2 AFRICAN MEN FREED IN U.S.

Many cheered as two African men were exonerated a few days ago in the United States. Jabar Walker was released after serving 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Accused of killing of two men in 1995, inconsistent witness testimony was used to place Walker behind bars. A witness statement in his favor was ignored, while another witness admitted to taking what amounted to a bribe from the district attorney's office. Meanwhile, Wayne Gardine, a Jamaican national, also was exonerated after being imprisoned in 1994 on a drug trafficking charge. He won parole last year, but the US government immediately placed him in an immigration detention center to begin the process of deporting him to the Caribbean island of his birth. His immigration status continues to remain uncertain, despite the exoneration, according to a New York Times report.

Wrongful conviction of minorities, especially Africans, is prevalent in the United States. An infamous case is that of 14-year-old Emmett Till, abducted, tortured and lynched in 1955 for allegedly sexually harassing a white woman in the US state of Mississippi. Years later, the woman, Carolyn Bryant, revealed to a historian and author that she had fabricated parts of her testimony. The same goes for Clarence Brandley, an African who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1981 for rape and murder in the US state of Texas. Brandley was released in 1990 and sued state-government agencies for $120 million, which he did not obtain.

The US prison system has been used to continue the forced labour of Africans after slavery was abolished in 1865. That's because the country’s 13th amendment allows slavery as punishment for a crime. Africans in United States are incarcerated at five times the rate of their white counterparts, providing labour for a lucrative prison-industrial complex.

Since 1989, more than 3,400 people have been exonerated, according to the US-based National Registry of Exonerations. That means wrongfully charged people have spent more than 30,000 years in prison.