Charged for Protesting Police Violence in 2020, Khalif Miller Is Still in Jail

Four years and two presidential election seasons after the 2020 uprisings, much of the intense mainstream attention around issues of abolition and police violence has receded into increasingly distant memory. But many who took to the streets to demand justice for George Floyd and other Black and brown people brutalized by police are still grappling with the consequences of rising up.

For Philadelphia native Khalif Miller, the unprecedented ways that protesters were prosecuted continue to shape his life. Miller is just one of more than 300 people federally charged for offenses related to the 2020 protests and has been serving a five-year sentence since last spring over the burning of a police cruiser. His story offers insight into how the U.S. criminal justice system employed a heavy-handed approach to stamp out one of the country’s largest uprisings in recent years. Miller’s political actions led not just to his arrest, but also rendered him particularly vulnerable in prison, where, he told Prism, he has faced retaliation from facility officials.

“I see what’s going on,” Miller told Prism in a phone interview. “I see that they’re trying to use my incarceration to stop other people from protesting.”

The night before Miller went out to a Philadelphia protest condemning Floyd’s killing, he said he spent three to four hours researching the stories of other Black people killed by the police and made a poster featuring their names.

“I was just tired of it, just fed up,” Miller said. “I felt like if people didn’t take to the streets and get out there, things weren’t gonna change. If they see that we’re just moving on with it … [then] they’ll think it’s OK. I was just ready for change.”

The next day, on May 30, 2020, Miller attended a protest near Philadelphia’s City Hall. He recalled speaking with police officers, trying to explain his community’s concerns. It was, however, a photo of Miller in front of a burning Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) cruiser, fist raised in a Black Power salute, that would become widely associated with Miller and later play a role in his prosecution.

In late October, Miller was returning home from work when he noticed someone had covered his home security cameras with a face mask. When he checked the footage, he said, he found that the FBI had paid him a visit. Officers also visited the home of his grandfather Tyrone Reed, who, in an interview with Prism, lamented that “it went downhill from there.”

Federal Charges, Stricter Sentences

More than 14,000 arrests were made across the country for protest-related offenses between late May and late June 2020, according to reporting from the Washington Post. According to an analysis by The Hill, many arrests made in the earliest weeks of the uprising were booked as low-level, nonviolent crimes such as violating curfews, obstructing roadways, carrying open containers, and failing to disperse.

However, Miller’s case was among a historically unprecedented wave of federal prosecutions targeting protesters. What made these prosecutions so abnormal was how offenses that would typically be handled at the local or state level were instead meted out under federal law.

While the large-scale shift occurred throughout 2020, it was partly the result of the rapid creation of federal criminal laws over the past 50 years. In fact, according to a 1997 study from the American Bar Association, more than 40% of federal criminal laws have been passed in just the prior 50 years.

A handful of these laws grant federal jurisdiction to certain offenses that would normally be handled on the state level if the offense influenced interstate commerce. Researchers have noted that this condition has been widely applied to offenses involving government-owned vehicles. This speaks to why Miller’s case, which involved a PPD cruiser, was brought at the federal level.

In “Struggle for Power,” a 2021 report released by the Movement for Black Lives, researchers analyzed more than 300 protest-related federal prosecutions in which the government justified both its deployment of federal law enforcement and its expanded use of the federal criminal code to establish its own jurisdiction over cases that would otherwise only be charged on the state or local level. From June 2020 to mid-January 2021, the report found that there were equivalent state-level charges that could have been brought against defendants in more than 92% of cases. With federal intervention comes a heightened severity in sentencing for those who are found guilty. According to the report, 88% of the federal criminal charges analyzed carried more severe potential sentences than their equivalent state charges.

Incarceration and its Chilling Effect

Miller was arrested for participation in the summer protests on Oct. 28, 2020; U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain formally announced his charges on Oct. 29. Miller, alongside two other defendants, was indicted for the destruction of a PPD vehicle, allegedly throwing papers into the burning car “after a road flare placed in the vehicle started a fire.”

