Monday, October 28, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Free Terrell Curry
Terrell’s struggle for justice
by Free Terrell Curry on Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 3:34pm ·
My Name Is Terrell Curry
On October 24, l998, I was arrested for something I did not do. That night I was in the car with two other individuals. There were guns in the car and we stopped in front of a house for five minutes before pulling off, deciding not to comit a crime. As we turned the corner to head home some guys standing on the corner began shooting at us from behind, one of their bullets spider webbed the back window and put a hole in the front wind shield. The passenger hung out the window and fired a few rounds in the air to scare the guys off. As we passed a street there was a sheriff patrol car parked several houses from the corner. The patrol car started to follow us without their lights on. As we turned down a street called Butler, I heard a pop in a distance and the patrol car activated their red and blue sirens. Due to it raining earlier that night and the roads were wet and slippery. The car spun out at the intersection of Myrrh st. and Lime st. and was now facing the patrol car off to the side in the next lane. We attempted to pass by the patrol car and this is when they began shooting multiple rounds (16 shots) at us. I ducked down in hopes of not being shot by the deputies who were trying to kill us.
The car crashed at the corner. The other two individuals and myself jumped out. The car and ran in different directions. Me and one guy ran south and the other guy with the ponytail (who they thought was a female) ran north. The first guy was arrested then I was. The guy who they thought was a female was never caught. They were searching for this female suspect that night. The deputies broadcast over their dispatch radio to the responding officers that they were searching for a female with a ponytail, because the responding officers were asking "where is your homegirl," (a term for female friend) who ran from the suspects car. This was evidence at one time that existed before they tampered with the evidence. I first learned that I was being charged with attempted murder on two Sheriff deputies when I received a copy of the charging complaint while in custody, two months after my arrest. I couldn't believe the charges because no one ever shot at the deputies. It was a surprised to me.They never found a female suspect, because the deputies wrote a false police reports stating there was only two male suspects who exited the car and fled the scene, omitting the existing female suspect. I was made out to be the one who did all the alleged shooting. Despite the evidence showing it being physically impossible to do all that was alleged due to my disability, which wouldn't allow me to perform the impossible feats that the deputies claimed I did with an assault rifle hanging out a car window.
My Disability:
One year prior to the night of my arrest, I suffered a C-7 fracture killing the nerves in my right arm and shoulder, which resulted in paralysis in my right arm, rendering it useless. The deputies testified that they saw me in the passenger side of the car, hanging out the window with an assault rifle firing at them as the two cars were head-to-head off to the side lane. This would have been impossible with my disability condition.
Testimony from a neurosurgeon appointed at the trail:
At trial on my behalf, expert testimony from a neurosurgeon appointed by the court showed how I would be incapable of using my arm to utilize a machine gun rifle as the deputies stated they saw. Further testimony from a ballistic expert produced evidence to the effect that there was no way that anyone couldhave shot at the deputies from inside the car as they followed from behind. Based on the trajectory examination that the LASD conducted of the suspect's car. The LASD expert confirmed this evidence as well. The ballistic expert further stated I couldn't have held the rifle and fired it with my one left arm balancing myself in the manner testified by the officers. The rifle requires two hands to use.
The prosecutor, Darren R. Levine, told me He knew I couldn't have done what was alleged:
The prosecutor, Darren R. Levine, told me at one of my court hearings that he knew I couldn't have done what was alleged, but if I didn't tell him who the female was that got away, he would prosecute me to the fullest.I went to several court appearances for 3 years fighting this case. After 2 years, I decided to represent myself in August 2000, because the lawyer I had at the time, Frank Digacaimo, no longer had my best interest. Before the trial, I pursued the testing of the authenticity of the first MDT tape because when I received the transfer of evidence from the attorney Mr.
The tampered tape evidence:
Digaciamo, the MDT tape was altered omitting the mention of the female suspect. This MDT tape now said only 2 suspects exited the car. I know this because when I first was arrested the attorney visited me at the jail and let me hear the MDT tape. All the documents and evidence was delivered to a third party before I received it from the attorney. At a court hearing in May 2001, the prosecutor, Darren Levine, admitted in open court that the MDT tape did exist which made mention of a female suspect who exited the car. This admission prevented the court from granting the funds for testing because the tape existed. The court ordered the prosecutor to turn over that MDT tape. I never received the un-edited MDT tape. The original MDT tape with the female suspect reference was still not disclosed at trial.
At the start of trial in June 2001, a different prosecutor took the case who did not know anything about disclosing the existing MDT tape previously admitted by Mr. Levine in open court. I complained to the judge, but to no avail. Trial proceeded without the evidence, against my objections. I again made issue of this MDT tape at the sentencing hearing in August 2001.I pursued the disclosure of the original MDT tape even after being convicted. I tried to raise this issue myself on a habeas corpus in September 2001, but was denied by the Appeals court who said the issue has to be addressed on direct appeal by the appellant attorney, William Flennekin, Jr., who was appointed to me by the court. He never raised this issue in my appeal, even when I asked him to.
Destroy the MDT tape evidence:
I again filed another habeas corpus in the state court when my direct appeal was concluded, because the direct appeal attorney Mr. Flennekin did not raise this issue. I exhausted my writ through the state court.The state or county of Los Angeles Superior court destroyed the exhibits that was admitted into evidence at trial, this included the original MDT tape in question that was tampered with. No authority contacted me or my attorney to give notice that they were going to destroy the MDT tape exhibit.
