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Cracked Up—Discriminatory Sentencing in the War on Drugs
According to Michelle Alexander, racial discrimination still exists in “crack sentencing laws” (Alexander). To support her statement, Alexander used a controversial court case (United States v. Edward Clary) as an example. She claimed that the court treated Edward Clary, an African-American boy, unfairly. Clary was convicted of crack cocaine possession for the first time, and was punished more severely compared to powder cocaine users. He was sentenced to a minimum of ten years in prison. Clary’s lawyers argued that the law was unreasonable and deliberate as to segregate African-Americans, who were the major users of crack cocaine at that time (Alexander). In the end, however, Clary lost the case. This led Alexander to believe that racism plays a role in criminal punishment.

Charging Ahead—Armstrong v. United States
In this book, Michelle Alexander argued that the color of your skin determines how you will be treated in society. She also briefly mentioned about a study that shows that more colored youth are transferred adult court compared to white youths. With that being said, Alexander also mentioned in the book that “in the State of Washington, it was found that in the juvenile sentencing reports, black and white cases were written and described very differently” (Alexander). Implicit bias plays a role in this whole process. African-American teenagers were accused of committing crimes because of their awry personality, however, White teenagers were tolerated as they were considered victims of external pressures.

In Defense of the All-White Jury—Purkett v. Elm
Further info: Jury selection in the United States § Discrimination

An all-white jury is a situation where a jury in a criminal trial or grand jury investigation is composed only of white people. There was never an African-American who was in a jury until 1860. According to Michelle Alexander, jury discrimination prevails, yet, the court did not give any attention or substantial protection. There are practices in which can be a way to exclude black people from becoming prospective jurors. One of the examples Alexander used to support her argument is that 30 percent of black men have no chance of becoming a juror as they were not on the list of registered voters. In Purkett v. Elm, the defendant was guilty of second degree robbery. Alexander mentioned that “any race-neutral reason is accepted by the Supreme court”. Therefore, the lawyer attacked the black jurors by his appearance, stating that they were cynical as they had curly hair, mustache, and goatee type beard. Hence, this case example showed that the Court declared the reasons offered by a prosecutor are justifiable for eliminating black jurors—even if the reasons were irrational and illogical.