Rainbow Nation News

RAINBOW NATION NEWS

DETROIT PANTHERS ACQUITTED

DETROIT - The hushed conversations in the spectators gallery and the last minute consultations between the 12 Panthers and their attorneys at the defense table abruptly stopped as the jury of seven women and five men filed back into the Detroit courtroom after 30 hours of deliberation. Judge John Murphy, in standard courtroom procedure, asked the jury foreman if they had reached a decision. Tommie Williams, the foreman, stood up and softly repeated "not guilty" 24 times, once each on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder lodged against all 12 defendants.

The defense attorneys piled their hands across the defense table in silent congratulation and several of the defendants began weeping as they embraced their attorneys, their parents and each other. The Panthers and spectators raised clenched fists and shouted "Power to the People!"

When "order" was restored to the courtroom, the jury foreman went on to read a guilty verdict for felonious assault against three of the defendants, Fondrun, DeSaussure and Johnson for the incident surrounding the cop killing. The three men face a jail term of up to four years. Eight of the defendants have been in jail for eight months already, waiting for the trial.

The 12 Panthers were arrested at the National Committee to Combat Fascism headquarters after a nine hour siege by Detroit policemen, which began moments after a black plain-clothesman, Lenny Smith, was responding to a call for assistance radioed in by two patrolmen, who were confronting a large crowd of people outside NCCF headquarters which had gathered after the cops tried to ticket two Panthers for distributing the Black Panther Newspaper on the sidewalk.

The defense attorneys did not call any witnesses of their own during the trial, concentrating on exposing the contradictions in the testimony of the prosecution witnesses' through cross-examination. They raised the possibility that Smith, who was carrying a shotgun and wore a heavy Afro, was killed by the white patrolmen, after they mistook him for an armed Panther. Chief prosecution witness Jerome Lee, one of the Panthers who was granted immunity from prosecution in order to force him to testify against his people refused to talk upon taking the stand, in an unexpected move. The only testimony that the shots that killed Smith were fired from the NCCF house came from Patrolman Frank Randazzo, the cop who began the whole incident earlier by hassling the newspaper salespeople. And ballistics tests contradicted his testimony.

The Panthers left the house in three different groups. Two groups left before a tear gas barrage, but the three Panthers convicted of felonious assault stayed until they were forced out, coughing and choking from the noxious gas.