Free John Now! Moves Into Supreme Court

A second far-out high energy Detroit Grande Ballroom FREE JOHN NOW! rock and roll benefit came down Sunday June 13 as seven different musical units kicked out the jams for only $1.00 before a sweating crowd of 1800 rock and roll maniacs from the Southeast Michigan youth colony. The benefit, a tribute in all respects to the spirit and work of John Sinclair, realized a profit of almost $1,200 for the John Sinclair Freedom Fund and demonstrated once again the tremendous support John has among young people in the state of Michigan.

Sunday's event was part of a two-week concentration of events and activities designed to bring John's situation into the public focus (he's serving nine and a half to ten years for possession of two joints of marijuana) and to set in motion a continuing informational and legal assault which will carry on until John is back home.

Backed by the spiritual and economic power generated during these first two weeks of the campaign to FREE JOHN NOW!, a team of attorneys and law students under the direction of Buck Davis have completed briefs for a reapplication for bond pending appeal which will be filed next week with the Michigan Supreme Court. They argue that there is absolutely no justifiable legal grounds for continuing to deny John bond pending the appeal of his conviction, since (1) John's past record demonstrates that he will definitely appear in court whenever required, (2) there is no potential harm to the community in John's being free pending appeal, and (3) John has excellent grounds for appealing his conviction, which is to say that his appeal is not a frivolous one, designed merely as a stalling tactic, but rather is an appeal with serious legal merits which raises substantial constitutional questions and is designed to correct a vicious miscarriage of justice.

It is important that John's supporters and those who would see this injustice corrected continue to apply pressure on the authorities in Lansing through postcards and letters to the governor. I have noticed several times in asking old friends if they had sent in a FREE JOHN NOW! postcard to the governor that people tend to neglect this simple task on the mistaken assumption that it won't do any good. We should all remember that the only way John will walk is if enough of us make our voices heard to let these creeps know we're watching them. If there are 10,000 postcards sitting in the governor's office demanding the release of John Sinclair, it's going to be hard indeed for the Supreme Court to summarily dismiss this latest brief without a fair reading of it, and a fair reading will compel them either to release John on appeal bond or to deny publicly the letter and the spirit of the laws they're sworn to uphold.

FREE JOHN NOW!

STOP THE PSYCHEDELIC GENOCIDE! AMNESTY FOR ALL MARIJUANA PRISONERS!

FREE JOHN FREE JOHN FREE JOHN!

--Dave Sinclair