George Jackson Cover-up Continues

By Mark Shwartz

Pacific News Service

The verdict in the 16-month trial of the San Quentin Six, hailed by many as a victory for the defense (40 acquittals out of 46 conspiracy, murder and assault charges), has effectively closed the book on the controversial events surrounding the death of prison activist George Jackson in a bloody prison uprising on August 21, 1971.

After 24 days of sequestered deliberation, the exhausted jury delivered a verdict implicitly rejecting the state's all-important conspiracy charge against five of the six defendants.

But in finding defendant Johnny Larry Spain guilty of conspiracy and two counts of murder, the jurors nonetheless upheld the cornerstone of the state's conspiracy theory - that Jackson conspired with radical attorney Stephen Bingham to escape.

That finding, according to attorneys and observers who have followed the case from the beginning, forecloses any likelihood of an independent investigation into an alleged counter-conspiracy on the part of prison guards and law enforcement authorities to assassinate George Jackson - the theory on which the defense had staked its case.

The result is that the nagging questions and doubts which have marked the case since August 1971 may never be resolved. In that sense, the verdict was a frustrating blow to the defense, which had hoped to open up the case in a wide-ranging legislative investigation with power to subpoena police records and interview witnesses not included in the trial.

The defense had contended that Jackson's death was the result of a plot by the California Department of Corrections, the Criminal Conspiracy Section of the Los Angeles Police Dept. (LAPD), and prison guards to "assassinate" Jackson, who was viewed as a charismatic prison revolutionary with a national constituency.

That theory was based on testimony by Louis Tackwood, a former LAPD agent who said he had participated in a plot to set up an escape attempt in which Jackson would be shot.

While Tackwood's testimony contained inconsistencies which were used by the prosecution to discredit him, at least some jurors were convinced that a plot involving law-enforcement authorities did exist.

But without solid corroborating evidence, and with Tackwood's lack of credibility, the defense failed to convince the jury that its theory held the only possible explanation for the abortive escape attempt and the deaths of Jackson, three guards and two other inmates.

Instead, the jury seemed to view the violence of August 21 as the product of years of tension and hostility between guards and convicts which finally exploded behind prison walls.

In this respect, the jurors were clearly influenced by the brutal portrait of prison life drawn by prisoner after prisoner, including the three defendants who took the stand and were subsequently acquitted on all charges.

The critical evidence in Johnny Spain's conspiracy conviction - which led directly to his conviction on two counts of murder - included ammunition and a map of the grounds outside the prison which were found in his cell, adjacent to Jackson's.

But regarding the prosecution's explanation for how the conspiracy was carried out - Bingham smuggling the gun in to Jackson, who brought it into the prison concealed beneath a wig - the jury failed to reach an agreement.

This single conspiracy conviction saved the day for the prosecution by upholding the official version of Jackson's death - that he died as a result of a prison-hatched escape attempt.

The state's conspiracy dragnet - weakened by the confusion of 46 separate charges, missing evidence, and suspect testimony by some guards - failed to ensnarl the other five defendants.

For them, the verdicts came down to the credibility of each individual defendant versus his accusers. On those grounds, Willie Tate, Fleeta Drumgo and Louis Talamantez were completely acquitted, while Pinnell and David Johnson were convicted on assault charges.

As defense attorney Ernest Graves put it after the verdict, "We may have won the game on points, but the state won the ballpark” - a reference to Spain's conspiracy conviction which, barring a successful appeal, will leave the controversies of August 21,1971, still up in the air.