Prison Revolt: Attorney’s Possible Role Focus of Trial

“Gentlemen, the dragon has come.”

With that phrase cribbed from Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh--and a 9-millimeter handgun--black revolutionary and author George Jackson introduced the most violent prison revolt in California history Aug. 21, 1971.

Three San Quentin prison guards were killed that day, cut down in cold blood while pleading for their lives, according to a guard who survived. Two prison trusties also died during the brief revolt, as did Jackson, who was felled by a torrent of rifle fire in the prison exercise yard.

The events of that sunny Saturday afternoon, as well as the conspiracies that may lie behind them, are expected to be the key elements in the trial set to open today of Stephen M. Bingham, the former left-radical attorney who represented Jackson and is accused of smuggling in the pistol used in the incident.

The trial in the fanciful pink-and-blue Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, 15 miles north, may last six months. The first three weeks are expected to be taken up by pretrial motions.

Prison officials have always contended that Jackson simply bungled a brazen escape attempt. But Bingham and other Jackson supporters say Jackson, a bitter and widely recognized critic of the prison system, was set up by authorities to foment rebellion and thereby provide a setting for his own assassination.

Bingham, 43, disappeared on the day of Jackson’s rebellion. He remained underground for 13 years, resurfacing in San Rafael in July, 1984, to face the charges against him. Shortly after he fled, Bingham was accused of five murder counts and one count of conspiracy.

However, Superior Court Judge E. Warren McGuire dismissed three of the murder charges last month. McGuire made his ruling because Bingham’s alleged co-conspirators were found innocent of those same three murders in 1976. The juries in those trials agreed that the three killings occurred in the heat of the moment and not as a result of a conspiracy.

In a recent interview, Bingham said he fled because “they already had me convicted.” He recalled a radio report that day in which a prison official named him as part of a conspiracy and a prosecutor said he had “conclusive evidence” of Bingham’s role in the fiasco.

He said he decided to resurface because government scandals of the last two decades, including Watergate and exposure of illegal CIA surveillance, will make it easier for jurors to believe his contention of government misconduct.

“The nation is different; California isn’t the same as it was,” he said. “A lot of Americans have . . . found out that their government can do and has done some terrible things.”

Six other men, all prisoners, were also indicted at that time. One, Johnny L. Spain, was convicted of murder and remains in prison while appealing his case. Two others, Hugo Pinnell and David Johnson, were found guilty of assault. Pinnell remains in prison; Johnson has been paroled. The remaining three were found innocent.

An earlier attempt to free Jackson had resulted in the death of a Marin County Superior Court judge and three other people, including Jackson’s 17-year-old brother, Jonathan. Activist Angela Davis, a friend of Jackson, was tried and acquitted of murder charges in connection with that Aug. 7, 1970, incident.

Bingham is specifically accused of concealing a semiautomatic handgun and two clips of ammunition in a tape recorder, then smuggling them in to Jackson during an interview on the day of the revolt. Jackson allegedly produced the gun and launched the disturbance while being returned to his cell after the interview.

During a long preliminary hearing that ended last February, Bingham and his attorneys, Leonard Weinglass of New York and Paul Harris of San Francisco, argued that the smuggling accusation is implausible.

In a brief, prosecutors said Bingham arrived at San Quentin with a private investigator, Vanita Anderson. Bingham had only a briefcase full of papers. In her briefcase, Anderson had a tape recorder about the size of a lengthy novel. A prison guard checked the outside of the machine and its battery compartment, but did not attempt to turn it on.

Both people were initially denied visits with Jackson--Anderson because she already had seen the prisoner earlier that week, Bingham because he was not Jackson’s criminal defense attorney of record. He was, however, representing him on a civil matter. More than two hours later, though, an associate warden approved Bingham’s visit.

Recorder Volunteered

Before his meeting began, according to the prosecution brief, Bingham was asked by a guard if he planned to use a tape recorder. The young lawyer said no, but Anderson volunteered the use of her machine and Bingham accepted.

Bingham and his attorneys agree on this version, and they argued during the preliminary hearing that it proves Bingham had not conspired to smuggle in the gun. Indeed, they contended, he used the tape recorder only at a prison guard’s suggestion.

Among the documents Jackson had when he met Bingham was a letter with indented or erased writing in Jackson’s hand: “Take the bullets out of that bag hurry and give me the piece in that bag--keep the bullets.” It is unclear when the words were written--before or during Bingham’s visit--and what Jackson meant by “that bag.”

Defense lawyers also contended that Jackson could not have hidden an 8-inch-long pistol under a wig, as prosecutors have further intimated, because Jackson was at that point under especially close supervision after having been accused of killing a Soledad prison guard earlier that year.

LAPD Informant?

At one point during the hearing, Weinglass suggested that as part of a plot to provoke Jackson’s improbable and ill-fated escape bid, a Los Angeles Police Department undercover informant may have supplied the gun to Jackson.

Jackson, author of the best-selling book, “Soledad Brother,” and a top official in the then-militant Black Panther Party, originally was from Los Angeles. He was sent to prison after being convicted of robbing a gas station.

Prison guard Edward Fleming conceded during the preliminary hearing that he originally told officials that he checked Jackson’s hair after the prisoner met Bingham and had not found a gun. However, he later changed a transcript of his statement to say he had not checked Jackson’s hair. Fleming said the second version merely corrected his original, inadvertent misstatement. Defense attorneys contended that he changed his story only after being pressured by his superiors.

Defense lawyers also contended that the location of Jackson’s wounds suggest that he was fatally shot in the head at point-blank range as he lay bleeding but alive on the prison yard.

Information Sought

Among the motions filed last month were two requests apparently aimed at helping to support the defense’s contention that Jackson was allowed to obtain the gun and launch his ill-fated rebellion as a way to provide some prison officials with a reason to kill him. One request asks for previously undisclosed information regarding allegedly illegal government infiltration of political organizations. The other asks for transcripts, recordings and other “products” of government wiretaps.

It is unclear whether the defense team’s conspiracy theory will be heard in court. During the preliminary hearing, Marin County Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry Boren stymied efforts to explore the issue by successfully arguing that it was irrelevant to the question of whether Bingham smuggled in the gun.

Outwardly, Bingham seems an unlikely revolutionary. He is the product of a prominent, well-to-do Connecticut family. His grandfather was once governor of Connecticut and a Republican senator from that state; his father was a judge and a state senator. Bingham graduated with honors from Yale in 1964.

He then joined the civil rights movement in Mississippi and then the Peace Corps in West Africa before earning his law degree in 1969 from Boalt Hall, the law school at UC Berkeley. He was in private practice in Berkeley, specializing in tenant rights and prison reform, when he vanished two years later.