Supporters pack courtoom for Panther veterans

Ray Boudreaus, Richard Brown, Hank Jones, Richard O’Neal, Harold Taylor and Francisco Torres entered the courtroom on March 13 shackled—despite objections made by their defense attorneys at the Feb. 14 arraignment here before Judge Little. The ages of these prisoners range from 57 to 70.

WW photo: Valerie Edwards

The courtroom was filled with supporters on March 13 at 9 a.m., the same as it had been on Feb. 14.

A determined early morning demonstration of more than 100 people in support of these prisoners began an hour earlier in front of the Hall of Justice building. Numerous drivers passing by honked their car horns and raised their fists in solidarity.

The six men were arrested on Jan. 23 and, along with Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim—who have been in New York prisons for more than 30 years—on charges that supporters maintain were a frame-up, charged with the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer and a sweeping conspiracy involving numerous acts between 1968 and 1973.

These Panther veterans are now known as the San Francisco 8.

The first charges in this case were thrown out in 1975 when a federal court ruled that torture “has been illegally used to extract confessions.”

Now, with funds made available by Homeland Security’s post-911 war against terrorism, the San Francisco Police Department has reopened the investigation of the 1971 murder of Sgt. Young and put Detectives Erdelatz and McCoy—members of the original torture team—in charge.

The reopening of this case extends the efforts of the U.S. government to make torture acceptable, not only in its so-called war against terrorism, but also on the domestic front.

The shackled defendants sat silently for the ten minutes it took the federal prosecutors and defense attorneys to decide on the date and time for the next hearing. The judge laughed several times while this was going on. Whatever caused her laughter, it was hugely offensive.

The issue of the shackling of these men, who have been serving their communities for 30 years, has been postponed again.

The next hearing will be April 27.

The Committee in Defense of Human Rights was formed by Brown, Boudreaus, Taylor and Jones in 2005 after they were jailed for refusing to cooperate with the 2003 grand jury witch hunt.

The Web site www.cdhrsupport.org states that the SF8 case is a continuation of the Cointelpro attack on the Black movement and community, and that “this case could set an intolerable moral standard and disastrous legal precedent.”

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