Charges dropped against SF8

[5 articles]

Charges dropped against SF8

http://www.workers.org/2009/us/sf8_0716/

Published Jul 8, 2009

Following is a July 6 statement from freethesf8.blogspot.com, along
with more background information on the campaign to win justice for
these former Panthers.
--

Finally, after years of unified resistance by the brothers and the
building of massive support, California State prosecutors were forced
to admit that they have insufficient evidence against the San Francisco 8.

Charges against four of the defendants were dropped, and Jalil
Muntaqim pled no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary
manslaughter. The State prosecutor asked the court to sentence him to
12 months, calling it "a drop in the bucket." Judge Moscone replied,
"Unless you're the one doing the time." Jalil received credit for
time served (close to 2 1/2 years in County Jail) and 3 years'
probation. He will return to New York to fight for parole.

The charges were dismissed today against Ray Boudreaux, Richard
Brown, Hank Jones and Harold Taylor.

The courtroom at 850 Bryant Street was packed with SF 8 supporters
after a rally of hundreds, and a huge Free SF 8 banner was displayed
on the hillside of Bernal Heights to be seen from all over the city.

"This is finally the disposition of a case that should never have
been brought in the first place," announced attorney Soffiyah Elijah.

Francisco Torres still faces a court hearing on Aug. 10. Francisco
steadfastly maintains his innocence, according to his attorney
Charles Bourdon, who intends to file a motion to dismiss the charges
against his client. Herman Bell entered a plea a week ago.

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Man admits to role in 1971 killing of S.F. officer

http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/1988803.html

Jun. 30, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- A man serving a life sentence for the murder of two
New York City police officers has admitted to taking part in the
killing of a San Francisco police sergeant nearly 40 years ago.

In a plea deal with prosecutors, Herman Bell pleaded guilty Monday to
a charge of voluntary manslaughter in the death of Sgt. John Young in
August of 1971.

Young died after being hit by a shotgun blast in an attack on the
police station where he was on duty.

Police and media outlets later received letters, claiming to be from
the Black Liberation Army, taking responsibility for the killing.

Bell was one of seven men facing charges in the case.

As part of his plea deal, he was sentenced to probation while he
continues to serve his life sentence in New York.

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Plea deal, probation in '71 killing of officer

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/29/BAJO18FURN.DTL&tsp=1

John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

A key defendant in the slaying of a San Francisco police sergeant
nearly 40 years ago pleaded guilty Monday to a lesser charge of
voluntary manslaughter and will be put on probation for that crime
while he continues serving a life sentence for the murder of two New
York police officers.

Herman Bell made the plea in San Francisco Superior Court, just a
week before the start of a preliminary hearing for him and six
co-defendants in the death of Sgt. John Young, who was killed during
an attack on the San Francisco Police Department's Ingleside Station
on Aug. 29, 1971.

Bell said very little during Monday's hearing, other than to answer
"yes" to questions posed to him by Judge Philip Moscone concerning
whether he was aware of the rights he was waiving. Then Bell said
simply, "I plead guilty."

Under terms of the plea deal, Bell will not testify against any of
the other defendants in the case, and his guilty plea may not be used
as evidence against anyone else.

Moscone immediately sentenced Bell to five years' probation. Bell is
expected to be returned to New York as soon as possible to resume his
life sentence there.

Bell's attorney, Stuart Hanlon, said the plea agreement was a victory for Bell.

"Mr. Bell was facing life without possibility of parole in a maximum
security prison in California if convicted," he said in a press
release he distributed after the hearing adjourned. In a previous
interview with The Chronicle, Hanlon had said the trial in San
Francisco presented a major hardship for his client. Bell has a life
in the New York prison system, Hanlon said in a previous interview,
and living in the San Francisco County Jail was much worse for him.

"His fight for freedom is in New York, where he will continue to
fight for parole," Hanlon said Monday. "He has been a model prisoner
while in New York, where he has gained several graduate degrees and
started programs to help other inmates and the communities from which
they come."

Gary Delagnes, president of the San Francisco Police Officers
Association, said Bell's plea validates the investigation and
prosecution of the defendants, and "gives further credence to our
belief that the other (defendants) were involved as well."

Black Liberation Army

The case against Bell and the other defendants has been long and
controversial through the years.

The case stemmed from an attack allegedly perpetrated by nine members
of what was then called the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the
Black Panthers. The attack came a week after the death of Black
Panther Field Marshal George Jackson, who died on Aug. 21, 1971, in
an abortive escape attempt from San Quentin Prison, where he was
staying while awaiting trial for the slaying of a prison guard at
Soledad Prison.

