La victoria es mía

After defeating my landlord (successfully winning a civil suit against him) and beating all the false criminal charges dropped that were filed by the local police department, I'm becoming more confident in my abilities to overcome adversity and more importantly to stand up for what I know is right.

The District Attorney of Allegheny County conceded that there was insufficient evidence to find me guilty of even a summary offense. Therefore, after what I hope is my final appearance in court for 2014, I won't have a criminal record.

Nevertheless, it strikes me as odd that in most American cities, four-fifths of the black population has a criminal record. After a year of postponing court dates and getting all the facts straight, volunteering, and proclaiming innocence, I'll be able to expunge my records on 10/08/2014, which is the last time I'll appear in court for that offense.

The reason the majority of black males, in particular, have records may not be because they're the most aggressive group of men on the planet, but rather because they're the first to be profiled and are targets of the criminal justice system. I want to file a civil suit after getting everything removed from my record, perhaps that's what the detective fears. But, this sort of thing needs to stop. We need to be made aware of all the options available to us as citizens. Information asymmetry is hurting the profession as much as it was hurting the health care market in the U.S.



Solving problems of incarceration, unemployment, and lack of social mobility will not be helped by these court officials. We need to have a different approach to penalize people who may indeed commit criminal acts. The court system is too confusing. Perhaps, the private sector ought to form start-ups aimed at making the system more egalitarian for defendants. Of course, more reform needs to first occur in order to ensure that the transparency is totally legal, but in the future. It should not be as complex to mount a sophisticated argument against someone, even if it's the police department.

I'm not surprised by my wins, I'm moving forward more shrewd than ever and making sure to keep a low profile as I re-focus on my burgeoning modeling/acting career, learning new technical skills, and reforming my start-up ideas. The last quarter of this year will likely be more productive than this time last year because I'm no longer worried about the legal issues that I had to face this past year and everything will be pristine on paper after the second week of October.