Early Release Candidate No. 1
By Annette Stark
It didn’t take long for Najee Ali to start advocating again — even behind bars. This time it’s for the early release of California’s nonviolent prisoners, specifically himself.
“The conditions are horrible and unsanitary,” says the hated-and-loved L.A. human-rights activist, speaking from Avenal State Prison, where he’s serving four years for witness tampering.
On a typical day, “I exercise, study and tutor inmates — many can’t read — and just try to keep a positive attitude.
“The worst thing I’ve seen?” he says. “Someone was stabbed last week and died in the hospital. He was targeted for being a child molester. Rapists and child molesters are pariahs here. I’m not advocating for the early release of hardcore gang members, rapists or child molesters.”
A year ago, Ali pled guilty to witness tampering involving a 2007 road-rage incident in which six motorcylists surrounded a car driven by Ali’s daughter, Jasmine Eskew, on a freeway. Eskew was accused by county prosecutors of crashing her car into one of the motorcycles — but the D.A. lost that case in court. At the pretrial hearing, Ali says he approached the bikers merely to “beg for mercy for my daughter” — a claim he sticks by today. But the bikers accused him of trying to bribe them, and county prosecutors again believed their version.
Ali, a former Crip who turned his life around, was on parole with two suspended sentences for a 1992 robbery, and a 2004 felony hit-and-run involving perjury. According to court records, prosecutors intended to charge him with attempting to dissuade a witness — a potential third strike that could have put him away for years. Instead, he pled to a lesser charge of “tampering,” and got four years.
Ali is at Avenal in the Central Valley, and with good behavior he is likely to be out within the year. But “based on the governor’s criteria” for cutting state spending by releasing prisoners, Ali now figures he would qualify for early release as of next month.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed letting nonviolent inmates serve their final year under “house arrest” with GPS monitoring. A federal court ordered California to cut its prison population by almost 44,000 over two years, using the savings to provide remaining prisoners with better health care. A few days later, 1,300 prisoners at the jam-packed California Institution for Men in Chino rioted.
Schwarzenegger last week described it as bedlam, with prisoners trying “to find anything they could to just hit each other, or stab each other with broken glass ... and entire housing units were burned.”
Ali says things are bleak at the Avenal: “We have eight toilets for 250 people, and the toilets back up. ... I think God put me here so I could see these Third World conditions. The only reason I haven’t gotten sick is that I can afford to buy my own food.”
He buys tuna, $1 per can.
In recent years, the extrovert Ali became an omnipresent voice, continually slamming the powerful. He was arrested for protesting what he saw as a racist Mexican stamp, he slammed Chief William Bratton as having failed to acknowledge organized hits on black children by Mexican Mafia, he called out Jesse Jackson for ignoring his illegitimate daughter, he got a restraining order against Congresswoman Maxine Waters for blocking him from entering a church.
He also advocated against the early release of heiress Paris Hilton by L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, who complained that his jail was crowded. “I do regret that now,” Ali says. “I’m not afraid to say I made a mistake.”
Even more ironic, the man who openly courted controversy left for prison without a word to the media. That lull is over. “At the end of the day,” he says, “my accusers were all ex-felons, and one was a convicted child molester.” The attorney for his daughter, Anthony Willoughby, says: “I impeached all her accusers on the stand with their criminal records. The one guy who didn’t testify had a conviction of lewd acts on a child under 14.”
Now doing time for an incident that lacked independent eyewitnesses, Ali says today, “If I had been convicted of drugs or robbery, my credibility as a leader would be over. But I get letters from across the nation from people who are outraged at my situation.”
He says he’s received messages through outside contacts from state Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jermaine Jackson (“a very emotional moment for me”).
Before his incarceration, he was everywhere, holding press conferences, brokering gang truces, calling singer R. Kelly a “pedophile.” He doesn’t feel at particular risk from race-based gangs in prison, he says, because, “Gang members in the black, white and Latino population knew my gang work . ... In the Long Beach case, I supported three white young women who were victimized by a mob of black youths. There’s my support for the Latino woman who was set to die on the floor of the King Drew Emergency Room. ... I think even the Mexican Mafia respects me for standing up for justice.”
