Spain Bailed Out of Prison, Awaits Retrial in Murder

After 21 years behind bars, former Black Panther leader and “San Quentin Six” defendant Johnny Spain walked out of prison Thursday, but acknowledged that he may have to return.

“I’m here to say I won’t let anyone down who has supported me,” Spain, 38, said upon leaving the state prison here. He was met by his attorney, Dennis Riordan, who worked 12 years to free him. Other supporters, including a private investigator who has worked on Spain’s behalf since 1971, also were there.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson ordered Spain freed on $350,000 bail while he awaits retrial on murder and conspiracy charges stemming from a bloody 1971 San Quentin riot that left three guards and three inmates dead. The judge gave Riordan a week to gather the bulk of the bail money.

Henderson in 1986 ordered the new trial for Spain after ruling that Spain was unconstitutionally denied the right to an adequate defense at his original trial in 1976 because he was shackled with 25 pounds of chain while in the courtroom.

On Monday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal will hear arguments in an appeal by the state attorney general over whether to reinstate his conviction in the San Quentin case. Reinstatement of the conviction by an appellate court would send Spain back to prison immediately.

Spain has been imprisoned since 1967, when he was convicted of the murder of a man in a 1966 street robbery in East Los Angeles. He was serving an indeterminate sentence for that murder at the time of the San Quentin riot. Earlier this week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered Spain paroled for the 1966 murder, saying he had served enough time for that crime.

Little to Be Done

In a press conference outside the gates of the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, Spain said there was little he could do about the possibility that he would be returned to prison.

“There could be an earthquake tomorrow. I don’t know what I could do about it,” he said. However, on the first night out of prison in 21 years, he said he planned to attend a school play with a supporter in San Francisco.

“It’s been a very difficult and terrible time. I don’t know that 21 years could ever change the action that occurred when I was 17 years old,” Spain said of the 1966 murder.

On Thursday, state parole authorities directed that Spain live in Los Angeles, where he lived at the time of the 1966 murder and which is the home of his estranged wife. He married the woman, a childhood friend, while he was in prison, and has two sons by the marriage. Spain’s wife and children were not among those to greet him at the prison gates.

Waiting in San Francisco

Riordan has said that until Spain’s various legal problems are resolved, he will remain at a friend’s home in San Francisco.

Spain has never publicly discussed his role in the riot of Aug. 21, 1971, saying he will save his side of the story for a retrial. The uprising was triggered when inmate George Jackson allegedly produced a gun. Jackson was shot to death by guards in a dash from the cellblock to the prison yard. Spain followed Jackson into the yard and survived by diving into some bushes.

A search of Spain’s cell after the riot produced an escape map and bullets in hollowed-out bars of soap.

Convicted in 1976

Spain was convicted in the 1976 San Quentin Six trial of conspiring with Jackson in the escape, and of murder in the shooting deaths of two guards. Although Spain was not accused of pulling the trigger on the guards, his role in the escape attempt made him guilty in the murders.

Three other defendants were acquitted during the trial, and two were convicted of assaulting guards.

Lawyer Stephen Bingham, another person implicated, was a fugitive for 13 years before surrendering and ultimately being acquitted of murder in 1986 by a Marin County jury. Bingham had been accused of helping to smuggle a gun to Jackson, who then hid it in a wig. But with Bingham’s acquittal, the mystery remains of how Jackson got the gun.