Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz - The Case of Isaac Wright Jr.

[johnkarls]

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IMPORTANT NOTE –

This Quiz was composed before obtaining my copy of “Marked for Life.” The Questions and their Suggested Answers are based on other reputable sources.


Question 1

Was Isaac Wright Jr. born 1/23/1962 into a career military family?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

By 1989, had Isaac Wright Jr. not only founded his own group (Uptown Express), become a talent manager, owned an independent record label (X-Press Records), and co-founded with his wife Sunshine Wright a platinum selling group (The Cover Girls)?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Had he and Sunshine settled in a New Jersey suburb of NYC to raise their six-year-old daughter, Tikealla S. Wright?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 4

In 1989, was he arrested and charged with being the mastermind behind one of the largest drug-distribution networks in the NYC metropolitan area? Was he convicted in 1991 and sentenced to life in prison under New Jersey’s “Drug Kingpin” statute (as well as 72 years on other charges)?

Answer 4

Yes – Yes.

Question 5

Did Sunshine divorce him in 1991?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

While in prison, did Isaac Wright Jr., realizing that nobody would materialize to save him, become a self-taught legal expert who helped to overturn wrongful convictions of 20 of his fellow inmates before finally proving his own innocence in 1996?

Answer 6

Yes.

Question 7

Did Isaac Wright Jr. prove that Nicholas L. Bissell Jr. who had prosecuted Wright, had directed police officers to falsify reports while personally dictating the false testimony against Wright? Did Bissell also make secret deals with defense attorneys to have their clients lie to the jury that Wright was their boss?

Answer 7

Yes – Yes.

Question 8

Did Prosecutor Bissell, upon learning that one of the police officers had confessed, take flight and then commit suicide when the police tried to arrest him?

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

Was Wright’s trial judge, Michael Imbriani, who concealed Bisssell’s secret deals with illegal sentencing schemes, removed from the bench and incarcerated (though the incarceration was on unrelated theft charges)?

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 10

Did Isaac Wright Jr. then decide that his true calling in life was to become a defense attorney representing the wrongfully accused – particularly the Black community and the poor?

Answer 10

Yes.

Question 11

After obtaining his B.A. and J.D., did he then join the Newark NJ law firm of Hunt Hamlin & Ridley whose website describes the firm as “the largest African-American owned law firm in the State of New Jersey with a wide range of expertise and skilled lawyers on staff to handle many types of legal matters”?

Answer 11

Yes.

Question 12

Despite passing the New Jersey Bar Exam in 2008, did the N.J. Bar Association’s Character Committee spend 9 years investigating him before permitting his admission to practice law?

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 13

Did the Bar Association Character Committee’s approval after 9 years coincide with the 2017 announcement that Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson (who has sold over 30 million albums and been ranked by Billboard as the third-best rapper behind Eminem, who discovered “50 Cent”, and Nelly) would produce a TV series based on Isaac’s life?

Answer 13

Yes.

Question 14

Did that TV series entitled “For Life” air on ABC for two seasons 2020-2021?

Answer 14

Yes.

Question 15

BTW, had “50 Cent” met Isaac Wright Jr. in 2016 when Wright was a practicing attorney? Did the New York Post (https://nypost.com/2020/02/11/meet-the- ... -for-life/) report that –

“[50 Cent had been] invited to perform at an illegal fight club in the Bronx. Jackson was hesitant; he risked losing his promoter’s license if he performed there and somebody posted a video to YouTube. ‘They went through several lawyers and a lot of money and nobody could help them,’ says Wright, who was brought in on the recommendation of a friend. He succeeded in making the club legal and 50 Cent performed there. Wright and Jackson got to know each other and Jackson learned his life story.”

Answer 15

Yes – Yes.

Question 16

Does our website feature each month a section entitled “Reference Materials” which traditionally includes, inter alia, book reviews of our focus book by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post?

Answer 16

Yes.

Question 17

Did none of them review “Marked for Life” – presumably because this is a “cart before the horse” situation with “For Life” airing on ABC 2020-2021 and “Marked for Life” not being published until 11/8/2022 – with the NYT and WaPo already having reviewed “For Life”?