Attorney, Frank Duncan:
In 2004, my family hired an attorney, Frank Duncan, to file a habeas corpus in federal court to review the unconstitutionality of my conviction, challenging the misconduct by the prosecutor regarding the false evidence and testimony surrounding the MDT tape that was tampered with. Mr. Duncan failed to properly address the matter. The U.S. Ditrict court judge denied my petition, missing the point of the argument, international side stepping the issue. I tried to contact Mr. Duncan between May 2005 and September 2005, so he can argue the important point of how the credibility/exculpatory evidence [the MDT tape] effected the outcome of the trial in the traverse, (opposition papers) before submitting to the judge. Mr. Duncan ignored all letters from me, and calls from my family for months. The judge ruled against me without the correct argument being presented. I wrote the attorney several times without a response from him. In December 2006, I filed a complaint with the California State Bar against the attorney Mr. Duncan because he failed to keep me informed on the case, failed to return my family's phone calls, or answer my letters. He also refused to send me the files regarding my case, even after I made several request. When I learned that the District Court made their ruling on my case and the attorney's work was concluded, he still failed to forward the files. The California State Bar had to order him to send me the file on my case sometime in the end of 2008, some several years after the case was closed. I was kept in the blind for several years.On or about October 2007, I found out that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal had already ruled on my case.
The sentencing 2 terms of 15-Life sentences, plus 45 years:
Two years after their order, on my own behalf [In Pro-Se], I then prepared a Federal Rules of Court, Rule 60(b) motion, and an Equitable Tolling motion, and filed it on January 9, 2008, with the U.S. District Court, Central District of California (case #cv-04-01344 GPS (PLA)). That court granted equitable tolling, heard and denied the 60(b) motion on October 05, 2008. Even after explaining in my equitable tolling motion they granted, the problems with the attorney Frank Duncan, the court still mailed the court order to the attorney, failing to inform me of their decision. For this reason, I missed important time limits I had to meet to file an appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court, who also denied my motions for relief, and again mailed their court order to Mr. Duncan, when I was acting In Pro-Se, on my own behalf. One of the major points that must be mentioned here is that, even though my case is classified as an attempted murder, not one person was injured, let alone suffered a scratch, yet I was convicted to serve 2 terms of 15-Life sentences, plus 45 years, to be served consecutively.
These are a few of the many obstacles in the struggle for justice and freedom in an unjust system.
No person was killed or injured, yet he is serving 2 life sentence plus 45 years for something he did not do, for something he couldn't have done because of his disabilities.
Any help that can be provided would truly be a blessing.
justice for Terrell Curry https://www.facebook.com/FreeTerrellCurry
Life without parole, is a judgment that says, this person is beyond hope, beyond redemption,beyoned rehabilitation. “Prejudices are what fools use for reason. Terrell Curry is is an innocent man in p…
Posted by Shai Dune on January 19, 2013 at 6:31am
Life without parole, is a judgment that says, this person is beyond hope, beyond redemption,beyoned rehabilitation. “Prejudices are what fools use for reason. Terrell Curry is is an innocent man in prison, that is fighting for justice since 14 years, he was sentenced to two life plus 45 years without the possibility of parole, no one was hurt or killed in his case
The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes -- would bring terrible retribution."american prison industrial complex system, is the Mother of evil, that is happening in America.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The Unsilenced Voice of a ‘Long-Distance Revolutionary'
The Unsilenced Voice of a ‘Long-Distance Revolutionary’
By Chris Hedges
I am sitting in the visiting area of the SCI Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pa., on a rainy, cold Friday morning with Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s most famous political prisoner and one of its few authentic revolutionaries. He is hunched forward on the gray plastic table, his dreadlocks cascading down the sides of his face, in a room that looks like a high school cafeteria. He is talking intently about the nature of empire, which he is currently reading voraciously about, and effective forms of resistance to tyranny throughout history. Small children, visiting their fathers or brothers, race around the floor, wail or clamber on the plastic chairs. Abu-Jamal, like the other prisoners in the room, is wearing a brown jumpsuit bearing the letters DOC—for Department of Corrections.
Abu-Jamal was transferred in January to the general prison population after nearly 30 years in solitary confinement on death row and was permitted physical contact with his wife, children and other visitors for the first time in three decades. He had been sentenced to death in 1982 for the Dec. 9, 1981, killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. His sentence was recently amended to life without parole. The misconduct of the judge, flagrant irregularities in his trial and tainted evidence have been criticized by numerous human rights organizations, including Amnesty International.
Abu-Jamal, who was a young activist in the Black Panthers and later one of the most important radical journalists in Philadelphia, a city that a few decades earlier produced I.F. Stone, has long been the bête noire of the state. The FBI opened a file on him when he was 15, when he started working with the local chapter of the Black Panthers. He was suspended from his Philadelphia high school when he campaigned to rename the school for Malcolm X and distributed “black revolutionary student power” literature.
Stephen Vittoria’s new film documentary about Abu-Jamal, “Long Distance Revolutionary,” rather than revisit the case, chronicles his importance and life as an American journalist, radical and intellectual under the harsh realities of Pennsylvania’s death row. Abu-Jamal has published seven books in prison, including his searing and best-selling “Live From Death Row.” The film features the voices of Cornel West, James Cone, Dick Gregory, Angela Davis, Alice Walker and others. It opens in theaters Feb. 1, starting in New York City. In the film Gregory says that Abu-Jamal has single-handedly brought “dignity to the whole death row.”
