By Ralph Richardson
Last month at a gala ceremony in front of the theater on Harlem’s storied 125th Street, six plaques were set in the sidewalk bearing the names of Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Little Richard, Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Smokey Robinson.

According to a new publication issued this week by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the increased concern about the mass incarceration of African Americans in the nation’s state and federal prisons has exposed a concomitant insidious practice: prison-based gerrymandering.

A.B. Butler was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and kidnapping of a young white woman in Texas in 1983, a crime DNA would later prove he didn’t commit. The victim identified Butler in a lineup and at trial, while Butler presented alibi witnesses who testified that he was elsewhere when the crime occurred. Butler repeatedly appealed his conviction, but each motion was denied.

Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based organization dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions, took his case in 1995 and located biological evidence from the victim’s rape kit. The kit wasn’t tested until 1999, and the results were inconclusive. Later, advanced DNA testing was conducted, and Butler was excluded as the source of semen. After the results were confirmed, Butler was released in January of 2000. He was pardoned ten years ago this week.