The San Quentin Six Were Indict- Dad Prison, Dr
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THE SANQU SIX "No black person will ever believe that George Jack- lic view, the prosecutor turns on the victims, selects so- son died the way they tell us he did." lames Baldwin, called militants and revolutionaries (usually black or Aug. 71 brown), and charges them with assault on their white keepers. Few white people will, either. Yet Fleeta Drumgo, But increasingly the public is seeing through these fra- David Johnson, Hugo Pinell, Johnny Larry Spain, Luis Tal- meups, and juries are bringing back "not guilty" verdicts. amantez, and Willie Tate, all black or brown prisoners, Jurors have spoken of the guards' capacity for deceit and will soon stand trial for the alleged murder of the three coercion as significant factors in the acquittals. After the prison guards and two convicts who died along with Soledad Brothers' trial, one of the jurors was quoted in the George Jackson, on August 21,1971. Los Angeles Times as saying: "There was no case against Prison trials are not new to California. Within the re- them. Everybody who testified against them was bought." cent past, surviving Soledad Brothers John Clutchette and His assertion was later substantiated by a published inter- Fleeta Drumgo, Chicano activist Luis Talamantez, and view with two men who had been scheduled to be prose- Angela Davis were tried and acquitted of charges stem- cution witnesses. After describing threats and intimidation ming out of prison violence. But the prosecutions contin- by prison guards, one said, "I decided to go ahead and ue in a set pattern. Even the authorities' reaction to Attica give it up under the psychological pressures they were is the same. In the face of reports from investigating com- using...(W)hen they questioned us, they wanted us to say missions laying the blame for prison unrest on the admin- certain things. Even though you would tell them what you istrators and guards, only prisoners have been indicted for saw, they wanted certain things down there." the mayhem and murder which occurred there. Whenever The state has not yet learned its lesson. Right after the corruption and brutality of prison life surface into pub- George Jackson's death, Department of Corrections Direc- tor Raymond Procunier told reporters, "The press and the in protest over the indictments, assailing "the inequities media have a hell of a responsibility to see that the sequ- and injustices of the secret indicting process." Reacting to ence is known." But the official "sequence" has changed the high-handed and manipulative presentation of the Dis- so frequently that observers can only suspect that prosecu- trict Attorney, two other grand jurors also walked out on tors and guards are once again manufacturing evidence to the session, one declaring thaf'What this Grand Jury does lit prosecution needs. Some of the inconsistencies in the is not justice, but vengeance." alleged eyewitness accounts fed to the press by the au- The defendants —Drumgo, Johnson, Pinell, Spain, Tala- thorities are: mantez, and Tate —have been characterized by the au- The "thirty seconds" Jackson spent shooting it out in thorities as prison militants—meaning that each in his the Adjustment Center is now twenty minutes. own way has refused to be broken by the racism, inhu- The "cap" under which Jackson hid his pistol is now manity and brutality of prison life. Because of this they a wig. had all been locked up in "Adjustment Centers," the name The authorities say that Jackson smuggled in a 9 mm. euphemistically attached by the Department of Correc- Spanish Astra M-600, along with two ammunition clips, tions to "the hole" —that area of the prison where inmates under the Afro-style wig. In a front-page story, dated Au- are kept for punishment or "institutional convenience" at gust 28, the San Francisco Chronicle described its staff's the whim of the guards. Cells are approximately 6 feet by attempt to re-enact the alleged feat; they concluded that it 10 feet, with a concrete floor and solid concrete walls. was physically impossible. The door is either solid steel, or barred and covered with The state's pathologist initially announced that a bul- heavy steel mesh. The cells are often filthy and infested let had struck Jackson in the head and exited through his with cockroaches and bedbugs. Prisoners sleep on a thin back, consistent with the authorities' story that he was shot cotton pad placedeitheronthe floor,on a cement pallet, or by a tower guard. However, his own subsequent examina- on rudimentary and often broken springs. The prisoners are tion of the body showed that, in fact, Jackson had been locked alone in these cells from 23 to 24 hours every day, shot from behind, not from above, as the prison contin- and are allowed no recreational, educational, vocational