Free Angela and All Political Prisoners Page #8

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and I had one other person who said

that they would put up money for bail.

A white farmer from Fresno, California,

which is one of the most

conservative areas in the state.

His name was Rodger McAfee.

And I said, "Will you do it?"

And he said, "Yes.

"I will put up my farm as collateral. "

When Rodger McAfee goes out

to feed the cows

on his dairy farm near Fresno,

he now carries an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle,

because he says his life and the lives

of his wife and five children

have been threatened.

The threats began the day after McAfee

put up some of his farmland

as security for Angela Davis' bail bonds.

Angela Davis has always promoted

the path to the freedom of peoples.

The freedom to speak out and...

it's our American way of life.

And when you have constant threats

on your life and etcetera,

that's not freedom. It just shows

we haven't developed far enough yet.

We're all outside

the courtroom together waiting.

And Howard comes out loping along,

you know?

Do some work, some typing.

And we yell, "What happened?"

I mean, we didn't know where he was going.

I'm going to do some typing.

The man has said he's going to do

some typing and some work,

and there are no more questions, all right?

And he turned and he was crying.

In a choked voice he said,

"We got what we came for."

After a tense day of

closed door conferences,

Judge Richard Arnason ruled

Miss Davis should be freed from jail.

It was the first legal fallout

from the death penalty ruling.

And the judge's decision

did not please the prosecution.

I think what he's going to do

is contrary to law.

Is this appealable? Can you appeal it?

Well, I suppose we could seek some relief

from the appellate court,

but the time factor is so short that

I don't think it would be worth the effort.

Then we got to the bail bondsman's

office. His name was Steve Sparacino.

Everything closes at 5:00, right?

We wanted to get her out that night.

And he said, "Well, I don't know.

Should I do this? Should I not do this?"

And perhaps about four minutes to 5:00,

and he said, "Okay. "

I'm so happy, boy. I just...

Kendra said to me, "Go tell Angela."

When I'm processed through

and I'm allowed into Angela's cell,

Angela had on a black shawl.

She was getting ready to leave.

She stood absolutely still for a moment,

and her body rippled.

There was, like, this little ripple

and then she walked out.

Her release on bail transformed the trial

because the presumption of innocence

had been restored.

She came into the courtroom

as a free person,

and it transformed everything

about the trial.

After 17 months of pre-trial activity

and three weeks to pick a jury,

the Angela Davis trial is ready

to hear evidence.

Prosecutor Albert Harris

outlined a conspiracy

which he promised to weave

out of circumstantial evidence.

A plan to take hostages

from a California courthouse

and use them to free San Quentin prisoners.

His first motive was political.

Angela Davis, a communist, a Black Panther,

a member of the Che Lumumba Club,

anxious to free the Soledad Brothers

and other political prisoners,

did this out of revolutionary fervor.

And then he changed midstream.

Harris said Miss Davis aided and abetted

that escape attempt

driven by a passion for Soledad Brother

George Jackson.

A passion, he said, that knew no bounds.

When he got up and made this argument,

it was so stunning.

I'm thinking, like, "Whoa!"

It was basically an argument that I was...

I was a person who had uncontrollable

passion because I was a woman.

In the State's case,

the primary motive charged

was to free the Soledad Brothers.

Ironically, at the noon recess,

word reached the courthouse.

They had been found, "Not guilty."

- Soledad Brothers got acquitted.

- They got acquitted.

Soledad Brothers were not guilty

and they've received a just verdict.

Right on.

I thought of the idea of having Angela Davis

to make the opening statement to the jury.

An opening statement in which she could

tell all about herself all of who she was.

And she got to tell the jury that

without being cross-examined.

No one has heard

Angela Davis say anything.

And so, suddenly in the courtroom,

she had this moment.

And every eye in the courtroom is on her.

So the beginning of the trial

was really Angela Davis.

I'm just gonna read to you.

"The trial's most dramatic development

"was the defense's opening statement

delivered by the defendant herself.

"Miss Davis scoffed at the prosecution

of her motive.

"The suggestion that

her love for Jackson

"had driven her to crime, she said,

"was utterly fantastic, utterly absurd.

"Clear evidence of male chauvinism."

I mean, nobody expected that.

You know, here's the beginning of a trial

that everyone thinks is black and white.

And what is she bringing up

in her opening statement,

but male chauvinism. Quite interesting.

Harris, in the early days,

brought on a lot of witnesses

to basically make the ground for his case.

I was working in the darkroom,

mixing fixer that day.

And I heard on the police monitor

that there was a...

They called a code 33.

Armed convicts with hostages at the

Marin County Civic Center Hall of Justice.

There was a shooting, there were

witnesses, so-and-so saw so-and-so.

I was across the archway

from where they were exiting.

And about that time somebody said,

"Here they come."

And there were a lot of exhibits.

The stick, that gun.

And the next thing I knew,

I got a black man

with a .357 Magnum

aimed at my head saying,

"Stand up, motherf***er,

or I'll blow your brains out."

Harris then continued

for days and days and weeks,

putting on exhibit, after exhibit,

after exhibit.

And witness, after witness, after witness.

What I saw,

I saw through the lens of a camera.

My photographs were my testimony.

I think he presented 104 witnesses

to overwhelm the jury with

what had happened on August 7th.

It was David and Goliath, you know?

And Angela was David.

The trial, for Harris, it was a hugely

important assignment for him.

Huge.

He was the one

who had to carry the government.

Albert Harris was not

a prosecuting attorney.

All the prosecuting attorneys

had been disqualified

because one of the victims of the crime

was a district attorney.

And so the Attorney General

took over as prosecutors.

So we had the advantage of having

better trial lawyers than they were.

Leo Branton made an argument

that was stunning.

That some of the most

unreliable testimony you'll ever hear

is eyewitness testimony.

Seated at the counsel table,

in addition to Angela and the lawyers,

was Kendra Alexander,

who's a close friend of Angela's,

and the head of the defense committee.

One day, when he had

this very hostile witness,

the guy even called him bald-headed,

and he was identifying Angela Davis as

being the one and he saw her.

They just kept egging this guy on.

They said, "Can you identify her?"

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