The Legal Eagle Review is an informative and thought-provoking weekly radio show and podcast where the show hosts, NCCU law professors Irv Joyner and April Dawson, talk with guest experts and discuss current legal and political issues affecting everyday people in Durham, the surrounding community, and the state. The show airs on WNCU 90.7 FM on Sundays from 7-8p. The Legal Eagle Review is sponsored by the North Carolina Central University School of Law, and the Virtual Justice Project.
Episodes
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
Criminalization of the Poor
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
The current structure of the North Carolina criminal justice system routinely imprisons people for no reason other than their inability to pay a court-imposed debt. And the failure to pay often results in the imposition of even more fines, which results in greater debt and hardship. Our criminal justice system treats poor people more severely than those with means, causing poor people to suffer greater criminal consequences than those with means who commit the same offenses. On this show, we talked with Laura Holland, Staff Attorney at the NC Justice Center, and Quisha Mallette, Community Advocate for Reinvestment Partners, about the extreme challenges faced by low-income people in dealing with the criminal justice system in North Carolina, and how the system has resulted in the criminalization of poverty and the unequal treatment of the poor in this state.
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
Juneteenth & Reparations
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
Juneteenth, which is celebrated on June 19th, recognizes the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and the official conclusion of the Civil War on May 13, 1865. This celebration date results from the arrival of General Gordon Granger in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, and announced to the inhabitants that slavery had ended. June 19th became the symbolic day for the celebration of the end of slavery following celebrations which began in Texas in 1866. As a holiday, Juneteenth is now celebrated in forty-five State and in the District of Columbia. Slavery exacted a tremendous toll on enslaved Africans and upon their descendants. For generations, Africans were forced to provide free labor for Whites and were subjected to the most brutal and degrading treatment imaginable. An increasing number of people have joined in efforts to demand Reparations for the many years of forced labor endured by the ancestors of African Americans. Many also advocate for compensation for the official sanctioned oppression and dehumanization which were inflicted upon African Americans during the “Jim Crow” era, which lasted from the late 1890s up until 1970s. By every measure, the impacts of slavery and “Jim Crow” continue to negatively impact African Americans and are the principal causes of the huge wealth gap which presently exists in the United States between Africa Americans and whites. On this show, we discussed Juneteenth and Reparations with Dr. Sandy Darity, the Director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University and Dr. Keisha Bentley-Edwards, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Duke University and the Research Director at the Cook Center for Social Equity.
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Opioid Crisis in North Carolina
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
North Carolina is no stranger to the opioid crisis sweeping the nation. In this State alone, from 1999 to 2017, more than 13,000 North Carolinians died from opioid overdoses. In 2017, five North Carolinians died each day from unintentional opioid overdoses. In that year, more than 521 million opioid pills were dispensed to North Carolina residents. The death rate attributed to opioid overdoses rose from 116 in 2013 to almost 2,000 in 2017. Among African Americans, the rate of increase in these overdose deaths is higher at the national level even though the actual use of opioid by Whites is higher. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 5,513 African Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017, which represented an increase of 26% over the 2016 number. In this show, we talked about the opioid crisis with Attorney Hugh Harris, Outreach & Policy Counsel for the Public Protection Division of the North Carolina Department of Justice and Dr. Jennifer Carroll, Professor of Anthropology at Elon University.