This story does a great job of keeping the listener engaged. The tone, cadence and music are wonderfully edited together - and kept me listening intently. The use of the cell door closing also was used to great effect - making me jump in my chair the first time.
The length, just shy of 8 minutes, makes this pieces eligible for dropping into a news magazine or local program. It has a good narrative and also is a colorful way to set up a call-in program or talk show discussion.
This unscripted background-sound-rich monologue spoken by a young black man wrongly convicted of murder is an eloquent social document. Sixteen-year-old Shareef Cousin (pronounced Ku-zan) was arrested one day after school and, following a botched trial, ended up on death row for nearly ten years.
In his quiet, self-effacing way Cousin describes how unreal everything seemed at first. He had been playing basketball the night of the murder, so how could his death sentence be real? When his jail cell door shut with a clang, though, he broke down and cried. Over the next few months he became close friends with a white guy, John Brown ("about 5'5", 112 pounds soaking wet, long brown hair, smoked cigarettes . . . brown teeth"), who'd been on death row for 17 years. The day Brown was led away to be executed, his last words to Cousin were, "Hey man, keep your head up. You blessed. You gonna leave from here one day."
Eight years later Cousin is a free man, exonerated, presumably because of a successful appeal. A little more than five minutes into this piece there is a brief pause. The rest of Cousin's monologue is an impassioned but never overwrought essay about our justice system. Rather than burning with rage at the Kafkaesque -- no, the racist -- machinations which cost him a decade of his life, Cousin is now studying full time as a college student to be an attorney. He's determined to represent people facing capital punishment, to organize families who have imprisoned relatives, and be part of a "new social movement" that will do away with the gross law-enforcement policies that have targeted black males and perpetuated a de facto system of slavery in America today.
Hats off to producer N. Christian Ugbode and the National Black Programming Consortium for a piece public radio listeners need to hear.
Comments for Young & Exonerated
Produced by The National Black Programming Consortium
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2 comments
Arvid Hokanson
Posted on April 26, 2007 at 12:35 PM | Permalink
Review of Young & Exonerated
This story does a great job of keeping the listener engaged. The tone, cadence and music are wonderfully edited together - and kept me listening intently. The use of the cell door closing also was used to great effect - making me jump in my chair the first time.
The length, just shy of 8 minutes, makes this pieces eligible for dropping into a news magazine or local program. It has a good narrative and also is a colorful way to set up a call-in program or talk show discussion.
Nicely done!
James Reiss
Posted on March 21, 2007 at 03:22 AM | Permalink
Review of Young & Exonerated
This unscripted background-sound-rich monologue spoken by a young black man wrongly convicted of murder is an eloquent social document. Sixteen-year-old Shareef Cousin (pronounced Ku-zan) was arrested one day after school and, following a botched trial, ended up on death row for nearly ten years.
In his quiet, self-effacing way Cousin describes how unreal everything seemed at first. He had been playing basketball the night of the murder, so how could his death sentence be real? When his jail cell door shut with a clang, though, he broke down and cried. Over the next few months he became close friends with a white guy, John Brown ("about 5'5", 112 pounds soaking wet, long brown hair, smoked cigarettes . . . brown teeth"), who'd been on death row for 17 years. The day Brown was led away to be executed, his last words to Cousin were, "Hey man, keep your head up. You blessed. You gonna leave from here one day."
Eight years later Cousin is a free man, exonerated, presumably because of a successful appeal. A little more than five minutes into this piece there is a brief pause. The rest of Cousin's monologue is an impassioned but never overwrought essay about our justice system. Rather than burning with rage at the Kafkaesque -- no, the racist -- machinations which cost him a decade of his life, Cousin is now studying full time as a college student to be an attorney. He's determined to represent people facing capital punishment, to organize families who have imprisoned relatives, and be part of a "new social movement" that will do away with the gross law-enforcement policies that have targeted black males and perpetuated a de facto system of slavery in America today.
Hats off to producer N. Christian Ugbode and the National Black Programming Consortium for a piece public radio listeners need to hear.