Jaylen Lamar Farmer was convicted of attempted capital murder and received an outrageous sentence for a case that didn’t result in death.
The judge in Arkansas handed down the staggering sentence of 152 years in prison.
According to Arkansas Online, 21-year-old Jaylen Lamar Farmer was accused of engaging in gang activities and firing an AK-47 at an Arkansas police officer during a traffic stop in 2017.
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A bullet reportedly hit the seat of the officer’s patrol car but the officer was unscathed.
“Our community is clearly tired of gang and gun violence that has come to be all too common in this area,” Capt. Joe Baker of the West Memphis Police Department said to ArkansasOnline.com. “We hope this verdict resonates loudly with the violent criminal element in West Memphis.”
A jury foundJaylen Lamar Farmer guilty of 16 counts of unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, 18 counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony and one count of fleeing, according to police.
A plea hearing for Jaylen Lamar Farmer is scheduled for April 20.
Bias in sentencing laws
Decades of research have shown that criminal courts sentence Black defendants much more harshly than white defendents. An investigation last year into sentencing disparities in Florida by The Sarasota Herald-Tribune exposed this fact in stark terms.
According to the New York Times, the report illuminates the fact that African-American defendants get more time behind bars —sometimes twice the prison terms of whites with identical criminal histories —when they commit the same crimes under identical circumstances. It also shows how bias on the part of individual judges and prosecutors drives sentencing inequity.
The Herald-Tribune found that judges disregard the guidelines, sentencing Black defendants to longer prison terms in 60 percent of felony cases, 68 percent of serious, first-degree crimes and 45 percent of burglaries. In third-degree felony cases—the least serious and broadest class of felonies—white Florida judges sentenced Black defendants to 20 percent more prison time than white defendants.