups, and the insistence of school officials at her trial that she deserved prison rather than probation for the shoving incident, fits in a larger pattern of systemic discrimination against black students in the Paris Independent School District.

In the past five years, black parents have filed at least a dozen discrimination complaints against the school district with the federal Education Department, asserting that their children, who constitute 40 percent of the district's nearly 4,000 students, were singled out for excessive discipline.

An attorney for the school district, Dennis Eichelbaum, said the Education Department had determined all of the complaints to be unfounded.

"The [department] has explained that the school district has not and does not discriminate, that the school district has been a leader and very progressive when it comes to race relations, and that there was no validity to the allegations made by the complainants," Eichelbaum said.

Not so clear

But the federal investigations of the school district are not so clear-cut, and they are not finished. In one 2004 finding, Education Department officials determined that black students at a Paris middle school were being written up for disciplinary infractions more than twice as often as white students--and eight times as often in one category, "class disruption."

The Education Department asked the U.S. Justice Department to try to mediate disputes between black parents and the district, but school officials pulled out of the process last December before it was concluded.

And in April 2006, the Education Department notified Paris school officials that it was opening a new, comprehensive review to determine "whether the district discriminated against African-American students on the basis of race" between 2004 and 2006. Federal officials say that investigation is still in progress.

According to one veteran Paris teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, such discrimination is widespread.

"There is a philosophy of giving white kids a break and coming down on black kids," said the teacher, who is white.

Not everyone in Paris agrees, however, that blacks are treated unfairly by the city's institutions.

"I've lived here all my life, and I don't see that," said Mary Ann Reed Fisher, one of two black members of the Paris City Council. "My kids went to Paris High School, and they never had one minute of a problem with the school system, the courts or the police."

A peculiar inmate

Meanwhile, Shaquanda, a first-time offender, remains something of an anomaly inside the Texas Youth Commission prison system, where officials say 95 percent of the 2,500 juveniles in their custody are chronic, serious offenders who already have exhausted county-level programs such as probation and local treatment or detention.

"The Texas Youth Commission is reserved for those youth who are most violent or most habitual," said commission spokesman Tim Savoy. "The whole concept of commitment until your 21st birthday should be recognized as a severe penalty, and that's why it's typically the last resort of the juvenile system in Texas."

Inside the youth prison in Brownwood where she has been incarcerated for the past 10 months--a prison currently at the center of a state scandal involving a guard who allegedly sexually abused teenage inmates--Shaquanda, who is now 15, says she has not been doing well.

Three times she has tried to injure herself, first by scratching her face, then by cutting her arm. The last time, she said, she copied a method she saw another young inmate try, knotting a sweater around her neck and yanking it tight so she couldn't breathe. The guards noticed her sprawled inside her cell before it was too late.

She tried to harm herself, Shaquanda said, out of depression, desperation and fear of the hardened young thieves, robbers, sex offenders and parole violators all around her whom she must try to avoid each day.

"I get paranoid when I get around some of these girls," Shaquanda said. "Sometimes I feel like I just can't do this no more--that I can't survive this."

----------

hwitt@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

[MillionsMoreMovement]

PARIS, Texas -- The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place.

There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged.

Brenda Cherry, a local civil rights activist, can see the fairgrounds from the front yard of her modest home, in the heart of the "black" side of this starkly segregated town of 26,000. And lately, Cherry says, she's begun to wonder whether the racist legacy of those lynchings is rebounding in a place that calls itself "the best small town in Texas."

"Some of the things that happen here would not happen if we were in Dallas or Houston," Cherry said. "They happen because we are in this closed town. I compare it to 1930s."

There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.

There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun....
Read the Full Article from The Chicago Tribune
Here's what's being done:



1. Messages of support are being solicited at Shaquanda's blogspot page.



2. She also receive mail here:
Ron Jackson Correctional Complex,
Unit 2, Dorm 4
P.O. Box 872
Brownwood, Texas 76804
1125308

3. A Facebook group has been created. In addition to the news and discussion generated there, the group has held a networked prayer vigil for Shaquanda.