Answer 17

Yes.

Question 18

BTW, among the zillions of reviews of “For Life,” did the American Bar Association Journal contain a review dated 3/12/2020 and entitled “ABC’s ‘For Life’ Reminds Us Of A Life Sentence’s Severity?

Answer 18

Yes.

Question 19

Does the American Bar Association Journal’s article even attempt to address the severity of a death sentence in a wrongful-conviction case?

Answer 19

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 20

BTW, did our 3/16/2016 meeting 7 years ago cover many of the same issues as “Marked for Life” when our focus book was “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by NYU Law Professor Bryan Stevenson who is/was the founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization with, currently, a staff of 77 providing, inter alia, legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners denied fair and just treatment in the legal system?

Answer 20

Yes.

Question 21

Did our 3/16/2016 “Suggested Discussion Outline” website section contain not only a Suggested Discussion Outline with 852 views to date, but also a “Murder By Gun vs. Murder By Judicial System = A Difference?” posting with 2,288 views to date?

Answer 21

Yes – please see viewforum.php?f=436&sid=a8aa8ad8f9cfb76 ... 20cbec6686.

Question 22

Did our 3/16/2016 meeting consider launching one of our “Six Degrees of Separation” E-mail Campaigns to put “Murder by Judicial System” on a par with “Murder by Gun”?

Answer 22

Yes.

Question 23

Did that proposal fail to meet our standards (no more than one dissent with a minimum meeting quorum of 6) because two attorneys participating in the meeting thought that if the prosecutors or other miscreants lost their jobs, that would comprise sufficient punishment?

Answer 23

Yes.

Question 24

In the light of Isaac Wright Jr’s case, should we re-visit this proposal?

Answer 24

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

BTW, among the 613 Judaic Laws in the Torah (i.e., Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy) are “thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” Exodus 21:23-25.

NB: that although the foregoing is the basis for Sharia Law in Muslim countries and for English Common Law (which is what was dispensed in English Ecclesiastical Courts – the only courts in England until Henry VIII took the English church out from under The Vatican in 1534 AD), Christ did say in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-44, King James Version) --

[38] Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
[39] But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
[40] And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
[41] And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
[42] Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
[43] Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
[44] But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

But is this (“turning the other cheek” and “going the extra mile”) practical at the societal level of criminal law, vs. the personal level of morality???

If not, shouldn’t something be done about corrupt prosecutors and corrupt judges other than a mere “wrist slap”???

In this regard, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Brady vs. Maryland (373 U.S. 83 (1963)) that the prosecution must turn over to the defense all evidence that might exonerate the defendant. HOWEVER –

(1) The U.S. Supreme Court did not provide a criminal penalty for corrupt prosecutors who fail to do so, such as “an eye for an eye”; AND

(2) The U.S. Supreme Court did not provide a criminal penalty for CORRUPT JUDGES who are ACCESSORIES BEFORE/AFTER THE FACT by enabling such corrupt prosecutors WHICH (BEING AN ACCESSORY) ALSO MAKES THE JUDGE GUILTY OF FAILING TO PROVIDE EXCULPATORY EVIDENCE!!!

Question 25

BTW, isn’t it appropriate that Isaac’s lawless prosecutor committed suicide as a result of his misdeeds?

Answer 25

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

BTW, Roman Catholicism holds that suicide is a mortal sin (please see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraphs 2280 - 2283 on p. 550) – even though, prior to 313 AD when Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, the overwhelming majority of Christians upon their group being discovered, would commit mass suicide rather than lose their nerve upon being “fed to the lions” for the amusement of the public – indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 2473 on p. 593, proclaims that those early Christians (among others without specifically mentioning the early Christians) were NOT “martyrs” –

“He [the martyr] endures death through an act of fortitude. ‘Let me become the food of the beasts, through whom it will be given me to reach God’”!!!

Question 26

Though hasn’t the Judge, Michael Imbriani, who concealed the prosecutor’s secret deals with illegal sentencing schemes, been insufficiently punished by simply being removed from the bench (since he was incarcerated on unrelated theft charges)?

Answer 26

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!