A pair of men awaiting trial for their alleged involvement in the 1971 murder of San Francisco Police Sgt. John Young declared their innocence at an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLUA) meeting on May 12 in Pasadena.
In 2007, Ray Boudreaux and Hank Jones were among the eight men charged with murder and conspiracy in connection with the decades-old murder.
Although a San Francisco judge dismissed the indictments against the "San Francisco 8" in 1975 and 1976, the case has been reopened based on the prosecution's claims of new evidence linking the men to the killing. But the 64-year-old Boudreaux and 70-year-old Jones argue that authorities targeted them as murder suspects due to their involvement with the Black Panther Party in the 1970s.
"COINTELPRO was pivotal in pitting the Black Panther Party and police against each other," Jones said during his visit to the Pasadena-Foothill chapter of the ACLU.
COINTELPRO is an acronym for the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program.
The Black Panther Party acquired a reputation for being a militant group, but Boudreaux and Jones — both of whom now live near Pasadena in Altadena — contend that the group served the community's needs at the time. Boudreaux was involved in the party's free breakfast program, and Jones was an active member.
"There would have never been a Black Panther Party had there not been... racism... discrimination," Jones said.
Jones said that the federal government "used the police to quiet the unrest in the black community," adding that the Black Panther Party enjoyed widespread support in many African-American neighborhoods until COINTELPRO agents launched a misinformation campaign about the group, often casting them as violent aggressors instead of a group focused on self-defense.
The meeting in Pasadena comes as prosecutors prepare for a June 8 preliminary hearing on the "San Francisco 8."
Defense attorneys are also getting ready, and Boudreaux said he anticipates a favorable outcome.
"We expect the case to be dismissed sometime during this preliminary hearing," he said. "Many of the motions to have the case dismissed by the judge were put off to the preliminary hearing."
Not all of them. The court cleared five of the defendants of conspiracy charges last year because the statute of limitations had run out. The move completely cleared one of the eight — Richard O'Neal, who was only charged with conspiracy and not murder. At the preliminary hearing, defense attorneys will seek to have conspiracy charges against the remaining three men dismissed.
In addition to O'Neal, Boudreaux and Jones, the remaining defendants include Francisco Torres, Harold Taylor, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom).
Asked by an audience member if each member of the "San Francisco 8" was innocent, Boudreaux insisted that was the case.
"We had nothing to do with it," he said.
Both he and Jones claim that confessions obtained by the police during the '70s resulted from torture.
Police coercion factored in a judge's decision to dismiss charges against the men in the '70s. Now that the case has been reopened, Jones said he felt the prosecution was "... looking for a face-saving way out of this."
Jones said that no new evidence ties the men to the case.
"They say they have weapons," he said. "There are no weapons."
Jones and Boudreaux also said that before their murder arrests, some of the eight men did not know each other.
Although Jones contends that his political activism may have factored into why he was targeted as a suspect in the original case, he said he has no regrets over his involvement in the Black Panther Party.
"I've been an activist since the murder of Emmett Till in 1955," he said, referring to a teenage boy from Chicago who was killed by white men for allegedly making a pass at a white woman in Mississippi.
"His mother was wise enough to leave that casket open," Jones said of Till. "It affected me. Before then, I was a Marine — apolitical. I've been an activist ever since, and I'll die one."
Nadra Kareem is a writer for the L.A. Watts Times.
Photo from L.A. Watts Times
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