Jaaye Person-Lynn
A Black attorney claims he was racially profiled in court because he was wearing street clothes … and while this video of his arrest seems to support that, he was just convicted for the whole thing.
38-year-old Jaaye Person-Lynn was sentenced last week to one-year probation after being convicted of obstructing or delaying a peace officer for this San Bernardino courtroom altercation in 2019.
Long story short … Person-Lynn says he dropped into court on his day off without a suit on, because he needed to change a hearing date for a client and thought he could do it quickly with the clerk. The Sheriff’s deputies inside the courtroom, however, stiff-armed him.
Check out the footage — it starts without audio, but you can see Person-Lynn enter the courtroom and walk past the bar as he tries to make his way to the clerk. A couple deputies flag him down and point back to the spectator section, where they meet him face-to-face.
That’s where the audio kicks in … you hear the female deputy ask who he is and what he wants. Person-Lynn tells her he wants to talk to the clerk, and eventually identifies himself as an attorney. Two deputies then escorted Person-Lynn out, and tried getting the case number for his client. Person-Lynn says he’s going after them, legally, for racially for profiling him … and then it really hit the fan.
Jaaye Person-Lynn was kicked out of court & ARRESTED when officers didn’t believe he was a lawyer. He was treated w/ implicit bias too often experienced by Black attorneys. Why is it so hard for some ppl to believe that Black ppl can be lawyers or doctors? https://t.co/K1RFlc4rg1
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) January 11, 2021
@AttorneyCrump
You can hear a Taser going off as a deputy tells the lawyer not to threaten him. Person-Lynn was arrested and booked into the county jail right then and there. He eventually went to trial over this … and got convicted and got sentenced Friday.
He’s vowing to appeal, maintaining race was a factor and that deputies used excessive force — which he claims caused injuries to his arms.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump commented on the story Monday, writing … “He was treated w/ implicit bias too often experienced by Black attorneys. Why is it so hard for some ppl to believe that Black ppl can be lawyers or doctors?”