Black Philadelphia Teen, Lionel Franks, Spent Five Months in Prison for Murder He Didn't Commit

Money talks in the court system in the United States. How else can you explain how Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan can get a slap on the wrist for all their many brushes with the law and someone like Lionel Franks, who is black, can be sent to prison for a crime he did not commit? The penal system blocked this young man's progress. According to Philly.com, he should have graduated from high school in June, near the top of his class so that he could begin his college education at Lincoln University, studying culinary arts, but he was left in jail for allegedly shooting a man 12 times on a North Philadelphia street.

Franks' bad-dream detour into the city's criminal-justice system began April 9, a Friday mostly spent touring the Lincoln campus in rural Chester County. Back home in his Nicetown neighborhood by midafternoon, he changed into an Adidas sweat suit, green with white stripes down the pants and sleeves, and went shopping for sneakers at a sporting-goods store on Germantown Avenue.

Minutes into the return trip, Franks was swarmed by police. A man had just been gunned down 12 blocks away, they told him, and two witnesses had identified him as the shooter. Franks showed the officers his bag from Olympia Sports and his new shoes. "You got the wrong guy!" he protested as they cuffed him.

Even as the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office began building its attempted-murder case against Franks, the evidence was shrinking. The witnesses, it turned out, hadn't seen the gunman's face, only a black male in green sweats with white stripes down the pants and sleeves. The victim, having taken eight shots to the head and neck alone, could remember nothing. A store surveillance camera provided Franks with an alibi nearly down to the minute.

But the 18-year-old would stay behind bars through August, captive to a pair of tiny blood spots and the grindingly slow wheels of justice in an overcrowded court system. If not for a prosecutor with doubts about Franks' guilt, he might still be there. Source

So, we are still living in an age when "walking while black" is still a recipe for disaster. It is obvious that Franks didn't have the financial means of celebrities, but where do we draw the line? Do we continue to allow innocent young black men to be sent to prison for crimes they did not commit? Or do we continue to stereotype all black men in the United States saying once you are black, the presumption is you're guilty? Surely this isn't what the framers of our Constitution had in mind.