Miller was initially charged with two counts of arson and one count of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder. The charge carried a mandatory minimum of seven years in prison and a maximum of 65 years, with three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $750,000. Miller was also charged with illegal possession of firearms when federal agents searched his home while arresting him and ultimately pleaded guilty, with prosecutors dropping the arson charges.

The two-and-a-half years between Miller’s arrest and his conviction was rife with its own terrors, effectively constituting punishment before he was even tried in court.

While detained pretrial at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) Philadelphia, Miller said he did not receive an attorney visit for the first 19 months inside. In August 2021, he filed a complaint to the facility over a physical attack during which he was stabbed 10 times and feared for his life. Further, much like in other prisons and jails across the country, incarcerated people were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19; Miller said he caught the virus twice while at FDC.

In April 2023, Miller was sentenced to five years in the U.S. Penitentiary Big Sandy in Kentucky. Since the elimination of federal parole in 1984, those convicted of federal crimes must serve at least 85% of their sentence before the possibility of release.

In a recent message sent over Corrlinks, a prison email system, Miller told Prism that his time at Big Sandy compared to FDC Philadelphia has been “pretty smooth.”

“The lockdowns do get difficult sometimes, but I’ve been devoting my time to learning the world of business and financial education to give myself a head start when I finally come home,” said Miller, who ran a business purchasing and renting cars prior to his incarceration. “So for me, I’m in college and every lockdown I come out smarter.”

But even while Miller said he has experienced less violence at Big Sandy, convictions on federal charges carry severe impacts beyond the length of the sentence. The extended physical distance from loved ones and family can exacerbate the experience of isolation inside, particularly as federal prisons are often located in more remote areas than state facilities. For Miller, this has meant distance not only from his friends and supporters, but also from his parents, grandparents, and his child.

Reed said that he connects with his grandson via telephone but has not seen him in person. He said he was proud of how successful Miller was, both as a businessman and a father.

“I just used to love how he took care of his family,” Reed said. “He was truly an individual that loved his son, loved his son’s sister … and he worked. All he did was work and take care of the children.”

Miller said that “some days and nights it gets lonely and hard” but that letters, books, and pictures from family, friends, and supporters go a long way in reminding him that he’s not alone.

“I have had a few [corrections officers] recognize me and actually salute me with their fist in the air to show their support,” Miller said. “I’m not going to lie, it felt kind of good to know my message was seen, felt, and recognized this far away from home.”

When Miller is released in 2027, he hopes to take the lessons he’s learned about financial education and use them in his own business and to teach youth in his community. His grandfather also hopes he continues to stay engaged with the community, potentially even volunteering with the Committee for a Better North Philadelphia, of which Reed serves as president.

That level of familial support is crucial, particularly given the heightened economic precarity often experienced by those returning home after being incarcerated on protest-related charges. According to the WUNC Youth Reporting Institute, North Carolina-based activists who participated in the 2020 uprising said that they “experienced long-standing consequences as a result of being arrested.” The findings, published in 2022, noted that many of “the people whose charges last the longest or actually face conviction are the people that are most economically, politically, and socially vulnerable.”

Other advocates have also noted the chilling effect that the prosecution of protest-related charges can have on future organizing efforts as well as the potential role the threat of incarceration can play in quelling political dissent. In January 2023, free speech advocates at PEN America spoke out against the potential impacts of “Cop City” protesters who were targeted by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s executive order declaring a state of emergency. Kemp also called in 1,000 National Guard troops to arrest protesters on charges of “domestic terrorism.”

PEN America U.S. Free Expression Program Director Kate Ruane said in a press release that the use of these statutes “that carry heavy penalties to punish and suppress protest is the logical next step after the waves of anti-protest legislation.”

Miller himself believes that his arrest and charges were strategically used to frighten the public from speaking up against the fatal police shooting of 27-year-old Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia on Oct. 26, 2020. Miller’s charges were announced two days later.

But Miller said he won’t be silenced.

“I feel like it could discourage you, but for me, it’s actually more of a reason to get active and to be some type of change to stop this whole system,” Miller told Prism. “These four years were hard and long but I felt like if we didn’t go out there and protest, Derek Chauvin and other police officers would not have been charged.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.