It was the summer of 2002 when Wanette Gibson accused Brian Banks, now 26, of raping her. The two were students at Long Beach Poly High School, and at the time, Brian was a 6-foot-4, 225-pound linebacker who was being recruited by USC among other top football programs. After the accusation and arrest, Brian, with the allegations was facing up to 41 years in prison, when along came prosecutors offering him a plea deal that would get him out in five years. Though there was no DNA evidence, let alone evidence of any kind to even prove that the incident Gibson accused Banks of even happened, Banks’ attorney advised him not to take the chance of staying in prison until he was 57 years old, and to take the plea offered.
She told me I was a “big black teenager,” he said, “and no jury would believe anything I said.”
Rather than rolling the dice on a trial, and risking getting a 41-years-to-life prison sentence,Brian took the plea deal of forcible rape, said goodbye to a bright future, and spent five years in prison for a crime he adamantly stated he was not guilty of. After his release, he was court-ordered to register as a sex offender and wear an electronic monitoring bracelet 24/7.
When it seemed as if all hope for recovering his life was gone, in 2011 Gibson contacted Banks through Facebook. She wanted to let “bygones be bygones”. Imagine that!!! (After the trial, Gibson’s family had filed a lawsuit against the school district for not providing a safe environment and she was awarded $1.5 million judgment.) Banks was flabbergasted that she wanted to become Facebook friends, but he was smart enough to see it as an opportunity.
“I stopped what I was doing,” he said, “and got down on my knees and prayed to God to help me play my cards right.”
Banks contacted Gibson and set up a couple of meetings with her, and during these meetings, she fully admitted she’d lied and wanted to help Banks clear his name. But there was one thing she absolutely refused to do— she absolutely refused to talk to prosecutors because she didn’t want to give back the $1.5 million dollar judgment she had been awarded. Banks decided to secretly record the conversation, and afterwards contacted the California Innocence Project, a law school program at California Western School of Law. Attorneys took the evidence back to the original judge and at Thursday’s hearing, his record and name were cleared. Banks broke down in tears.
“There are no words in any language, no gesture in any culture that can explain or describe what I have been through,” he said.
After the hearing (which Gibson did not attend) the district attorney said that it would be very unlikely that Gibson would face any charges, because the case is 10 years old and she was only 15 at the time.
During an interview I watched with Rev. Al Sharpton today on MSNBC, at the intro to his interview with Brian he said:
“The system does work, but we’re getting more proof that it is also flawed.”
An iPhone that downloads the wrong version of an app IS FLAWED. A car that works exclusively on Tuesdays, Thursdays, & Saturdays, IS FLAWED. The system, by no shape, way or form is currently, slipping or dropping the so called “BALL”, it has SLIPPED and dropkicked the ball off of a 12 story building with 1,000,000 civilians on the ground level. This is a system that can prosecute a man with no history of violence or run-ins with the law,and then proceed to give the same man no options, making 5 years in prison for an alleged crime with literally NO EVIDENCE at all seem like a “deal” compared to 41 years in maximum security prison. Then to find out ten years later, after this man’s youth, dreams, and goals have been stolen, that the whole story was a complete and utter lie. And on top of that to realize that there are no repercussions that Gibson has to face. This system is beyond flawed; it has enough holes in it, to safely guide a battleship through without touching the sides of it.
Brian Banks is a prime example of how unreliable our justice system truly is, and these loop holes need some serious patchwork, before we as a nation, can ever truly call ourselves free.
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SOURCES:
MSNBC