4. Paula Mooney is urging that protest letters be sent to Judge Chuck Superville, who handed down the sentence:





Honorable M.C. (Chuck) Superville, Jr., Judge
Lamar County Courthouse
119 North Main
Paris, TX 75460
Phone # 903-737-2410
Fax # 903-785-3858



5. Letters can also be sent to Texas Gov. Rick Perry through his website.

[Moorbey]

Will be writing the judge and the governor.

[Moorbey]

I have written the governor and the judge. We must act on this now.

[MillionsMoreMovement]

Texas reviews scandal-plagued juvenile prison system

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 26, 2007, 8:02 PM CDT
HOUSTON -- The sentences of many of the 4,700 delinquent youths now being held in Texas' juvenile prisons might have been arbitrarily and unfairly extended by prison authorities and thousands could be freed in a matter of weeks as part of a sweeping overhaul of the scandal-plagued juvenile system, state officials say.

Jay Kimbrough, a special master appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to investigate the system after allegations surfaced that some prison officials were coercing imprisoned youths for sex, said he would assemble a committee to review the sentence of every youth in the system.

The goal, Kimbrough said, is to release any youth whose sentence was improperly extended without justification or in retaliation for filing complaints. In his initial review of sentences, Kimbrough said, he had found many questionable extensions, adding that some experts estimate that more 60 percent of the state's youthful inmates might be languishing under wrongful detention.

Such a mass emptying of a state's juvenile jails would be unprecedented, experts said.

Among the leading candidates for early release is Shaquanda Cotton, a 14-year-old black girl from the small east Texas town of Paris, who was sent to prison for up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school while other young white offenders convicted of more serious crimes received probation in the town's courts.

Shaquanda's story was the subject of a March 12 Tribune article that triggered hundreds of Internet blog articles and thousands of message board postings and led to a nationwide letter-writing campaign to the Texas governor decrying perceived racial discrimination in her case.

Cotton, now 15, has been incarcerated at a youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, for the last year on a sentence that could run until her 21st birthday. But like many of the other youths in the system, she is eligible to earn earlier release if she achieves certain social, behavioral and educational milestones while in prison.

But officials at the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex have repeatedly extended Shaquanda's sentence because she refuses to admit her guilt and because she was found with contraband in her cell--an extra pair of socks.

"I do have an interest in that case," Kimbrough said. "Based on what I've already seen and heard, that's exactly the kind of thing I want to know more about, if that typifies in some way why sentences are being extended."

Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas chapter of the ACLU, attended a meeting in Austin on last Friday where Kimbrough outlined his sentence review plan and invited civil rights groups to nominate members to the special review panel.

"Everybody in the room thought we should take Shaquanda's case first," Harrell said, because of its high profile.

But if the teenager is released, Kimbrough noted, the decision will have nothing to do with whether she was the victim of racial discrimination in the schools and courtrooms of Paris, as civil rights groups have alleged. Instead, it will be based on whether she has been treated arbitrarily by prison officials since she has been incarcerated.

Texas' juvenile prison system, known as the Texas Youth Commission, was first rocked by scandal last month after revelations surfaced that two administrators at a youth prison in west Texas had allegedly coerced sex from inmates for years and that prison officials and local prosecutors chose not to pursue the cases.

Since then, the scandal has widened as reports surfaced of cover-ups and alleged sex abuse by guards and administrators at other prisons. More than a thousand investigations have now been opened. Meanwhile, Kimbrough discovered that 111 employees of the youth agency had felony arrests or convictions and another 437 had misdemeanor arrests or charges.

The top leadership of the youth commission was forced out, the board overseeing the agency resigned and Perry essentially placed the commission into receivership when he appointed Kimbrough to clean up the mess.

Texas state legislators are rushing to pass bills to overhaul the juvenile prison agency.

Civil rights advocates have long been concerned that Texas' system of indeterminate sentences for youths places too much discretion in the hands of prison authorities, who retain the power to hold or release youths at will. Now the sex scandal--and the concern that some victimized youths may have been threatened with longer detentions to keep them quiet--has prompted Kimbrough to examine the entire practice.