The late historian Manning Marable says in the film: “The voice of black journalism in the struggle for the liberation of African-American people has always proved to be decisive throughout black history. When you listen to Mumia Abu-Jamal you hear the echoes of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and the sisters and brothers who kept the faith with struggle, who kept the faith with resistance.”
The authorities, as they did before he was convicted, have attempted to silence him in prison. Pennsylvania banned all recorded interviews with Abu-Jamal after 1996. In response to protests over the singling out of one inmate in the Pennsylvania correction system, the state simply banned recorded access to all its inmates. The ban is nicknamed “the Mumia rule.”
“I was punished for communicating,” Abu-Jamal says.
Cornel West says in the film: “The state is very clever in terms of keeping track, especially [of] the courageous and visionary ones, the ones that are long-distance runners. You can keep track of them, absorb ’em, dilute ’em, or outright kill ’em—you don’t have to worry about opposition to ’em.”
“If you tell them the truth about the operation of our power this is what happens to you,” he goes on. “Like Jesus on the cross. This is what happens to you.”
During my four-and-a-half-hour conversation with Abu-Jamal I was not permitted a pencil or paper. I wrote down his quotes after I left the prison. My time with him mirrors the wider pattern of a society where the poor and the destitute are rendered invisible and voiceless.
The breadth of his reading, which along with his writing and 3,000 radio broadcasts has kept his mind and soul intact, is staggering. His own books are banned in the prison. In conversation he swings easily from detailed discussions of the Opium Wars between 1839 and 1860 to the Black Panthers to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the series of legislative betrayals of the poor and people of color by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. He cites books by Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, Eric Foner, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, James Cone and Dave Zirin. He talks about Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, “Cinque,” Harriet Tubman, Charles Deslondes, Denmark Vesey and Sojourner Truth. He is reading “Masters of War” by Clara Nieto, “How the World Works” by Noam Chomsky, “The Face of Imperialism” by Michael Parenti and “Now and Then” by Gil Scott-Heron. He wonders, as I do, what shape the collapse of empire will take. And he despairs of the political unconsciousness among many incoming prisoners, some young enough to be his children.
“When I first got out in the yard and I heard groups of men talking about how Sarah was going to marry Jim or how Frank had betrayed Susan, I thought, ‘Damn, these cats all know each other and their families. That’s odd,’ ” he says. “But after a few minutes I realized they were talking about soap operas. Television in prison is the great pacifier. They love ‘Basketball Wives’ because it is ‘T and A’ with women of color. They know how many cars Jay-Z has. But they don’t know their own history. They don’t understand how they got here. They don’t know what is being done to them. I tell them they have to read and they say, ‘Man, I don’t do books.’ And that is just how the empire wants it. You can’t fight power if you don’t understand it. And you can’t understand it if you don’t experience it and then dissect it.”
Abu-Jamal’s venom is reserved for politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whom he correctly excoriates for speaking in the language of traditional liberalism while ruthlessly disempowering the poor and the working class on behalf of their corporate patrons. And he has little time for the liberals who support them.
“It was Clinton that made possible the explosion of the prison-industrial complex,” he says, speaking of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill.
He looks around the visiting area at the 30-odd prisoners with their families.
“Most of these people wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Bill Clinton,” he says of the other inmates. “He and Barack Obama haven’t done anything for poor people but lock them up. And if our first African-American president isn’t going to halt the growth of the prison-industrial complex, no president after him is going to do it. This prison system is here to stay. The poor and the destitute feed it. It is the empire’s solution to the economic crisis. Those who are powerless, who have no access to diminishing resources, get locked away. And the prison business is booming. It is one of the few growth industries left. It used to be that towns didn’t want prisons. Now these poor rural communities beg for them. You look down the list of the names of the guards and see two or three with the same last names. This is because fathers, brothers, spouses, work here together. These small towns don’t have anything else.”
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world—742 adults per 100,000. There are some 2.2 million adults incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails. About 5 million are on probation or parole. Seventy percent of the inmates are nonwhite.
The Omnibus Crime Bill, pushed through the Senate with the help of Joe Biden, appropriated $30 billion to expand the nation’s prison program. It gave $10.8 billion in federal matching funds to local governments to hire 100,000 new police officers over five years. It provided $10 billion for the construction of new federal prisons. It expanded the number of federal crimes to which the death penalty applied from two to 58. It eliminated an existing statute that prohibited the execution of mentally incapacitated defendants. It instituted the three-strikes proposal that mandates life sentences for anyone convicted of three “violent” felonies. It ordered states to track sex offenders. It permitted children as young as 13 to be tried as adults. It set up special courts to deport noncitizens alleged to be “engaged in terrorist activity” and authorized the use of secret evidence. The prison population during the Clinton presidency jumped from 1.4 million to 2 million. The United States has spent $300 billion since 1980 on the prison system.
Abu-Jamal talks in the interview about being a Black Panther and the use of violence as a form of political resistance throughout history. He speaks of visiting the Chicago apartment where Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was shot to death by Chicago police and the FBI while he slept on Dec. 4, 1969. He calls Hampton, who was 21 when he was killed, “one of the bright lights.” Abu-Jamal chokes up and his eyes glisten with tears. “Fred … ,” he says as his voice trails off.
