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Justice For Tiana Petition

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WHEREAS, Tiana Drummond-Phiri, who had absolutely no criminal record whatsoever, was an honor student at Archbishop Carroll High School in Radnor, Pennsylvania and is now an undergraduate student at Temple University with plans to attend law school to become a civil rights attorney after receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree,

WHEREAS, Tiana was recently the victim of what one courtroom observer described as a “legal lynching” after she was arrested by Delaware County police, charged by the Delaware County District Attorney, and tried, found guilty, then sentenced by a Delaware County judge in connection with a small “white versus black” student melee in a train station parking lot near the high school,

WHEREAS, despite evidence that she never threw a punch, despite evidence that she was inside a car about 50 yards away from the melee, and despite evidence of her reputation for being honest, law-abiding, and non-violent,

WHEREAS, in addition to being sentenced, she also was expelled from the high school (thereby being banned from her once in a lifetime prom and her once in a lifetime graduation ceremony). However, not one white student was ever arrested or expelled- despite the fact that at least one white student actually admitted to having been violently involved in the fight,

WHEREAS, Tiana is an African American whose family is from South Africa and whose father had been jailed for his political activism by the racist apartheid government but later released and pardoned by President Nelson Mandela, and

WHEREAS, if left in place, the unlawful conviction imposed on Tiana in Delaware County would essentially be a death sentence for her lifelong plan to be admitted into a law school in order to become a civil rights attorney,

WE, the undersigned men, women, and children, hereby demand JUSTICE FOR TIANA by calling for the immediate reversal of that conviction and the immediate expungement of her record:

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