Greetings, Everyone,
My name is Kenny Zulu Whitmore; call me Zulu. I was wrongfully tried and convicted by a Jim Crow-era jury verdict of 10/2 [10 jurors voted me guilty; 2 jurors voted me not guilty]. I was found guilty for the August 15, 1973 armed robbery and second degree murder of the mayor of a rural northern community in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

I am being housed in the Louisiana State Plantation at Angola. For the forty-eight plus years that I have been incarcerated, thirty-seven of those years was spent in solitary confinement.

I love to work out; it helps me to deal with the abnormal life of being incarcerated. I work out with weights, do push ups, jump rope, stair climb, and I run the yard. While in solitary I used to run for the full hour I was allowed out of my cell. I ran four or five days a week. Running is the best because I can mentally free myself. I run from one side of “town” to the other, — from one side of the exercise yard to the other.

Louisiana and Oregon are the only two states in the United States that allow felony convictions based on a Jim Crow-era, non-unanimous jury verdict of 10/2 or 11/1. In other words, all 12 jurors are not needed to vote guilty in order to get a conviction. In 2016, this racist jury verdict system was challenged in Oregon and Louisiana.

During this period in 2016, I started to kick a soccer ball around the yard. I named my soccer ball “Jim Crow” in solidarity with the jury verdict challenge in the courts. I ran five days a week, trying to kick Jim Crow off life support that Oregon and Louisiana had it on since 1898. I would kick and kick old Jim Crow, never allowing the ball to stop rolling. Die, Jim Crow, die.

In 2018 the Louisiana legislators put the unconstitutional Jim Crow-era laws on the ballot. Louisiana voters would decide whether to continue on with the racist jury system or end the practice of 10/2 or 11/1 jury verdicts that could convict. Louisiana voters overwhelmingly outlawed the practice, declaring the law unconstitutional, and amended the Constitution to end the discriminatory law forever.

In 2020, the US Supreme Court , in the case Ramos v Louisiana, declared Louisiana’s non-unanimous jury verdicts both unconstitutional and historically racist.

However, the Louisiana legislators tricked the voters into voting for a non-retroactive amendment, leaving 1,500 Louisiana prisoners without benefitting from the changes and left them without a legal conviction or sentence. I am in this group of prisoners.

So for now I will continue to kick Jim Crow ‘s racist ass around the yard until this racism is eradicated from the Louisiana and Oregon judicial systems, respectively. Free all of the 1,500 men and women in prison under the unconstitutional historical racist law.

The Louisiana Supreme Court was presented with the issue of correcting its 120 year old racist scheme to incarcerate its citizens. The court, on October 23, 2022, in a 6-1 decision, denied retroactivity. The Louisiana Supreme Court and legislators saw fit to keep the racist practice around for a while longer. Oregon’s state supreme court, on December 30, 2022, in a 7-0 decision, reversed the convictions of every defendant convicted by a non-unanimous jury verdict, thereby eradicating Jim Crow practices from their state system for good.

When I am physically free from this plantation I will continue to kick Jim Crow and I will get the kids in my community to kick Jim Crow so they will know of the 120 year old racist judicial practice intended to incarcerate them. We will work together so this will never be allowed to happen again. So kick that rascal, Jim Crow, kick him good.

Kenny Zulu Whitmore