“It used to be that a politician promised jobs, a chicken in every pot,” Abu-Jamal says. “But in our new national security state they promise law and order. They get elected by saying they will be tough on crime and by calling for the death penalty. Death sells. Fear sells. What was a crime by the state in the 1960s is now legal. The state can wiretap, eavesdrop, listen to phone calls and break into homes. And there is nothing we can do about it. The mass incarceration and the mass repression impact every community to make people afraid and compliant.”
“In this place, a dark temple of fear, an altar of political ambition, death is a campaign poster, a stepping-stone to public office … ,” Abu-Jamal has written. “In this space and time, in this dark hour, how many of us are not on death row?”
“The brutality of the empire was exposed under George W. Bush,” he says to me. “The empire desperately needed a new face, a black face, to seduce the public. This is the role of Barack Obama. He is the black face of empire. He was pitched to us during the most recent presidential campaign by Bill Clinton, the same Clinton who gave us NAFTA in 1994 and abolished good-paying manufacturing jobs for millions of workers. The same Clinton who locked us up. Clinton and Obama represent the politics of betrayal at the heart of the corporatist machinery. And they have fooled a lot of people, especially black people. During slavery, and even post-Reconstruction, there were always a few black people who served the system. The role of these black servants to white power was to teach passivity in the face of repression. This is why Obama is president. Nothing has changed.”
It is only by stepping outside the system, by carrying out acts of civil disobedience, by defying both of the major political parties, that we have any hope of resisting the rise of an oligarchic and totalitarian corporate system that will finally enslave us all. Abu-Jamal sees hope in the Occupy movement, largely because white middle-class youths are beginning to experience the cruelty of capitalism and state repression that has long been visited on the poor. But, he adds, we must recover our past. We must connect ourselves to the revolutionaries, radicals and prophets who fought injustice before us. We must defy the historical amnesia the corporate state seeks to cement into our consciousness. His book “Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the Spiritual Life of African and African-American People” sets out to do precisely this, to recover a past intellectual and spiritual life for African-Americans that is trivialized, ignored or censored by the dominant culture. He is worried that the mindless diversions of popular culture and the assault by corporate power on education are keeping many from grasping not only what is happening but the continuity that modern systems of oppression have with older systems of oppression.
“We would not be who we are as African-Americans of this date were it not for the Reverend, the Prophet, Nat Turner—who brilliantly merged the religious with the political,” Abu-Jamal says in the film. “Who didn’t just talk about the world to come but fought to transform the world that is. You know, he is honored and revered today—not because he could quote the Bible well, he could do that, but because he worked in the fields of life to get the slave master off of his neck, off of all of our necks.”
On the far side of the visiting area are vending machines that dispense White Castle hamburgers, soda, candy and Tastykake cupcakes. We drop in the prepaid tokens—no money is allowed inside the prison—and the fast food is dumped in the vent. To Abu-Jamal, forced to eat prison food, it is a treat, especially the Hershey’s bar. He watches as a boy darts past him toward his father.
“I didn’t see children for 30 years on death row,” he says softly. “It is a delight to see them here. They are what is most precious, what the struggle is finally about.”
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/unsilenced-voice-long-distance-revolutionary-1355242481. All rights are reserved.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Send letters of support for Marshall Eddie Conway
Send letters of support to the Maryland Parole Commission
Good news! I was just told that I have a parole hearing on November 1, 2011. We will need as many letters of support as we can get. I would appreciate any assistance you can give in our pursuit of a favorable recommendation from the parole board. If you need any information please call Dominique Stevenson at 410-948-6302.
Please encourage people to send letters on my behalf. They can simply say they believe I should be granted parole based on my many contributions to the prison population through mentoring projects and other activities, and my record as a "model" prisoner. For those of you that know me personally, please speak to the work I have done for prisoners and the community.
Send letters of support for Marshall Eddie Conway's parole to:
Maryland Parole Commission
Attention: Mr. Blumberg
6776 Reisterstown Road
Suite 307
Baltimore, MD. 21215
(Letters should be mailed no later than Weds 10/26)
Or Call
1-877-241-5428
Or Fax
FAX 410-764-4355
Please send an additional copy to Eddie for his records at:
Marshall Eddie Conway #116469
P.O. Box 534
Jessup,MD
20794
For more info about Eddie Conway, former Black Panther and political prisoner, add Eddie as a friend on Facebook or go to the Causes page Free Eddie Conway and All Political Prisoners!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
FREE Marshall "Eddie" Conway
Marshall Conway (born April 23, 1946) was the Minister of Defense of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party. In addition to his position within the Black Panther Party he was also employed by the United States Postal Service. Conway, however, was unaware that some of the founding members of the Baltimore chapter were actually undercover police officers with the Baltimore Police Department. These officers would report daily on his particular activities within the chapter. At the same time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had also started its own investigation of Conway, recording his whereabouts, contacting his employers at the Post Office and maintaining liaison with the Baltimore Police Department.
On the night of April 23, 1970, Baltimore Police Officers Donald Sager and Stanley Sierakowski were shot by three assailants who fired at least 8 rounds at the officers while answering a domestic disturbance call. Officer Sager was slain and Officer Sierakowski was critically wounded. Two men were also arrested about an hour later near the scene of the first shooting by Officer James Welsh and Officer Roger Nolan, based on information Welsh and Nolan had received over the police radio. Two pistols were found near the location that the two men were hiding.
