Ex-Guard Recalls Bloody San Quentin Revolt for Bingham Jury

A retired prison guard Thursday recounted for jurors in the murder trial of Stephen M. Bingham the gruesome details of the slaughter caused by revolutionary inmate and author George Jackson’s ill-fated 1971 escape attempt from San Quentin Prison.

Kenneth McCray, whose throat was slashed during the incident, was generally unemotional as he testified that Jackson did not have a gun before his meeting with Bingham but moments afterward produced the pistol, touching off the bloody revolt.

Jackson, three guards and two other inmates died as a result. Bingham is accused of precipitating the revolt by smuggling a gun to Jackson during an attorney-client meeting only minutes before the shooting began.

Assaults Recounted

Later on the witness stand, McCray’s face flushed and his voice sometimes cracked as he recounted the systematic assaults that followed.

“This is it, gentlemen; the dragon has come,” he quoted Jackson as saying.

McCray said he and three other guards in the cellblock were bound hand and foot with electrical wires by inmates freed from their cells by Jackson. He said his head was covered with a cloth, and his throat was slit.

“It was a very swift cut--almost painless,” recalled McCray, who retired with a psychiatric disability soon after the incident and now works as a house painter. McCray said he could feel himself bleeding “profusely” and said he “just went limp” to feign death.

He said he was then dragged into a cell, where he lay motionless as other guards were brought in and apparently killed, some as they pleaded for their lives.

“I heard him praying . . . ‘May the Lord have mercy on my soul,’ ” he said of one guard shortly before the guard’s throat was cut for the second time.

Shortly after the guards were assaulted, Jackson and another inmate, Johnny L. Spain, fled the adjustment center. Jackson was shot and killed; Spain was found hiding in a bush.

Jurors Cautioned

Superior Court Judge E. Warren McGuire cautioned jurors that the grim details shared by the former guard must be used simply to put into context the events of that day. They should not be used to judge Bingham, he said, because Bingham is not charged with the assault on McCray.

Bingham’s defense team pressed McCray about how much of his testimony was based on direct observations and how much on what he had been told later by other members of the prison staff.

Defense attorney Susan Rutberg, apparently seeking to establish an alternative source of the 9-millimeter automatic pistol used by Jackson, also quizzed McCray about how food, laundry and medicine were brought into the maximum-security adjustment center where Jackson was kept when he attempted to escape.

Bingham’s defense team has suggested that, because Jackson was so closely watched, it was doubtful that a gun could have been smuggled in to him.

Prosecutors contend Bingham, perhaps with the help of an investigator from Jackson’s defense team, smuggled a gun, ammunition and a wig to Jackson in a false tape recorder.