by After being wrongfully convicted the first time, D’Juan Collins was called a “felon” in the eyes of the law.
That label affects “everything,” says Collins, a paralegal and mass prosecution-focused advocate at the New York social justice organization VOCAL-NY.
“That label really paints a black eye, almost like I’m blacklisted from certain opportunities that other citizens might have,” he says. The Independent.
“And it leaves me in a state of poverty,” he says. “If I can’t get a job, if I can’t get suitable housing, how do you expect me to survive and thrive in the society we’re supposed to be in?”
But for former president Donald Trump – able to leverage his wealth, power and influence to avoid the consequences of his white-collar crimes that threatened the 2016 elections – that “criminal” label is helping him make millions of dollars to raise.
For anyone else with 34 felony convictions, access to jobs, housing, health care, childcare and the ability to vote could be in jeopardy if labeled a “felon” for life, not to mention a path to the presidency.
Through his fundraising campaign, Trump even branded himself a “convicted felon” on June 1, two days after he was convicted in a hush money trial in New York, and then again on June 7: “THEY MADE YOU A POLITICAL PRISONER. CONVICTED FELON!”
“How is that possible?” says Collins. “Why isn’t a president getting the same limits?”
In statements and press releases supporting President Joe Biden and other Democratic officials, the Democratic National Committee has called Trump a “convicted felon” and a “criminal” several times since the verdict.
The DNC also purchased billboards in Phoenix that were written in English and Spanish reading “Trump has already attacked Arizona’s democracy once. Now he is back as a convicted philosopher. He has revenge and retribution out. Trump: unfit to serve.”
Meanwhile, Trump remembered his Georgia mugshot in T-shirts and Christmas wrapping paper, sweaters and commemorative credit cards, and continued to paint his convictions, indictment and narrative as a victim to raise millions of dollars for his legal defense.
His campaign reported raising nearly $53 million within 24 hours after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of stealing business records related to a hush money scheme involving an adult movie star and conspiring to illegally influence a presidential election 2016 to falsify.
On May 31, one day after the verdict, the Biden campaign released a statement calling it “Donald Trump’s maroon conviction” for the first time.
“Look, folks, this campaign has entered uncharted territory. Last week, for the first time in American history, a former president was convicted – a convicted felon,” President Biden said during a campaign event in Connecticut on June 3.
Last year, two political action committees supporting the presumptive Republican presidential nominee spent more than $55 million on his legal bills, and more than half of that cash was spent within the second half of the year.
“When you have a legal team like Donald Trump, who is just spending millions and millions of dollars on his legal defense, it makes you wonder what the system is really about,” Collins says. “This is greed, and if you have the money to build this greedy system, you get justice.”
Republican strategists have also suggested that Trump’s felony convictions could even be used to win over Black voters frustrated with the criminal justice system, a message that President Biden derided as “disproving and refuting lies and stereotypes for your vote , so he can win for himself, not for you.”
Other GOP allies also hope the verdict could boost Trump’s support among Latino voters by linking the charges against him to Latin American regimes that have targeted political rivals.
Republican parties in at least two states – Vermont and Nevada – expressly prohibit the promotion of candidates with felony convictions. Vermont was the only state Trump didn’t win during the presidential primaries, but party officials now appear to be figuring out how to serve Trump after he formally received the Republican nomination in July.
And GOP officials in Nevada went so far as to change their bylaws so they can bolster Trump.
“The Nevada GOP is making a shameful admission that they knew all along that Trump would be convicted and the ‘convicted felon’ clause of their platform was deleted to make an exception for him, showing Nevada voters that there is no end with his corruption. to DNC spokeswoman Stephanie Justice.
But for the nearly 20 million Americans with a felony conviction, felony branding is a modern-day “scarlet letter,” says Ed Chung, vice president of initiatives at the Vera Institute of Justice and a former federal prosecutor in the civil rights division. . US Department of Justice.
“People who don’t have power or are not as famous as Donald Trump – that can be life-changing, and it affects everything from employment to housing to social relationships and so on,” he says he. The Independent.
Carroll Bogert, president of the nonprofit criminal justice publication The Marshall Project, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post titled “Don’t call Trump a traitor.”
By branding Trump a “felon” he tries to “bring Trump down on punishment, to label him as no better than a common criminal,” she wrote.
“And that’s the problem,” she said. “Most of the people in prisons and jails in America come from lives of poverty and discrimination. A label like ‘felon’ or ‘prisoner’ helps keep them on the fringes of society.”
Trump’s conviction is a powerful reminder that accountability should know no status or privilege,” said David Ayala, executive director of the Ex-Convicted Movement of People & Families, which has encouraged media and people another without using “felon” as well. as a noun.
That phrase only serves “to dehumanize and generalize harmful stories that distort the treatment and perception of individuals within our community,” Ayala said.
The former president is clearly not an ordinary person in the criminal justice system,” says Chung The Independent; He is a billionaire with a multi-million dollar legal campaign spanning several jurisdictions, to keep him out of jail, and help him get elected to the White House to insulate himself against criminal prosecution.
But campaigns that spread the “felon” label keep alive “a stigma that is in many ways insurmountable,” he says.
“It’s something that applies regardless of who the individual defendant is, something that’s relevant regardless of your political interest, and its use over and over again, and to weave it into our lexicon, is I think it’s something we want to avoid,” says Chung. “The fact that it’s something that people are talking about in relation to Donald Trump shows how important language is.”