These two men, Jackie Powell and Jack Ivory Johnson, had either alleged affiliations to or knew members of the Baltimore Black Panther Party chapter the police determined. Immediately subsequent to the contact with the two men, Officer Roger Nolan was involved in a brief foot chase with a black male as Nolan tried to make contact with the male. The black male then fired several shots at Nolan and escaped. Nolan stated that he had previously seen this man on his assigned beat and could recognize him, although he did not know his name. Based on the affiliation of the two suspects with the Black Panther Party, Nolan was shown two photo line-ups of party members. In the first line-up, Nolan claimed that a picture of Conway taken 7 years earlier in 1963, resembled the shooter. In the second line-up, which used a current photograph of Conway, Nolan positively identified Conway as the individual that had shot at him. Welsh also positively identified Conway as the individual that Nolan had chased. The next day, Conway was arrested while working at the Post Office. Following an investigation where the ballistics of both shootings were determined to be a match, Conway was charged with both the murder of Officer Sager and the attempted murders of Officers Sierakowski and Noland. Conway happened to be working during the time of the shooting and his boss at the Postal Office verified his alibi, but this did not change his conviction. One of the weapons found with Powell and Johnson was also matched through ballistics testing to the murder of Officer Sager.
These charges, came at a time when there was already considerable media attention focused on the Baltimore Chapter of the Black Panther Party. This included front-page coverage of the multiple indictments of this case, and a mass arrest of the Baltimore Panthers for the purported torture/murder of an informant who participated in local chapter activities. In the first trial following the mass arrest, the prosecution witnesses proved to be both contradictory and not credible to the jury. The first defendant charged with the torture/murder and conspiracy was acquitted after just 2 ½ hours of jury deliberation. None of the remaining cases were ever tried, and all those arrested were released.
The FBI surveillance of Mr. Conway and the Black Panther Party in Baltimore had begun even before these events, and were part of Mr. Conway's FBI files, secured by him through the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI's letter to Baltimore's Postal Inspector dated 10/22/69 provided notification that Mr. Conway, a Postal employee, was a member of the Black Panther Party. An additional memo in the file was from the Baltimore FBI, dated 11/28/69, and stated that 1) the Panthers were under constant surveillance and investigation, and 2) that the Baltimore chapter had already been infiltrated by government agents and informants. That memo refers to a "highly sensitive source who is of continuous value to the Bureau." The same memo also confirmed that from November of 1969 on, there was direct coordination of the surveillance of the Baltimore Panthers by the FBI and the Baltimore City Police Department.
Conway appealed to the court to have either Charles Garry or William Kunstler, two attorneys who consistently represented party members, represent him at his trial. Both lawyers had offered their services free of charge. The court, however denied Conway’s request. Instead of lawyers of his own choosing the court appointed a lawyer who performed no pre-trial investigation and never met with Conway. Conway therefore chose to absent himself from much of his January 1971 trial.
Prior to the trial, Johnson had confessed to the police, naming Powell and Conway as the ones who shot Officers Sager and Sierakowski. According to court testimony, Johnson stated he fired into the air because "I didn't have the heart to kill the pig." Johnson later refused to testify against Conway and claimed his statement was coerced.
The state’s case was one based partially on the evidence of a photo identification made by Officer Nolan. In an effort to strengthen their case, the state called one Charles Reynolds, a known jailhouse informant. He testified that while he shared a cell with Conway prior to trial, Conway confessed to him. However, as was verified by the court transcript, Conway protested greatly when Reynolds was placed in his cell because everyone knew he was an informant. One of the points that proved to be key to the truthfulness of Reynolds was the fact that Reynolds was told by Conway that he had taken Officer Sierakowski's watch, a fact that was not released by the police during the investigation.
Finally, the ballistic evidence connecting the weapons to the murders also played a significant role in the trial. After hearing all of the evidence, the jury convicted Conway of the murder and both he and Powell were sentenced to life in prison. Both men appealed and the appellate court upheld the convictions.
There are several controversies involving the trial and conviction of Conway. The trial took place just two years after the 1968 Baltimore riot, the use of the photo line-up was questioned and the reliability of the jailhouse informant was brought up. In addition, Conway fired two lawyers, the first (Nelson Kandel) over trial strategy differences and the second one that was appointed to represent him and who Conway refused to cooperate with. Conway requested that his cellmate, attorney Arthur Turco, be appointed to represent him. Turco requested bail to be able to do so, but both of these requests were denied. Conway claims to be a political prisoner.
Mr. Conway was never linked by any physical evidence to the crimes for which he was tried. There were no fingerprints, and no physical evidence linking him to either the crime scene or the weapons. Mr. Conway maintained his innocence at the trial, and continues to do so.
Mr. Conway rejected the use of a criminal defense, which in all likelihood would have ended in his acquittal, based on lack of evidence. Instead, he accepted advice to use a 'political' defense, and was wrongfully convicted. With adequate legal representation denied him, an acquittal could have been convincingly argued. At his trial, the prosecution primarily relied on the testimony of an informant, placed, in Mr. Conway's cell under suspicious circumstances and against Mr. Conway's written protests to the guards. It was to this informant that Mr. Conway supposedly then confessed. Such use of informants was common knowledge to all Black Panther Party members. The only other evidence came from the third officer who responded to the shooting, who stated he ‘followed a man who seemed to be acting suspiciously' near where the two suspects were arrested. The officer's identification of Mr. Conway came about only after he was given a set of photos and he recognized no one. The same officer was then given a second set of photos in which Mr. Conway's photo was the only one repeated from the first set, and he 'identified' Mr. Conway. Since Mr. Conway was being held in a cell at that very station house as the photos were being shown to the officer, a lineup (considered a more reliable means of identification) could easily have been arranged, but was not.
