Spain Granted Bail After 21 Years in Jail

Johnny Spain, a one-time revolutionary who took part in California’s worst prison riot but later became a model inmate, was ordered freed on bail Wednesday after 21 years behind bars.

Spain, a former Black Panther who has since renounced radical politics, could be free as early as this morning.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson set bail at $350,000 while Spain awaits a new trial on murder and conspiracy charges stemming from the 1971 San Quentin prison riot that left six people dead. Henderson in September, 1986, overturned Spain’s murder conviction for his role in the uprising.

Spain’s attorney, Dennis Riordan, said he can line up bail from supporters of Spain, who now is in the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. However, a Vacaville prison spokesman, Lt. Al Deines, said that Spain would not be released before this morning.

“We need more documentation,” Deines said.

Wednesday’s decision was the second major court victory in two days for Spain. On Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Parker ruled that Spain had already served enough prison time for a 1966 murder conviction and should be paroled for that offense immediately. Spain was incarcerated for the 1966 murder at the time of the San Quentin riot.

In court Wednesday, attorney Riordan took the unusual step of telling Henderson that he would post his own life savings as bail assurance, so confident was he that Spain, 38, “will honor every condition” of his release.

“Mr. Spain would walk from here to Vacaville over hot coals before he would betray this trust,” said Riordan, who had been fighting for Spain’s release since he took the case a dozen years ago.

Others of Spain’s supporters wept after Henderson announced his decision.

The emotion in the courtroom reflects the cause celebre that has developed around Spain, who has been portrayed by his backers as an example of rehabilitation.

State authorities, however, have tenaciously battled all efforts to free the prisoner.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Ronald Niver declined comment on Henderson’s decision. “It doesn’t matter how I feel,” he said.

Like Riordan, Niver has spent 12 years on the case. Spain’s legal problems are far from over, but there was no apparent avenue left to Niver for now to keep Spain in prison.

Last month, the Board of Prison Terms, after twice rejecting Spain’s pleas for parole, grudgingly ruled that he would be eligible for release in 1989.

However, on Tuesday in Los Angeles, Judge Parker said that the board had improperly extended Spain’s sentence and ordered his immediate parole. That meant the only thing standing between Spain and freedom was his continued incarceration pending the new trial on the riot charges.

Spain was born in Jackson, Miss. His mother was Ann Armstrong, a white woman married to a white man named Fred Armstrong. But Spain’s father was black. Fred Armstrong assumed that the boy was his and Spain was raised for his first six years as white. His racial background became increasingly apparent as he aged and when he reached school age, neither the segregated black or white schools would accept him.

His mother, seeking help, turned to a black couple living in East Los Angeles, Mr. and Mrs. John Spain, who adopted the youth. At age 6, he was placed on a train headed West. When he arrived at Union Station, he had new parents of a different color.

The Spains treated him well, he said, but his transformation from the son of white parents in the Mississippi of the 1950s to the son of blacks on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1960s took its toll. He was a high school athlete but also ran with a street gang. He committed some minor crimes and was held once in a juvenile facility.

The 1966 murder occured during a street robbery when Spain was 17. He was sentenced to prison the following year.

Incarcerated at Soledad State Prison, Spain turned to the radical politics of the 1960s. He became a trusted friend and lieutenant of fellow inmate George Jackson, a leader of the Black Panthers and author of a book, “Soledad Brother,” that gave Jackson a following among leftist activists outside prison. In 1970, Jackson and two others were accused of murdering a Soledad guard.

As a result of the Soledad case, Jackson was transferred to San Quentin. Although Spain was not accused in the Soledad crime, he too was moved to San Quentin, and he and Jackson were housed in the tiny, noisy cells of the Adjustment Center, home to Death Row inmates and problem prisoners.

On Aug. 21, 1971, Jackson triggered the worst prison riot in California history when he produced a gun and ammunition from under a wig. Three guards and three inmates died. Among those killed was Jackson, who was shot to death by a guard as he ran across the prison yard, bringing the uprising to an end.

Spain left the cellblock with Jackson but survived by hiding in bushes in the prison yard. In a search of Spain’s cell after the riot, guards discovered bullets hidden in hollow bars of soap and a map said to show escape routes.

That evidence helped convict him in 1976 of conspiracy in Jackson’s failed escape and of murder in the shooting deaths of two guards, Frank DeLeon and Jere Graham. Spain was not accused of actually killing the guards, but his participation in the break-out that led to their deaths was enough to convict him of murder. He was the only person ever convicted of murder in connection with the incident.

At the time of his trial on the escape conspiracy and guard murders, Spain was seen as such a security risk in court that he was shackled with 25 pounds of chain. Henderson ruled in 1986 th1635000436conducting an effective defense and ordered a new trial. That reversal is on appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal, and is set to be argued on Monday.

After the Jackson escape attempt, Spain said he gradually became disillusioned with radical politics and abandoned them. He told The Times in a 1986 interview that he quit the Black Panther Party in 1980. While behind bars, he earned his high school diploma, gained credits toward a bachelor’s degree, became an electrician and was considered a model prisoner in recent years.

In one of the most startling developments in the case, a number of prison guards have written to the Board of Prison terms urging his parole in the Los Angeles murder that first sent him to prison.

“I could not imagine myself writing on the behalf of another inmate,” one wrote, “simply because I do not know another inmate who demonstrates so clearly or consistently the qualities he has.”

One of the guards who wrote was the best friend of an officer murdered during the riot. Prison psychologists also gave Spain glowing reports, including one that concluded that he was less violent than most people on the street.

Spain has not had a disciplinary action against him since 1979, when he was caught with a marijuana cigarette.

“I realized that I didn’t want to have the prison experience be the sole experience in my life,” Spain said at one parole hearing.

Others are unconvinced.

Richard Nelson, associate warden at San Quentin and one of the first officers to reach the bloody cellblock after Jackson’s death, said in 1986, when Spain first came up for parole, that Spain had conned his supporters.

“He knows how to play the game. He knows how to do time. He has not been and never will be a productive citizen,” Nelson said.

One perplexed parole board member, who voted against Spain’s release, said he simply could not determine whether Spain was “a dormant volcano or an extinct one.”