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Jeffrey Epstein, a Miami hedge fund manager, and Kevin Keith, an indigent Bucyrus resident, have been through the criminal justice system for serious crimes but with remarkably different experiences.

Epstein allegedly had sex with and trafficked over three dozen girls, most of them 13 to 16. He faced a life sentence in 2007, but his lawyers worked a deal. Epstein served just 13 months in a county jail and was allowed work at his Palm Beach office during the day.

Keith was sent to Death Row in 1994 for three murders and three attempted murders. Post-trial investigations revealed that a state crime lab analyst contrived forensic evidence to link Keith to the shootings and that the state suppressed evidence.

Epstein is a multimillionaire, white, and could afford high profile lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr. Keith is black and couldn’t afford to hire his own lawyer.

Shocking? Yes. Surprising? No.

Disparities in the criminal justice system begin with where you are born. The Brookings Institution reports that boys raised in families in the bottom 10 percent of income are 20 times more likely to be incarcerated in their early 30s than boys born to the wealthiest families. Boys born in the lowest income families make up roughly 27 percent of 30-year old inmates.     

According to the advocacy group Sentencing Project, racial disparities exist because of policies and practices, implicit bias and stereotypes in decision making, and structural disadvantages. Bryan Stephenson’s “Just Mercy” provides several troubling examples.

Nearly 1.5 million people were incarcerated in federal and state prisons in 2016. Of these 440,200 were white, 487,300 were black and 339,600 were Hispanic, though blacks and Hispanics make up just 13 and 18 percent of the nation’s population, respectively. Research shows that the race of the victim and defendant influences sentencing. Killing a white person increases the likelihood of a death sentence, and blacks are more likely than whites to be sentenced to death.

New York City’s “stop and frisk” policy illustrates the problems cited by the Sentencing Project. Police were permitted to stop anyone for “furtive” behavior”—whatever that is. A federal court found in 2013 the police stopped 4.4 million people over eight years. Fifty-two percent were black, and 10 percent were white, but blacks made up just 23 percent of the population, while whites comprised 33 percent. Which group was more often found to have weapons and other contraband? Whites, by a tiny margin.

Let’s tie all this into Keith’s case. Police were told a “large black man” was seen where the shootings occurred, and Keith is six feet tall, black, weighs 300 pounds and had been previously arrested for selling a small amount of crack. His arrest may have made sense, but nothing that followed did.  

Keith was watching TV and surprised when the police arrested him—not what you would expect of someone who shot six people just two days prior. Forensics from the scene—carpet fibers, fingerprints—didn’t connect Keith to the shooting. A seven-year-old survivor of the shooting said the shooter was her daddy’s friend, Bruce; based on a photo, she ruled out Keith, who had multiple alibi witnesses.

But the police had their man. From then on, a case was constructed against Keith. Bogus forensic links to the scene were created, and favorable evidence was suppressed. Fortunately, Keith’s sentence was commuted in 2010 to life, and a federal appellate court recently granted him the opportunity to persuade a federal district court that he should receive a new trial. 

One of Keith’s attorneys, Rachal G. Troutman, puts it this way: “It takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and resources to undo a wrongful conviction, most of which could be avoided by providing more resources to poor defendants from the beginning.”  

Do all indigent blacks get abused like Keith? No. Do all wealthy white men get sweetheart deals like Epstein did? No. But can you imagine someone like Keith getting treated the way Epstein did?

[This post was published as an op-ed in The Columbus Dispatch on March 30, 2019.]

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Jack D’Aurora writes for Considerthisbyjd.com

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