Mr. Conway was connected to the shooting of the two officers in the patrol car only by the disputed statements of Charles Reynolds, the jailhouse informant, placed in Mr. Conway's cell despite documented protests to guards by Mr. Conway. Reynolds was inexplicably transferred to Mr. Conway's cell in the Baltimore City Jail from a Maryland prison, where he was serving time on an assault conviction. Reynolds was in route to Michigan where he was wanted on forgery charges. With his record of four previous convictions, and prior service as a police informer, Reynolds wrote to Baltimore police from Detroit and offered them his testimony in exchange for intercession with the Michigan Parole Board. Nothing came of an interview done by the Baltimore police officer flown to Detroit. When it became evident that the case against Mr. Conway was weak however, one of the prosecutors flew to Detroit for a second interview, and as a result, Reynolds was brought back to Baltimore for the purpose of testifying at Mr. Conway's trial.
On most days of the trial, Mr. Conway left the courtroom while the trial proceeded because the trial judge denied him an attorney of his own choosing, or to represent himself. Instead, only the court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Conway was allowed question witnesses. That lawyer spent only 45 minutes prior to trial with his client, and during the trial often appeared to be intoxicated, (Apparent from the transcript itself is the lawyer's inadequate and inappropriate demeanor in the afternoons, following lunch recess.)
Certainly a factor in the trial was Mr. Conway's appearance to the jurors: in shackles, with his imposing height, huge Afro, and raised-fist salutes to supporters in the crowded courtroom before his refusal each day to sit at the trial table. Prior to their selection, the jurors had been exposed to weeks of inflammatory media coverage of the Black Panthers in Baltimore in connection with allegations of kidnapping and murder. This mirrored the media's negative national coverage of the Panthers throughout this period. Pervasive negative media attention has since been authoritatively attributed to the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program [“COINTELPRO”], and other national security operations, as part of their stated intention of destroying the Black Panther Party. Prior to and during the trial, stories were in both of Baltimore's daily papers and in the Afro-American each Friday. The jury was not sequestered, and could have had access to these materials.
Mr. Conway has been incarcerated since April 1970. He has now spent almost three decades [now three and a half decades] in Maryland's prison system. He is currently classified as medium security prisoner, and is being held in a maximum-security institution at the Maryland House of Corrections in Jessup, MD.
A vicious beating by Maryland Penitentiary guards in 1974 was part of an attempt to destroy the Panther Collective, formed by Mr. Conway in the Penitentiary. As a result of that attack, Mr. Conway suffered a broken shoulder and compound fracture of his jaw, necessitating surgery and a three-month hospitalization. Although Mr. Conway filed a civil rights action against the guards, an all-white federal jury refused to hold the guards accountable for their actions. The US Court of Appeals subsequently refused to substitute its judgment for that of the jury but did acknowledge that: "The severity of the injuries ... presents a closer question of whether excessive force was used, amounting to a constitutional deprivation."
Mr. Conway earned his high school GED while in the US Army, and while incarcerated, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Social Science from Coppin State College. In addition, as his interest and expertise in computers grew, he also earned an Associate of Arts degree in Computer Science and Business Studies from Essex Community College. While incarcerated, Mr. Conway was also the Inmate Coordinator for the Penitentiary Library, and worked to secure a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mr. Conway directed the project supported by this grant which resulted in To Say Their Own Words, fifty videotaped discussion sessions between 100 prisoners and a wide-ranging group of published authors, recorded over a one year period.
Throughout his years of incarceration, Mr. Conway has provided inspiration and leadership in numerous other efforts to benefit fellow prisoners. Some examples of this are:
1) the formation of the United Prisoner's Labor Union at the Maryland Penitentiary, which signed up 500 members, and secured the support of the labor community;
2) a counseling program for youths at risk for imprisonment, which operated for 12 years, that provided court assigned youth with 10-week counseling sessions by Penitentiary inmates;
3) the ACLU-affiliated Prison Committee to Correct Prison Conditions, which was chaired by Mr. Conway, and worked with a team of ACLU lawyers to litigate overcrowding, brutality, and health issues at Maryland House of Corrections [the resulting court decree is still in effect; at the time of the suit the MHC population was 2,100, which was reduced to and remains at 1,200]; and
4) the Maryland Lifers Association, now ten years old, with chapters in three institutions, which created African-centered holiday celebrations for prisoners with their families; a program which used four computers to teach 600 prisoners computer literacy; and the first ever prison-based Touchstone Project, which is based on weekly discussions of classical literature.
IV. Current Status of Efforts to Free Eddie Mr. Conway
Mr. Conway has been unable to receive any recommendation for parole from the Parole Board in spite of encouraging meetings with them. This is because Maryland's Governor has communicated to the Parole Board his intention of not granting parole to any lifers except the aged and terminally ill. The issue of ‘no-parole for lifers’ is now under review by Maryland's highest court. Attorneys for the prisoners argued in the appeal that such a policy negates the intention of courts to impose some life sentences with the possibility of parole. If the 'no-parole for lifers' policy is allowed to stand, it will permit the executive to interfere with the exercise of judicial power which rests solely with the courts.