One week after Jackson's death, Ingleside Station was attacked.
Several men entered the station, and one of them put the barrel of a
shotgun into the voice grate of the bulletproof glass separating the
public from the officers at the front desk. Young was at the desk,
and the blast hit him in the chest and wounded a civilian aide. Young
died almost immediately.

Shortly after the attack, The Chronicle, other media and the police
received letters, allegedly from the Black Liberation Army, in which
it claimed credit for the attack and said it was in retaliation for
the killing of Jackson at San Quentin.

Supporters of the Panthers and Black Liberation Army have long
alleged that Jackson was set up at San Quentin and that the FBI's
Counter-Intelligence Program at the time was focused on destroying
the groups from within.

Law enforcement officers have said the Black Liberation Army saw
itself as being at war with the "system" and as such went on the
attack against law enforcement officers around the country. The group
is thought to be responsible for the deaths of at least 15 police
officers, including the two New York City officers. Bell and another
defendant in the Ingleside case, Anthony Bottom, were convicted in
that case and sentenced to life in prison.

The Police Department investigated the Ingleside attack for years and
thought it had confessions from three men in 1973 while they were
being detained in New Orleans. But those statements were thrown out
after a judge ruled that they were made after the men had been tortured.

The case languished until 1999, when it was reopened. Police
investigators matched fingerprints found on a lighter dropped at
Ingleside during the attack, and one of the alleged perpetrators
agreed to testify against the others. Eight men were arrested in 2007
and charged with murder and conspiracy. Charges against one man were
dropped, and the other seven were scheduled to have a preliminary
hearing Monday. Now there will be six.

The other defendants are Bottom, also known as Jalil Muntaqim, Ray
Boudreaux and Henry W. "Hank" Jones of Altadena (Los Angeles County),
Richard Brown of San Francisco, Harold Taylor of Panama City, Fla.,
and Francisco Torres of New York City.

Statement of guilt

David Druliner, the lead state prosecutor in the case, cited
unspecified legal issues and the passage of time in settling the Bell
case, saying the plea includes an admission of guilt.

"It's the appropriate plea, under all the circumstances," he said.
The manslaughter outcome, he said, includes a statement of
acknowledged facts about the events surrounding the death of the
police sergeant.

Druliner said the plea is the "first clear statement of guilt" from
any of the defendants, who had previously denied guilt and who had
alleged that they had been framed.

Hanlon had a different take on the plea.

"If they really believed Herman Bell is the executor of a (San
Francisco) cop, how can they give him probation?"
--

E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com.

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Charges Against 4 In 1971 Slaying Of SF Officer Dropped

http://www.ktvu.com/news/19970366/detail.html

July 6, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- State prosecutors Monday dismissed charges against
four men accused in the connection with the 1971 killing of a San
Francisco police sergeant, after a fifth man agreed to plead no
contest to conspiracy.

On the day a preliminary hearing in the case was scheduled to begin,
Jalil Bottom, 57, pleaded no contest in San Francisco Superior Court
to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter for an Aug. 29, 1971,
attack on the Ingleside police station that left Sgt. John Young dead.

The nearly 40-year-old case involves an alleged plot by members of
the Black Liberation Army, a militant offshoot of the Black Panther
Party, to murder police officers, blow up police stations, and rob
banks as part of a violent resistance movement in the late 1960s and
early 1970s.

The case was revived in 2007 by the state attorney general's office,
which said it had new fingerprint evidence and charged eight
suspected former BLA members with murder, conspiracy to commit
murder, or both. A conspiracy charge against one of the men was later dropped.

The conspiracy charges relate to a series of crimes between 1968 and
1973, including the attempted murder of four police officers, the
bombing of a police officer's funeral, the murder of two New York
City officers, the attempted bombing of the Mission police station
and three armed bank robberies.

Prosecutors dismissed the murder charge against Bottom, who they said
was not present for the Ingleside station attack but was involved in
planning it.

Murder charges against Richard Brown, 68, of San Francisco; Ray
Boudreaux, 66, and Henry Jones, 73, both of Altadena; and Harold
Taylor, 60, of Panama City, Fla., were also dismissed, "due to
insufficiency of the evidence," said Special Assistant Attorney
General David Druliner, the lead prosecutor in the case.

According to prosecutors, late on the evening of Aug. 29, 1971, nine
armed men attacked the Ingleside station. Young was hit from close
range by shotgun blasts fired through the public counter window of
the station's business office. A female clerk was hit in the arm and survived.

Following the shootings, the suspects tried to ignite a bomb and blow
up the station but failed, prosecutors said.

