By Terry Miller
Black Lives Matter organizer Jasmine Richards was sentenced to 90 days in county jail for “felony lynching,” by Judge Elaine Lu in Pasadena Superior court Tuesday, June 7.
Judge Lu took into consideration Richards’ 18 days’ time-served and deducted those days from her 90 day sentence.
Richards was facing four years in state prison after she was convicted of a rarely used statute in California law originally known as “felony lynching.”
Under California’s penal code, “felony lynching” was defined as attempting to take a person out of police custody. Jasmine was arrested and charged with felony lynching last September, after police accused her of trying to de-arrest someone during a peace march at La Pintoresca Park in Pasadena on August 29, 2015.
Richards was also ordered to attend anger management classes following her conviction last week. Richards was found guilty of “Attempting to unlawfully remove a suspect from police custody,” in an incident last August.
Richards’ attorney Nana Gyamfi, in asking for the minimum sentence, told Judge Lu of the support that Richards had received from a wide range of community members and an online petition had gathered more than 78,000 signatures over the five days that Richards had been in custody awaiting sentencing.
The arrest and jailing of a young black female activist on charges of felony lynching caused considerable controversy.
Historically, the crime of lynching refers to when a white lynch mob takes a black person out of the custody of the police for the purpose of extra judicially hanging them.
The law’s name was so controversial that less than two months before Richards was arrested, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law legislation removing the word “lynching” from the penal code.