Meanwhile, a habeas corpus petition to Maryland's highest state court on behalf of Mr. Conway is currently being prepared by attorneys as part of an effort to exhaust legal remedies so that a Clemency Petition can be presented to the Governor. Baltimore City Mayor Kurt Schmoke has written Governor Glendening, on behalf of Mr. Conway suggesting that consideration be given to returning Mr. Conway to the community. The Baltimore Chapter of the NAACP has also called for Mr. Conway's release from prison. Church leaders have voiced their support for Mr. Conway, including the Rev. Frank Reid, Pastor of Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore City. Support for Mr. Conway's release from prison has also been expressed by some members of Maryland's General Assembly, the Baltimore City Council, and by the community.
As the previously undisclosed records of the FBI and other security agencies are brought to light, Americans are reexamining what was done by the government and the courts in the name of its citizens during the turbulent period of the 1960's and 1970's. Across the country, efforts are being made to Win release for the wrongfully convicted and still-incarcerated targets of the FBI's COINTELPRO, including Marshall 'Eddie' Conway.
As one part of this effort, Amnesty International called for an independent commission of inquiry into the effects of abuses by the FBI on trials in the US. In a press release dated October 13, 1981, Amnesty International asked that the inquiry determine "whether misconduct which judges might have treated as isolated irregularities formed part of a pattern." These abuses were documented in the 144-page report released on that date, and included those that were part of the FBI's COINTELPRO program aimed at disrupting target organizations such as the Black Panther Party. Amnesty international’s study was based on an examination of thousands of pages of official transcripts and documents, and cited many examples of irregularities by the FBI in the cases of activists from militant groups, including the Panthers, targeted for FBI intelligence work. According to that study:
Production of false evidence, misstatements about FBI action, harassment, infiltration of defense teams by informants and failure to make available information which the defense might have used are all shown to have occurred. (Proposal for Commission of Inquiry into the effect of domestic intelligence activities on criminal trials in the United States of America, 1981)
Document prepared by Mardon Walker, Esquire; January 1999.
__________________
"We must continue to move forward and do everything we can to outlaw legal lynching in America. We must continue to stand together in unity and to demand a moratorium on all executions. You must stay strong. You must continue to hold your heads up, and to be there. We will prevail. Keep marching Black people. They are killing me tonight. They are murdering me tonight." -- Excerpts of Last Words of Bro. Shaka Sankofa, an innocent man executed by the state of Texas, 6/22/00. www.myspace.com/nattyreb7
During his imprisonment, Conway has earned three college degrees, started a literacy program, and has been an "exemplary" prisoner. During the entire time, Conway has maintained his innocence. In February 2001, the Baltimore City Council passed a resolution urging the Governor of Maryland to pardon Conway, over the strident protests of police officers. There is a "Free Eddie Conway" website that continues to lobby for his release, with the support of various groups such as the NAACP. In addition, Conway has written a book on his life, Marshall Law: The Life & Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, that was released on April 4, 2011.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Seattle Times Scott Sisters Article
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2010
Seattle Times Scott Sisters Article
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sisters may or may not be guilty, but Mississippi assuredly is
Let's assume they did it.
Let's assume that two days before Christmas in 1993, a 22-year-old black woman named Jamie Scott and her pregnant 19-year-old sister Gladys set up an armed robbery. Let's assume these single mothers lured two men to a spot outside the tiny town of Forest, Miss., where three teenage boys, using a shotgun the sisters supplied, relieved the men of $11 and sent them on their way, unharmed.
Assume all of the above is true, and still you must be shocked at the crude brutality of the Scott sisters' fate. You see, the sisters, neither of whom had a criminal record before this, are still locked away in state prison, having served 16 years of their double-life sentences.
It bears repeating. Each sister is doing double life for a robbery in which $11 was taken and nobody was hurt. Somewhere, the late Nina Simone is moaning her signature song:
"Mississippi Goddam."
For the record, two of the young men who committed the robbery testified against the sisters as a condition of their plea bargain. All three reportedly received two-year sentences and were long ago released. No shotgun or forensic evidence was produced at trial. The sisters have always maintained their innocence.
Observers are at a loss to explain their grotesquely disproportionate sentence. Early this year, the Jackson Advocate, a weekly newspaper serving the black community in the state capital, interviewed the sisters' mother, Evelyn Rasco. She described the sentences as payback for her family's testimony against a corrupt sheriff. According to her, that sheriff's successor vowed revenge.
You don't have to believe that to believe this: Mississippi stands guilty of a grievous offense against simple decency.
But there is hope. Recently, the sisters' cause has been championed by high-powered allies. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert and the NAACP have called on Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to pardon the two women. I add my voice to theirs.
I have no way of knowing if the Scott sisters' fate is tied in to some sheriff's revenge and at some level, the question is moot. Whatever the proximate cause of this ridiculous sentence, the larger cause is neon clear: the Scott sisters are black women in the poorest state in the union. And as report after report has testified, if you are poor or black (and God help you if you are both), the American justice system has long had this terrible tendency to throw you away like garbage. Historically, this has been especially true in the South.
If you doubt it, play with the scenario in your head. Try to imagine some rich white girl doing double life for an $11 robbery. You can't.
But then, that girl has access to a brand of justice unavailable to women like Jamie and Gladys Scott. She will receive every break the law allows her and maybe a few it does not. No one will throw her away.