The story continues...
By Annette Stark
It didn’t take long for Najee Ali to start advocating again — even behind bars. This time it’s for the early release of California’s nonviolent prisoners, specifically himself.
“The conditions are horrible and unsanitary,” says the hated-and-loved L.A. human-rights activist, speaking from Avenal State Prison, where he’s serving four years for witness tampering.
On a typical day, “I exercise, study and tutor inmates — many can’t read — and just try to keep a positive attitude.
“The worst thing I’ve seen?” he says. “Someone was stabbed last week and died in the hospital. He was targeted for being a child molester. Rapists and child molesters are pariahs here. I’m not advocating for the early release of hardcore gang members, rapists or child molesters.”
A year ago, Ali pled guilty to witness tampering involving a 2007 road-rage incident in which six motorcylists surrounded a car driven by Ali’s daughter, Jasmine Eskew, on a freeway. Eskew was accused by county prosecutors of crashing her car into one of the motorcycles — but the D.A. lost that case in court. At the pretrial hearing, Ali says he approached the bikers merely to “beg for mercy for my daughter” — a claim he sticks by today. But the bikers accused him of trying to bribe them, and county prosecutors again believed their version.
Ali, a former Crip who turned his life around, was on parole with two suspended sentences for a 1992 robbery, and a 2004 felony hit-and-run involving perjury. According to court records, prosecutors intended to charge him with attempting to dissuade a witness — a potential third strike that could have put him away for years. Instead, he pled to a lesser charge of “tampering,” and got four years.
Ali is at Avenal in the Central Valley, and with good behavior he is likely to be out within the year. But “based on the governor’s criteria” for cutting state spending by releasing prisoners, Ali now figures he would qualify for early release as of next month.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed letting nonviolent inmates serve their final year under “house arrest” with GPS monitoring. A federal court ordered California to cut its prison population by almost 44,000 over two years, using the savings to provide remaining prisoners with better health care. A few days later, 1,300 prisoners at the jam-packed California Institution for Men in Chino rioted.
Schwarzenegger last week described it as bedlam, with prisoners trying “to find anything they could to just hit each other, or stab each other with broken glass ... and entire housing units were burned.”
Ali says things are bleak at the Avenal: “We have eight toilets for 250 people, and the toilets back up. ... I think God put me here so I could see these Third World conditions. The only reason I haven’t gotten sick is that I can afford to buy my own food.”
He buys tuna, $1 per can.
In recent years, the extrovert Ali became an omnipresent voice, continually slamming the powerful. He was arrested for protesting what he saw as a racist Mexican stamp, he slammed Chief William Bratton as having failed to acknowledge organized hits on black children by Mexican Mafia, he called out Jesse Jackson for ignoring his illegitimate daughter, he got a restraining order against Congresswoman Maxine Waters for blocking him from entering a church.
He also advocated against the early release of heiress Paris Hilton by L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, who complained that his jail was crowded. “I do regret that now,” Ali says. “I’m not afraid to say I made a mistake.”
Even more ironic, the man who openly courted controversy left for prison without a word to the media. That lull is over. “At the end of the day,” he says, “my accusers were all ex-felons, and one was a convicted child molester.” The attorney for his daughter, Anthony Willoughby, says: “I impeached all her accusers on the stand with their criminal records. The one guy who didn’t testify had a conviction of lewd acts on a child under 14.”
Now doing time for an incident that lacked independent eyewitnesses, Ali says today, “If I had been convicted of drugs or robbery, my credibility as a leader would be over. But I get letters from across the nation from people who are outraged at my situation.”
He says he’s received messages through outside contacts from state Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jermaine Jackson (“a very emotional moment for me”).
Before his incarceration, he was everywhere, holding press conferences, brokering gang truces, calling singer R. Kelly a “pedophile.” He doesn’t feel at particular risk from race-based gangs in prison, he says, because, “Gang members in the black, white and Latino population knew my gang work . ... In the Long Beach case, I supported three white young women who were victimized by a mob of black youths. There’s my support for the Latino woman who was set to die on the floor of the King Drew Emergency Room. ... I think even the Mexican Mafia respects me for standing up for justice.”
The story continues...