Estelle Richardson campaign

Power To The People is now working with Nashville prison organizer Denver Schimming and others in the newly formed Estelle Richardson Justice Coalition to expose her racist murder and demand that the jailers, employed by private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, be prosecuted and jailed themselves. Richardson was beaten to death by four jailers in the Metro Nashville Detention Facility back in 2004, after she continually complained about jail conditions and her lack of proper medical treatment in the solitary confinement unit. She literally had her skull and chest crushed from a brutal beating.

Yet, because of economic and political pressure by CCA, local prosecutors and cops caved in, and continuing with this miscarriage of justice, the judge colluded with the corporation to dismiss the case "with prejudice", which means that the case can not be raised again, unless there is "clear and convincing newly discovered evidence." This is highly unusual, and is a travesty of the worst sort, a total cover-up which has lasted the last four years. The cops and prosecutors all claim that they could not hold a trial because they could not establish the time of death, nor determine which of the guards struck the fatal blow. This is nonsense, they know all that, and they have gone to trial with a hell of a lot less evidence. The prisons in Tennessee are full of Black and poor people sitting in prison on the slimmest of evidence.

Contrast the inaction in the case of Estelle Richardson with that of a white prisoner killed in the Wilson County jail in 2006. In that case, eight guards were prosecuted and convicted, being given sentences of six years and upwards to life in prison (the latter for the shift supervisor, who oversaw the beatings). We do not begrudge the prosecution of these brutal jailers in Wilson County, but we demand even handed criminal prosecution for the murders of Black prisoners in Nashville.

So we will now lead a direct action protest campaign against this inaction and the coverup of this murder by CCA and the local law enforcement establishment. If you would like more information about the death of Estelle Richardson, please go to the website: http://www.whokilledestelle.org

Look for other comments concerning the fight for justice in this case.