Nearly 90 percent of juveniles incarcerated inside Texas youth prisons were sent there on indeterminate sentences that could run as long as their 21st birthdays. But many of those inmates become eligible for release after serving only nine months, if prison authorities are satisfied that they have completed all the steps, or "phases," of an elaborate behavioral modification program.

"The system is wide open for abuse and corruption," said the ACLU's Harrell. "How difficult would it be for a 12-year-old kid to file a complaint on an assistant superintendent of a facility when that assistant superintendent is actually the one who is sexually abusing her and that same person gets to decide when she gets out? Basically the official gets to say, 'Comply and keep quiet or I'll keep you here until you're 21.' "

Harrell, who will serve on Kimbrough's sentence review panel, said the members intend to be careful not to release truly violent youths who ought to remain behind bars.

"If kids have behaved violently, then those are the ones that may very well have a justification for their sentence extension," Harrell said. "But most of the cases I have heard about have to do with petty instances, like Shaquanda's contraband socks."

The "phases" system also contains a built-in Catch-22 for youths, like Shaquanda, whose legal appeals are still making their way through the courts. One of the first phases that must be satisfied is a requirement that youths admit their guilt--an admission that would instantly compromise their appeals.

For his part, Kimbrough says he feels a sense of urgency about his review.

"As fast as we can do this, that's my goal," said Kimbrough, a former deputy attorney general. "Any time the government is holding somebody that ought not be held, that's urgent to me."

hwitt@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

[Tehuti-4]

Where there's smoke there's fire. WHo could believe just one child caught up?
falsely imprisoning children and then raping them!!!!

A whole lot of these savages should be behind bars behind this bs!!

[MillionsMoreMovement]

Texas Teen In Racial Controversy To Be Freed(AP) DALLAS Shaquanda Cotton, the black teenager whose sentence to a juvenile prison for pushing a teacher's aide roiled civil rights activists nationwide and set off accusations of bias, was to be released Friday, a state lawmaker said.

Rep. Harold Dutton, the Houston Democrat who chairs the House juvenile justice committee, said the newly appointed conservator of the embattled Texas Youth Commission told him Cotton was being freed after 12 months in a Brownwood facility.

"This is one of those cases that is the poster child of everything wrong with the criminal justice system," Dutton said.

Dutton said he was informed of Cotton's pending release by Jay Kimbrough, who Gov. Rick Perry appointed to investigate the agency accused of ignoring multiple allegations of sexual and physical abuse of young inmates.

Texas Youth Commission spokesman Jim Hurley said he could not talk about specific cases.

Cotton, 15, was sentenced on a felony count of shoving the teacher's aide, who is classified as a public servant, before the morning bell at Paris High School in 2005. Activists say the fact that the same judge sentenced a white 14-year-old girl to probation for arson signaled evidence of racial bias in the East Texas town on the Oklahoma border.

Prosecutors in Cotton's case, who said they were told Friday morning by the TYC that Shaquanda had not met the agency's standards for release, expressed surprise at Dutton's news.

"Apparently now, cases that get the most attention from screaming activists can grab the ear of state legislators who can simply order people to be freed from incarceration," said Allan Hubbard, a spokesman for the Lamar County district attorney's office. "That could be dangerous."

Cotton was eligible to be released on March 17, but had not met the agency's standards for release governing academics, behavior and "correctional therapy," Hubbard said.

Creola Cotton, Shaquanda's mother, could not be immediately reached for comment.

(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )

[Mamazen]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4676774.html


PARIS, TEXAS — Shaquanda Cotton, a 15-year-old black teenager who spent more than a year in the state's distressed juvenile prison system for shoving a teacher's aide in a case that raised questions of racial bias, was ordered released Friday.

She became the first juvenile inmate ordered freed by Jay Kimbrough, whom Gov. Rick Perry tapped Thursday to lead the troubled Texas Youth Commission out of an abuse and mismanagement scandal. Kimbrough told lawmakers Friday that the order had been given.