ues to maintain. or other programs. The former chief psychiatrist at Sole- On October 1, 1971, the San Quentin Six were indict- dad Prison, Dr. Frank Rundle, has stated of the Adjustment ed by a bare minimum vote of the Marin County Grand Centers: "I don't think a place more destructive of a man's Jury. In an unprecedented move, one grand juror resigned mental health could be devised if we tried." OUTSIDE THE ADJUSTMENT CENTER August 21, 1971 As Jessica Mitford reported in The Atlantic: ty he was again assaulted...The situation has gotten so bad our client is fearful of even leaving his cell while in "When the courts do venture behind prison walls, they San Quentin...! believe that the harassment of the other are aghast at the things they see. In 1966, a U.S. district inmates involved is a continuing thing." court made a first hand investigation of maximum-secu- rity cells in Spledad prison. The court declared that the The San Quentin Six must be assured of an aggressive prison authorities had 'abandoned elemental concepts of legal defense in this trial in order to expose the real crimi- decency by permitting conditions to prevail of a shocking nals: the "cruel, vindictive and dangerous men" who run and debased nature/ and ordered them to restore 'the these dungeons. The Six have chosen skilled, experienced primal rule of a civilized community.' Yet four years la- lawyers, capable of mounting the type of defense that has ter, in 1970, a committee of black legislators investigated resulted in the acquittals of the Soledad Brothers and An- charges that black inmates of the self-same cells under gela Davis. But, in a cruel perversion of the Constitutional the jurisdiction of the self-same warden were targets of guarantee of counsel, the trial court deliberately appoint- unbridled racism and brutality on the part of the guards. ed other counsel —attorneys whom these indigent defend- The legislators concluded, "If even a small fraction of the ants neither know or trust. In fact, these appointed attor- reports received are accurate, the inmates' charges neys themselves want no part of this case. amount to a strong indictment of the prison's employees The California Court of Appeals supported the defend- on all levels as cruel, vindictive, dangerous men." ants' requests to choose their appointed counsel, but the California Supreme Court has recently turned its back on the Six, stating quite simply that an indigent defendant has Some inkling of the brutality to which these defendants no right to choose whom the court should appoint. In are continually subjected, while awaiting trial, is afforded order to avert a complete travesty in the courtroom, it is in the testimony of Edwin T. Caldwell, Hugo Pinell's form- imperative that funds be raised now to retain attorneys. er lawyer, before a subcommittee of Congress: The cost of the legal defense for the San Quentin Six is es- timated to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Your "On September 6, 1971, Mr. Pinell was viciously at- contributions are desperately needed. Please send today tacked which resulted in lacerations requiring some six to: sutures. He had a fractured tooth on his left side, which we have as evidence. He sustained either a fractured jaw San Quentin Six Legal Defense Fund or a badly bruised jaw, so much so he could hardly Prison Law Collective Foundation talk...On September 22, he was again assaulted...On Oc- 558 Capp Street tober 5, upon return from superior court in Marin Coun- San Francisco, Ca. 94110 WHO ARE THE SAN QUENTIN SIX? Fleeta Drumgo is 27, and has done 5 years David Johnson, is 26, and serving time for Hugo Pinell is a 29-year-old Nicaraguan in prison for second-degree burglary. He second-degree burglary. Has been in pris- serving a life sentence. Hugo has been once received a disciplinary "write-up" for on since 1968. David was the first prisoner threatened and brutalized numerous times having a poster of Malcolm X on his cell to file a complaint after Fred Billingslea because of his leadership in combatting wall. He was recently acquitted of the was gassed and beaten to death, in Febru- racial conflicts among prisoners, which are murder of a guard in the Soledad Brothers ary, 1970. As a consequence he was trans- often encouraged by guards in order to case. Nonetheless, he has been in the Ad- ferred to "B" Section, and later to the Ad- keep the prisoners divided from one anoth- justment Center since that charge was justment Center. er. He has been told by guards that he is a filed. "dead man" and that "we are going to kill you after we break every bone in your body." johnny Larry Spain, now 23, has been in Luis Talamantez is 30, and has been in San Willie Tate is 28, one of twelve children prison since the age of 17 and is serving a Quentin since 1965, serving two life sen- raised in Fresno.