![]() He had left, Newton said later, because the charges against him were so clearly phony that it was obvious the police had become desperate and, he said, because pimps and prostitutes had been offered $10,000 to kill him. 17, 1974, after surrendering to Oakland police on a charge of assaulting his tailor a week later, he failed to show up for a bail hearing and surfaced in Cuba. Newton was charged with the shooting on Aug. The mistrial came more than 4 1/2 years after Smith was shot on the Oakland street corner where she stood, just outside a liquor store. And the other chief prosecution eyewitness, a 20-year-old former prostitute named Michelle Jenkins, walked into the courtroom when the trail was almost over to announce that her testimony has been filled with lies. Defense attorney Kennedy sought to pin the murder on one of the chief prosecution witnesses. Both testified that Newton had worked with them through the night when Kathleen Smith was shot. But now, asked to pick out the person in court who looked most like that man, she got up from the witness chair, passed the table where Newton was sitting, and pointed at one of the spectators, a former defense witness who is white.ĭuring the intervening weeks, as the testimony grew increasingly tangled, Newton presented for the first time an alibi backed by two witnesses: Donald Freed, a Los Angeles-based writer and co-author with Newton of various books and essays and Gwen Newton, the defendant's wife. A few weeks after the shooting, West had identified the gunman by selecting a mug shot of Newton. It ended Wednesday afternoon, with a wild, dime-store novel flourish: Joanne West, a prostitute missing ever since the shooting was arrested in Los Angeles and forced into the Oakland courtroom to describe a man with a gun who had harassed her that night in 1974, two blocks away from the cornor where 17-year-old Kathleen Smith was shot. ![]() This trial opened quietly, with a small contingent of Newton supporters, a few curious spectators, and a firm but brief outdoor news conference in which Newton denounced the mostly white jury and said the conspiracy against him would be fully exposed. When he was released from prison in 1970, after a reversal of his conviction in the manslaughter shooting of an Oakland police officer, two trials on the same charge ended in deadlocked juries (the case was finally dropped) later, he was accused of assaulting an Oakland disc jockey, and that trial ended in deadlock. It was the fourth time in nine years that criminal charges against the 37-year-old Newton have ended in a hung jury. The matter was brought to Judge Anderson when a third juror reported having seen the note passing, but Anderson let it stand, Kennedy said.Orloff would not confirm nor deny the note passing, but said Anderson was satisfied that nothing had happened to affect the jury. Kennedy charged that just before deliberations began on Wednesday afternoon, one of the three alternate jurors passed a note reading "Go hang him" to a regular juror who cast one of the guilty votes. Newton must return to court next week to face contempt charges for refusing to testify about how he got to Cuba as a fugitive from justice in 1974 and who helped him get there.Īs he was driven away from the courthouse, he declared, "I've been vindicated by the community, and that's what important to me in the first place." Anybody else in the world would have been acquitted." This is the biggest farce I've ever seen. ![]() You'll be screaming for the American embassy. They looked grim and worn as they passed the defendant, who stood with his stands folded before him to watch them.Īn hour earlier, Newton had waited outside the locked courtroom door, his eyes red-rimmed and his speech slurred, and said while gazing directly at a white reporter, "Let you get charged, and you get 11 blacks up there and one white. The jury, with one black member, deliberated for 24 hours over four days before returning to the Oakland courtroom to tell Superior Court Judge Carl Anderson their deadlock was hopeless. "I think it primarily rests on the people of Alameda County as to whether or not they want this farce to go on," Kennedy said. Newton's attorney, Michael Kennedy, in a brief news conference on the courthouse steps, said the two guilty votes "represent fear and loathing in Oakland," and that Newton did not believe he would be retried. ![]() Newton ended today in a mistrial, with the jurors deadlocked 10 to 2 for acquittal.Īlameda County prosecutor Tom Orloff said he did not know whether the district attorney's office would order a new trial for Newton, who was accused of killing a 17-year-old prostitute in August 1974. The murder trial of Black Panther Party leader Huey P.
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