"He made a determination that she served her time and it was time to let that child out," said Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas.

Cotton could have been kept in a cell until her 21st birthday. But a public outcry about the case helped secure her release.

"I've spent the whole year fighting this," her mother, Creola Cotton, said.

On Friday, the 54-year-old single mother rushed to find a rental car and began preparing for the trip to Brownwood today to pick up her daughter and bring her home.

"She's thrilled," said Brenda Cherry, a Paris civil rights activist and a close family friend.

Confidentiality laws prevented Kimbrough from talking about Cotton's case. Speaking in general terms, however, Kimbrough touched on how the TYC's haphazard system of extending youths' sentences could lead to the release of an inmate.

"I have said a lot — as have parents, staff and legislators — about the fragmented and disjointed and decentralized process where youth sentences have been extended by TYC," Kimbrough said Friday. "Every facility has a different version plan, model and system."

A week ago, Kimbrough announced he would begin to review every case in which the TYC extended a youth's sentence.

"I started with 'B, Brownwood,' " he said.

For the past year, Cotton has been locked up at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex in Brownwood.

West said Cotton would be placed on conditional parole for about three months.

"This particular case defies all logic, and I've worked 25 years as an attorney," West said. "I challenge Americans to take a look at this case where people in the criminal justice system are dealt with differently, based, it seems, on the color of their skin."


White teen's case cited
Cotton's struggle against authorities in this small northeast Texas town focuses on a single thread: how a black teenager with no prior criminal history was sent to prison for what her supporters say was a mere brush-up against a teacher's aide, while a white classmate was given probation for burning down her family's rental property by setting a Christmas tree on fire.

Prosecutors in the case counter that the incident involving Cotton was much more serious than a shove. It was an assault, described by Lamar County Attorney Gary Young as a "body slam" that sent a petite 58-year-old teacher's aide to the ground.

"It was no push," Young said. "When you assault a teacher in Lamar County, you're going to get prosecuted."

The Sept. 30, 2005, incident that led to Cotton's arrest took place just before school opened. After Cotton saw a white student allowed in early, ostensibly for early-morning tutoring, she told the aide that she should be allowed in to go to the nurse's office to take her daily medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. She was denied entrance.

Cotton's mother said her daughter was also hurt in the incident, but that no one brought that up at her daughter's jury trial, an unusual proceeding that occurred at the defendant's request.

Young said his office offered to give Cotton two years' probation in exchange for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor. Cotton's mother denied an offer was ever made. The girl's trial attorney, Wesley Newell, confirmed Young's offer of probation but he declined to say why it was not accepted.

Little about Cotton's case is available for public review because both the juvenile criminal system and the public school system protect a child's right to privacy.

Her case gathered momentum when the Chicago Tribune wrote about her two weeks ago. Since then, black leaders and civil rights activists have questioned why she received such a harsh sentence. A protest was held in Paris earlier this week.

But Young has defended his office's action.

"It's not her fault; it's always the administrator's fault, never the kid's," he said.


Early school troubles
Young said his office had recommended the white student convicted of arson be sent to TYC. But Lamar County Judge Maurice Superville, the same judge who sentenced Cotton, opted for probation, in part because the white girl had relatives who offered to look after her. Young said Creola Cotton did not cooperate with probation officials and declared she would refuse to do so because her daughter was innocent.

Creola Cotton claimed she said no such thing.

Both sides agree that beginning in elementary school, Shaquanda Cotton became the subject of disciplinary notes. In at least one case, she suffered the consequences by serving one in-class suspension, her mother confirmed.

In Paris, news of the girl's release was received coolly by the Lamar County Attorney's Office.

"The squeaky wheel got the oil, apparently," said Allan Hubbard, the county's victim-witness representative and spokesman for the attorney's office. "But I'll say this, too. She did a year for something she could have gotten probation for. That's more than enough time."

"We pray Miss Cotton is never part of our criminal justice system again and that she has learned her lesson."

Chronicle reporter Lisa Sandberg in Austin contributed to this report.