PERSPECTIVE: My baby sister’s rapist and murderer pleaded guilty, but that does little to address the crisis involving Black children

Early on the morning of July 7, 2023, police responded to a call at the home in Rensselaer, New York, that my mother shared with her then boyfriend, Robert Fisher, and my 3-year-old little sister, Josefina Catherine Cunningham. On July 9 of this year, about a year after that horrible morning, Fisher, 34, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree rape in the attack on Josie. The details of Fisher’s crime have been hard for me to accept. Fisher admitted to giving Josie Clozapine, an anti-psychotic with dangerous side effects, and Xanax, an anxiety drug, from my mother’s prescription bottles, and then raping and killing her. He admitted to wiping my little sister down with Clorox bleach in an attempt to clean up the evidence. The author, Jy’Quan Arnay Stewart, with his baby sister, Josefina Catherine Cunningham, who was raped and died by homicide last year. She was 3. Photo credit: Jy’Quan Arnay Stewart When my mother called 9-1-1 saying Josie was unresponsive, police arrived and told everyone to exit. Fisher’s defiant denial of involvement as he was forcibly restrained by the police and his initial plea of not guilty at the Rensselaer County Courthouse on August 2, 2023, starkly...