"The plea itself is a reflection of the passage of time and the
strength of the evidence," Druliner told Judge Philip Moscone today.

Bottom has been serving a life term in prison since 1971 for the May
1971 murders of the two New York City police officers.

Following Bottom's no-contest plea, Moscone made a guilty finding and
sentenced him to three years' probation and one year in county jail,
which he has already served since his 2007 arrest in this case.

Druliner, who had requested the 12-month sentence, called it "a drop
in the bucket."

Druliner said the original plan of the conspirators was to attack the
station "and to kill everyone inside and then blow the station up."

He said the reason Bottom wasn't present for the attack was because
he had been arrested the day before for the attempted murder of
another San Francisco police officer.

One of Bottom's attorneys, Mark Goldrosen, argued to Moscone for
leniency and said Bottom had been in prison since he was 19 years old.

"Over that period of time he has evolved and changed greatly as a
person," Goldrosen said.

The man who prosecutors suspect fired the shotgun that killed Young
and injured the clerk, Herman Bell, pleaded guilty last week to
voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to five years' probation.

Bell, now 61, is also serving a prison sentence for the New York
officers' killings in 1971.

Bottom and Bell remain in custody; Brown, Boudreaux, Jones and Taylor
were embraced by supporters today as they left a packed courtroom.

Only one other man, Francisco Torres, 60, of Queens, N.Y., remains
charged in the case, both with murder and conspiracy to commit
murder. He is scheduled to return to court Aug. 10 to set a date for
a preliminary hearing.

"Francisco Torres steadfastly maintains his innocence," his attorney
Charles Bourdon said outside court. Bourdon added that he intends to
file a motion to dismiss the charges against his client.

Prosecutors claim they have Torres' fingerprint on a cigarette
lighter found outside Ingleside station on the night of the attack.

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San Francisco 8 case takes a critical turn

http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/san-francisco-8-case-takes-a-critical-turn/

by Wanda Sabir
July 3, 2009

The news presently on all the dials and stations and headlines is the
death of one of my personal icons, Michael Jackson, who died suddenly
last week, June 25, from cardiac arrest. He was 50. His birthday,
Aug. 29, is shared by my cousin, Jeffery Lewis, and my friend, Karla Brundage.

The date is also the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It is the day
after Martin King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which
celebrated its 45th anniversary last year, the day President Obama
accepted the Democratic nomination for president.

However, off the radar is a critical turn in an important case, the
San Francisco 8 (SF8) a case involving initially eight former members
and associates of the Black Panther Party who were charged in a
shootout at the Ingleside Police Department in San Francisco ­ also
on Aug. 29, the year 1971. In this shooting, a policeman was killed.

What makes this case unique is the fact that in the pursuit of
"justice," the San Francisco Police Department rounded up Black
Panther Party members throughout the country and extradited three of
the men charged in San Francisco to New Orleans, where the FBI and
SFPD watched NOPD torture them in 1973. Subsequently, the evidence
and case were thrown out. This was 30 years ago. One of the men, John
Bowman, has since died. Another, Richard O'Neal, was cleared of all
charges. The film, "Legacy of Torture," produced by Freedom Archives,
www.FreedomArchives.org, looks at the use of torture in this case.

The grand jury stated that evidence extracted through torture was
inadmissible. Fast forward 30 years: Jerry Brown is elected
California's new attorney general and he revives this case. The men,
now in their 50s, 60s and even 70s, are rounded up from across the
country Jan. 23, 2007, two men, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim
(Anthony Bottom), brought from New York where Bell has been
incarcerated in New York since 1973 and Muntaqim since 1978 and
charged with the murder.

Preliminary hearings to decide whether the case will go to trial
begin Monday, July 6, in San Francisco Superior Court, 850 Bryant St.
at Seventh Street. A rally to drop the charges begins at 8 a.m. and 9
a.m. is the hearing. Visit http://www.freethesf8.org/ and
http://freethesf8.blogspot.com/.

A few days ago, Herman Bell accepted a plea bargain from the
prosecution and will be returning to New York for his parole hearing
as soon as California gets him on a return flight. The news was
greeted soberly and from some quarters with bemusement.

What does it mean to the other SF8 plaintiffs' case when one of its
plaintiffs seemingly jumps ship and confesses to the crime:
possession of arms and being present at the Ingleside police station
the night a policeman was killed? Even though one of the stipulations
to the plea was that the prosecution cannot call Bell as a witness,
unless he agrees, gone is an opportunity for him to be a character
witness for Jalil Muntaquim.

