Deaunteze Bobo currently resides in Minnesota Correctional Facility - Stillwater, serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole on a homicide conviction based solely on the testimony of a family member who has since admitted they lied and framed Deaunteze for the crime he is currently incarcerated for. Despite multiple attempts to call for Deaunteze's case to be reopened and investigated further and signed/sworn testimony and affidavits from the accuser stating that he lied when accusing Deaunteze, he remains incarcerated for crimes he did not commit. We are calling for the state of Minnesota to immediately release Deaunteze.

For an excellent starting point in learning about Deaunteze, we recommend reading this Unicorn Riot article:

Deaunteze Bobo's life involved many run-ins with law enforcement from a very young age, beginning with the killing of his father by MPD in 1992 when he was just 4-years-old. The Bobo family name was known to Minneapolis police and during Deaunteze' adolescent and teenage years, Minneapolis Police officers made a game out of harassing, stalking, and physically torturing both Deaunteze and his brother. Deaunteze was known to MPD as "Speedy Gonzalez" because of his ability to outrun most MPD officers when they targeted him for harassment simply for being a young Black kid hanging around in his own neighborhood. While getting to know Deaunteze, he told me one specific story of being taken behind a store and he and his brother were thrown into the dumpsters behind a store, covered with trash, and humiliated simply because the officers loved making the lives of people with the last name "Bobo" more difficult than they already were.

Deaunteze's story is unique in many ways, but also stands out as another example of the treatment that Black and Brown bodies endure while simply trying to grow up in this country. There are hundreds of similar stories of targeted harassment and abuse by law enforcement officers, specifically targeting Black and Indigenous People of Color as part of their "fun and games".

Our entire society is built on the fact that after attaining a quality (free) public education, we are all on a "level playing field" and that we all have access to relatively similar opportunities. That may be the case for many people in our society, but it is not the case for people like Deaunteze Bobo, and we must not rest until that is true for all citizens of the United States of America. We hold certain truths to be self-evident, including that "All men are created equal".