A Pastor Charged With Murder He Did Not Commit: Alabama Targets Reverend Glasgow In Political Prosecution
A formerly incarcerated community organizer in Alabama may be executed or imprisoned for life for a murder he’s not accused of committing.
Reverend Kenneth Glasgow is the founder of The Ordinary People Society, a faith-based organization that “works with the most disenfranchised members,” which others tend to exclude.
According to police, a passenger in a car Glasgow was driving exited the vehicle after it was involved in an accident and shot another driver to death.
He was charged under a “complicity law” in Alabama, and prosecutors are trying to convince a grand jury to indict him for violent acts committed by another person. He said he did not anticipate, had no control over, and didn’t even see the acts take place.
Glasgow, who is Reverend Al Sharpton’s half-brother, is known and celebrated for the ministry he established after leaving prison in 2001 and for his activism on behalf of people impacted by incarceration.
While he fights his own case, Glasgow is calling for the complicity law to be changed. Under the law, “A person who, whether present or absent, aids, abets, induces, procures or causes the commission of an act which if done directly by him, would be a felony or a misdemeanor under a provision of this chapter, is guilty of the same felony or misdemeanor.”
“The complicity law could [be used against] anybody,” he said in an interview with Shadowproof. “Any preacher or anybody that has a prison history, anybody that deals with any kind of social work or juveniles—anybody, with this complicity law. That law is making you responsible for someone else’s actions.”
In addition to providing meals, running transitional homes, serving as an outside spokesperson for incarcerated activists, like the Free Alabama Movement, and deescalating violence in his community, Glasgow is also well known nationally for his organizing for voting rights and against police brutality.
The New York Times described Dothan in 2016 as a place that “can feel like it is caught in a southern time warp, immune to change, and defined by racial division.” One in three Dothan residents is Black, but the town has never had a Black mayor, police chief, circuit judge, or school superintendent.
The newspaper went on to note, “Meetings of the city commission are held in a room adorned with 28 portraits of city leaders, all of them white men. An old photograph shows police officers, including the current chief, posing beside a Confederate flag.”
In this environment, Glasgow’s activism and his association with marginalized communities has placed a target on his back, which has grown over the years and drawn the ire of prosecutors and law enforcement officials whose power he regularly challenges.
He recently enraged the right-wing when he threw his support behind Doug Jones’ senate campaign, helping to register tens of thousands of currently and formerly incarcerated voters in Alabama ahead of the first election of a Democrat to statewide office in 25 years....