Votes on prisoner slavery
Illegal, slavery, in the United States? Yes, except as punishment for a crime, says the country's 13th Amendment . This exception, echoed in one way or another in the constitutions of more than a dozen states, is increasingly contested by human rights advocates. On Tuesday, voters in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont voted to end the ability to subject their imprisoned citizens to "involuntary servitude." The question was on the ballot of a fifth state, Louisiana, which rejected it after controversy over the wording of the sentence put to the referendum. "We've won in four states, but Louisiana has always been a tough place to promote the idea," Curtis Ray Davis, general manager of Decarcerate Louisiana, said over the phone. I'm disappointed. » Mr. Davis is one of those who worked to bring the issue to a vote in that state. He knows the prison system inside out, having been sentenced to prison in 1994 for second-degree murder, a crime for which he