Is the author quoting the well known anarchist Angela Davis? If so, all credibility is lost...matter of fact the entire article is just conjecture wrapped in bs.

I only respond because I had exactly the same reaction as you. BTW, forget "Anarchist". She was a devoted Maoist/Stalinist-

died-in-the-wool-pure-D Communist who ran for vice president about a dozen times or so for the "Socialist Worker's Party. She bough guns for Black Panther cop-killers and in general did everything in her limited power to destroy the United States. She has no respect for our justice system anyway, much preferring the kangaroo-court impromptu firing-squad type of justice a-la Castro, Mao, and Lenin and Stalin. If this IS that Angela Davis then Slate is in big trouble. They rely on stuff written by a person with a history like that?

Dear DsCsIII, Before you spend any more time tarring me by association, please follow the link or google the book. What you'll find is that the book I cite (published this year by Oxford University Press) was written by Angela J. Davis, a respected law professor who ran the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia. While she does share a name with Angela Y. Davis of BPP SNCC and Critical Resistance, they are not the same person. Angela's bio is below: <link>

The book's author isn't Angela Y Davis of U.C. Santa Cruz, but Angela J Davis, professor of law at American University's Washington College of Law...

Should it surprise anyone that more than one person could have the name "Angela Davis?"

Of course, as others have already noted, the book in questions is by Angela J. Davis of American University Washington College of Law, not Angela Y. Davis, formerly of the Black Panthers and now a professor at the University of California Santa Cruz.

They do not even have the same middle initial and a cursory search on Google or Wikipedia or the like would have revealed this in the time it took to return the search results.

I don't mean to come across as an asshole, but you could have certainly ascertained this information in the time it took you to pen your response. Which leads us to my final question, since it is not the same Angela Davis, does this imply the credibility of the entire article is not lost nor is it "just conjecture wrapped in bs."

A hearty Right On! But really what does it matter? Both A D's are professors and well-educated people entitled to write books et al. the revolutionary AD should be viewed in context with the times where she attained her, as you see it, infamy. It seems that bad AD has lived a pretty quite academic life much like the good AD over these last three or four decades.

Those who lost it over the bad AD might have had the same attitude about John Kerry or anyone else who was considered “counter culture” or the "L" word.

So many of these meatheads actually have faulty (re Brainwashed) memories when they have convinced themselves there were only 100 hippies in San Francisco and Jane Fonda who were against Vietnam and all the other tragic inequities and injustices glossed over by post boomers and various members of the Right reinventing history.

Excellent question. My final point of my previous post, whether it was clear or not was that it doesn't matter. Had it been the so-called bad Angela Davis (Angela Y. Davis) that had written the book, that, in itself does not discredit anything what Feige wrote. In fact, Angela Davis' past assocaitions with the Black Panthers and/or other radical groups does not, in itself disprove a single thing she writes. Just because she was (and perhaps still is) a radical, does not mean that she cannot write a factual accurate account of prosecutorial misconduct.

It is all a moot point, though, since we are talking about another AD.

I completely agree.

But my point is that those who wrote to discredit the piece because it was written by an Angela Davis were so quck to jump on without even using the link betrayed their bias and desire to discredit the entire article.

Thanks

Billy and Spruce. And of course I agree with your larger point as well. Best, David.

!!!