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A pregnant Black activist is sitting behind bars after using her freedom of speech right during a South Carolina protest in 2020. Brittany Martin, 34, was sentenced to breaching the peace in a high and aggravated manner and is serving four years in prison due to comments she made towards the police.
Body camera footage shows Martin yelling “No justice, no peace” in a police officer’s face as well. She isn’t seen assaulting any officers.
A few days later, according to NPR she’s heard saying:
Some of us gon’ be hurting. And some of y’all gon’ be hurting. We ready to die for this. We tired of it. You better be ready to die for the blue. I’m ready to die for the Black.”
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In 2021, Martin was initially indicted on charges of aggravated breach of peace, instigating a riot, and five counts of threatening the life of a public official. The aggravated breach of peace charge only carries a 30-day sentence. Since prosecutors deemed it a “high and aggravated crime,” she was then facing up to 10 years in prison. She was sentenced to four years in May 2022.
“She’s in jail because she talked in America,” her lawyer Sybil Dione Rosado told NPR. “She’s a dark-skinned Black woman who is unapologetically Black and radical.”
Brittany Martin’s Lawyers Are Pushing For A Lesser Sentence
Rosado added that while sitting in jail, Martin has suffered health complications while pregnant.
“She has had preterm labor, she’s had several events where she had to be taken on an emergency basis to the hospital,” she told CNN. “She’s spending four years in jail and pregnant and struggling for the life of her baby because she’s loud and Black. It’s an absolute travesty of justice.”
Her lawyers have been trying to lower Martin’s sentence due to her health complications and alleged inadequate care. Martin, whose 18-year-old son was fatally shot in January 2022, also has four younger children.
In July 2022, she was taken to the hospital twice and had lost 12 pounds, her sister Whitney Rosado told NPR. Martin was also sent to solitary confinement for refusing to cut her dreads off. She’s also spent 35 days in detention for threatening to inflict harm on an employee and then 22 days in July for refusing or failing to obey orders.
Political analyst Bakari Sellers has joined her legal team in hopes of getting her a reduced sentence. According to CNN, he wrote in a memo that it “will allow her to seek and receive the prenatal care she needs to sustain what has been a high-risk pregnancy, plagued by complications.” He added that a lower sentence “will adequately reflect the serious nature” of Martin’s actions.
This isn’t Martin’s first run in with the law. In November 2020, she was sentenced to seven years probation for willful intent to injure and leaving a crime scene in Iowa. Her 18-year-old son told police that his mother hit him with a SUV and drove off after telling him she hopes he dies, according to court documents.