And while it would be nice to think this problem of discarding people's lives would be solved by the release of the Scott sisters, the truth is, that wouldn't even address it.
How many other Scott sisters and brothers are languishing behind bars for no good reason, doing undeserved hard time on nonexistent evidence, perjured testimony, prosecutorial misconduct or sheer racial or class bias?
So fixing the problem the Scott sisters represent involves nothing less than the reformation of the justice system, a commitment to make it, as the name implies, a system that reliably produces justice — as opposed to these too frequent miscarriages thereof.
Meantime, Jamie Scott, who is in her late 30s now, is in poor health. She is said to be losing her vision and both her kidneys have failed. And we wait for common sense to take hold in Mississippi.
It is a situation that shocks the senses, even if we assume they did it.
Now, assume they did not.
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: lpitts@miamiherald.com
From: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2013477385_pitts21.html
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
ACTION ALERT FOR JAMIE SCOTT
ACTION ALERT FOR JAMIE SCOTT
From: Nancy Lockhart October 2 at 1:47am
Please e-mail and/or call Drs. Gloria Perry and Zein-Ahmed and request that Jamie Scott #19197 immediately receive proper medical treatment. Jamie has been vomiting for 5 days now and is in need of immediate attention. I apologize for being so crude here but, this is the case and it is urgent. Please assist us in saving her life until she is released!
Dr. Gloria Perry - gperry@mdoc.state.ms.us
(601) 359-5155
Dr. Zein-Ahmed - MZein-Ahmed@mdoc.state.ms.us
(601) 359-5155
You may cc and call the following if time permits.
Margaret Bingham - mbingham@mdoc.state.ms.us
601-932-2880
Christopher Epps - CEPPS@mdoc.state.ms.us
Epps ph. 601-359-5600
Nancy Lockhart
Friday, October 1, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
MESSAGE FROM MRS. RASCO:
Thanks to all of the supporters that have helped with Jamie and Gladys' case. It is because of all of you that it has came down to what it has. You all have worked hard to help to free Jamie and Gladys and I feel like now we are on the final step to freedom.
I am asking that everyone Write and Fax all the Parole Board members to ask for justice for Jamie and Gladys. They need all of your help, the ones that can tweet it, please do. Jamie and Gladys' life depends on you all so that another injustice won't be done to them. Let the Parole Board know that the world is looking at this injustice.
Shannon Warnock - Chairman
Bobbie Thomas - Board Member
Clarence Brown - Board Member
Betty Lou Jones - Board Member
Danny Guice - Board Member
State of Mississippi Parole Board
660 North Street
Suite 100A
Jackson, MS 39202
Fax: (601) 576-3528
Please contact these Board Members and keep doing it until Jamie and Gladys are free. Love to every one of you.
Evelyn Rasco
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Parole Board investigator meets with Scott sisters
Parole Board investigator meets with Scott sisters
The Mississippi Link: News
For the first time in their 16-year imprisonment, Gladys and Jamie Scott have gotten some action from the Mississippi Department of Correction Parole Board.
According to their attorney, Chokwe Lumumba, an investigator from the Parole Board visited the sisters in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility early this week. However, he was not given the opportunity to be present.
“They did not tell me that they [the Parole Board] were going to see them,” Lumumba told The Mississippi Link Tuesday night, Sept. 21. “This is not really characteristic of Parole Board procedure. It is inappropriate not to allow council to be present.”
The sisters are incarcerated for their alleged involvement with two other teenagers in a 1993 armed robbery of two men of $11. They are serving double life sentences. They maintain their innocence. No one was killed.
For more information and updates about the sisters ordeal, log on to http://freethescottsisters.blogspot.com/
The fact that Lumumba was not privy to the investigator’s visit with the sisters has alarmed their mother Evelyn Rasco of Pensacola, Fla.
“I don’t know why they would not want Mr. Lumumba present. This has me very concerned,” Rasco said, who recently lost her father. Her daughters were allowed to attend their grandfather’s wake in Forrest, Miss., but not his funeral.
While his office will inquire why he was not alerted, Lumumba, at the same time, said he is hoping the Board is acting in good faith. He said he is optimistic that the Parole Board has been moved to do something, but he wants that something to be positive.
The “move” comes after a loud cry for justice for the Scott sisters went out last Wednesday, Sept. 15, when hundreds marched and rallied from Farish Street Park to the Governor’s Manson on to the state capitol in downtown Jackson. The crowd chanted: “We are here - without fear - and we want our sisters free;” “Haley Barbour, can’t you see? The Scott sisters must be free. Right now, Right now!” and “Fifteen years is too long; Send our sisters home!”
NAACP President Ben Jealous was also in town last week to accompany Lumumba in submitting a petition with more than 2,000 signatures in support of freeing the Scott sisters to the Governor’s office.
Mississippi Parole Board Chairman Shannon Warnock told The Mississippi Link that the Board has received the clemency request from Lumumba. “We’ve received a request from the Governor to proceed with the clemency investigation as we would any other pardon applicant,” she said. “I’ve asked our investigator to launch that process. Once we receive the report, we will interview the candidates. Then make our recommendation to the Governor, along with submitting the complete investigative report. I’m sorry, but I cannot commit to a time line. Typically, it takes several months. But I can say this, once we make our recommendation to the governor, it is his discretion at that point.”
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