As the SF8 posse, about 50 strong, sat behind Bell to the right of
the bench ­ our side a lot more packed than the other side, which
only had five or six guys in suits, clearly lawyers ­ Herman Bell's
attitude was somber.

It's a heavy thing to confess to a crime one didn't commit.

I watched Bell, dressed in red, glasses perched on his slender nose,
but I couldn't imagine what was going through his mind as the
prosecution stated the terms of the agreement and then his attorney,
Stuart Hanlon, restated these terms, emphasizing certain aspects
which he felt weren't clear, like the 12 months in county jail, the
court fees, Bell's transport back to New York State, and Bell's
protection from self incrimination as a state witness.

What I didn't understand, after Bell waved his rights under oath and
confessed to the crime ­ voluntary manslaughter for his role in the
killing of San Francisco police officer John Young on Aug. 29, 1971,
was what was meant when the judge stated certain circumstances which
would void the current agreement and allow Bell to recant the plea of
guilty. The second charge faced by Mr. Bell, conspiracy to kill the
policeman, was dismissed.

Dressed in a red jumpsuit, seated next to his attorney, Stuart
Hanlon, Herman Bell must have been anticipating his return to New
York; I wondered when. After 36 years behind bars, the possibility of
missing his parole date, something he'd been waiting for for a long
time, something he hoped to have approved this time around, probably
filled Bell with mixed emotions, sad for the plaintiffs he leaves
behind, yet excited as his decision Monday places him that much
closer to freedom. He'll supposedly be on probation for five years ­
that was part of the plea bargain ­ but that might be a moot point
also, given the fact that he is going to be outside California.

At the time of the crime, Aug. 29, 1971, sentences were harsher and
longer, both prosecution and the defense agreed. In 1976, the law
changed and sentences for such crimes were reduced. The prosecution
took this into consideration when it offered the SF8 the plea bargain
and in the terms of this agreement.

The proceedings were all polite and orderly. Bell didn't make a
statement when given the opportunity. I would have liked to hear his
rationale, but this was court and he is not free, so perhaps the less
said the better.

In the hallway, there wasn't much jubilation, but people were happy
for Herman and hopeful for his case.

I have never spent a day behind bars; however, this lack of direct
experience does not mean that I am not affected or that I don't know
how disruptive it can be to a family to have one's father or
grandfather snatched from the home at night by people in uniforms
waving badges. This happened to me as a youth in San Francisco when
my father was defending our home one afternoon. He was arrested, and
my brother and I were left alone. Sister Elretha picked my brother
and me up and took us to stay with her family until my dad was released.

I remember going to visit him in the county jail. I remember watching
him walk over to the chair, where a glass separated us, and pick up
the phone. I remember his face through the glass even though I don't
recall what we spoke about, nor do I remember how long it was before
he came home. Perhaps this is the beginning of my amnesia, this erasing?

I don't remember if my brother was there with me. I don't know how
Daddy got home or what time of day it was. I just know it wasn't two
years, or anything like what Herman Bell's family has had to endure.

Bell, his attorney Stuart Hanlon said in a follow-up email, "was
facing life without the possibility of parole in a maximum security
prison in California if convicted. The government, through an
informant, originally alleged that Mr. Bell was the shooter of Sgt.
Young. However, it is difficult to believe that the Attorney General
of California, who prosecuted this case, would have allowed Mr. Bell
to plead to a lesser charge with a sentence of only informal
probation if there was credible evidence he had shot Sgt. Young."

Bell's supporters see this move as a victory and look forward to a
positive outcome once he goes before the parole board in New York.
Richard Brown has told me many times that the state of California is
set on using SF8 as the poster case for admission of evidence
gathered through torture.

I've invited Richard Brown and other SF8 plaintiffs who will be in
town from Florida, Southern California and New York on my radio show
Friday, July 3, 8 a.m. We'll be talking about the SF8 case, Herman
Bell's decision and the coming weeks. I have also invited Herman
Bell's attorney Stuart Hanlon, on the air. Hanlon has confirmed. Also
invited is Kamel Bell, CEO of Ankh Productions. Kamel has not confirmed.
--

Visit http://www.wandaspicks.asmnetwork.org (for archived shows). You
can also listen live at the website or by calling the listener line:
(347) 237-4610. The shows are: Wednesday, 6-8 a.m. and Friday, 8-10
a.m. PST. This is the plan.
--

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com.
Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com for an expanded version of
Wanda's Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda's Picks Radio. Her shows
are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m. and
archived on the Afrikan Sistahs' Media Network,
http://www.WandasPicks.ASMNetwork.org.

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