Free after 25 years: How a racist law sent a US man to jail

Brandon Jackson, 50, was convicted in the late 1990s by a law rooted in the Jim Crow era that allowed for a non-unanimous jury verdict. At its inception, the law was designed to mute the voices of Black jurors and convict more Black people [Henrietta Wildsmith/The Shreveport Times]

My stomach was in knots as I watched Brandon Jackson’s Louisiana parole hearing via Zoom on Friday morning. Brandon, who turned 50 in December, has been in prison for more than 25 years.

This was his second time before the board. In late 2020, he was denied parole, and his ailing mother Miss Mollie Peoples had a heart attack shortly after. “It wasn’t the cause but it helped,” Mollie told Al Jazeera.