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We knew before Huey's trial began in mid-July, that the whole power structure wanted to hang Huey. We-understood that William Knowland (the publisher of the Oakland Tribune), the mayor, the other politicians, the D.A., and the cops were all so treacherous that they would do anything to get a conviction and send Huey to the gas chamber.

We asked Charles Garry a number of times what he thought would happen. He would run it down, how Huey was really innocent, and how the two cops had shot each other in an attempt to kill Huey. He knew that defending Huey was the most necessary thing that a lawyer could do to save human integrity, because the power structure was attempting to crucify a black man who was the heir of Malcolm X - Huey P. Newton, the man who put in motion a revolutionary movement to bring the struggle to a higher level. Brother Malcolm had educated black people to the need for a political party like the Black Panther Party, and Charles Garry understood this.

Charles told us that Lowell Jensen, the D.A. prosecuting Huey, knew that Huey wasn't guilty. He said that even though these cats were going to do everything possible to get a guilty verdict, and that even though he shared our understanding of how corrupt we felt the legal system was, he knew that we should get a not-guilty verdict. We should definitely get a not guilty.

kidnap charge had to be dropped right away. The person who was supposed to have been kidnapped came forth on the witness stand and refused to testify. Later, he said that he had been intimidated by the police to make false statements.

They tried to set Huey up as the "only person who could have done the shooting". Gene McKinney, who was with brother Huey on the evening when the cops tried to kill him, came to the witness stand, and Jensen and the judge tried to force him to testify. He refused. He took the Fifth Amendment. The judge is supposed to be impartial, if nothing else, but he was working with the D.A. through the whole trial.

The main prosecution witness Jensen put up against Huey was a bus driver named Grier, who said that he had gotten a clear look at the shooting. Garry found a passenger who was on the bus who completely contradicted Grier's story and said that Grier couldn't have seen anything. Apparently, months before, when the police first asked Grier questions, he had initially stated: "I didn't get a clear look as to who it was." He said he didn't get a clear look. However, on the police report that Jensen had entered in as evidence for the jury to have and read over, this particular statement had been changed to, "I did get a clear look." It had been changed by the D.A. and the cops. Grier was lying on the stand and Jensen knew it.

It came out during the trial that Grief's first interview had been taped by the police

department. Garry got hold of the tape, duplicated it, and brought it to court while the jury was trying to decide on our Minister of Defense. Garry argued in court that the tape

recording showed that somebody had tampered with the written transcript and that the D.A. had knowingly submitted that crap as evidence.

Garry didn't take any crap from the judge. He played the tape recording, argued with the judge, and finally got the judge to recognize the tape recording as the real evidence, and order that a new transcript be made, in which Grier said, "I didn't see who did the shooting." Even though they brought the new transcript into the jury room, no one on the jury was told that this was new evidence, so they didn't bother to read it.

Garry's a hard-working revolutionary lawyer who really goes after the facts. All during the trial, he worked in the evenings investigating and digging up evidence to prove brother Huey's innocence.

We waited in those days when the jury was out on brother Huey and we knew that they had to come up with a not-guilty verdict, especially if they read the last piece of evidence Garry had submitted. We didn't really know it at that time, but we speculated that Judge Monroe Friedham was really working in conjunction with the power structure which was trying to get Huey railroaded, and that, because of him, the jury didn't know about the new evidence. We didn't put it past the power structure to try to buy out a member of the jury or anything like that. But we felt that someone on that jury would know the real facts, after having read them, and would realize that brother Huey wasn't guilty, not even of voluntary manslaughter. That night, we heard that the jury had reached a verdict. We had said, "If they kill Huey P. Newton, the sky is the limit." We meant every word of that. "If they kill Huey P. Newton, the sky is the limit." We were going to go down with brother Huey because Huey was the leader of our Party. But "the sky is the limit" also meant that we would go to the highest court if necessary. They had thousands of cops around in those days when the jury was

deliberating so that you couldn't go two blocks anywhere throughout the black community without seeing a regular city police car or highway patrol car. I had also heard that they had secretly placed National Guardsmen in different places around Oakland and San Francisco. You couldn't go two blocks in that city day or night, especially in the afternoon, without seeing a cop car with two, three, or four policemen in it, with shotguns and helmets and all that riot equipment. That's how tight the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Richmond were.

I was at home, at my mother's house, and my mother came in and said, "Bobby, Bobby, did you hear that on TV? They said that the jury has reached a verdict on Huey P. Newton." I jumped up and got into a car and drove over to David Hilliard's house. When I got there, it was on the radio that they had found Huey guilty of third degree murder, "voluntary

manslaughter." I just couldn't see that. That pissed me off. It really made me mad. And some brother started saying, "Let's burn the town down. Let's burn the town down." At that point I remembered that there had been a press interview on TV a few days before the jury came out. Huey was asked, "What do you mean by 'the sky is the limit'?" Huey had said that he was sure that he would not be convicted at all, but that if he was, the Party would fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. Huey also had sent a message to us that we should defend ourselves if unjustly attacked, but that we just didn't believe in spontaneous rioting.

I was sitting in the house and this brother was talking about, "Ah, man, let's go burn it down. Let's go burn it down." I told them no, that they couldn't do it. A lot of Party members were calling up from all over town, asking, "What should we do? What should we do?" We told them, "Cool it and don't do anything. We're not supposed to be doing anything. They haven't killed the brother," I said "We said that if they kill Huey P. Newton, "The sky is the limit.' But right now the sky is the limit in terms of the legal fight, because they got Huey in for two to fifteen years and we're going to have a one-and-a-half or two year fight on our hands trying to get Huey free. We're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. That's what Huey P. Newton said and that's what we're gonna do. Don't be running out in the streets there," I said, "because there's so many cops out there now that if you turn your head wrong, man, you might get shot down - you'll just be brutalized and murdered."

From there, we started getting petitions signed demanding that Huey P. Newton be given appeal bond, because a third degree conviction allowed a man to have bail. But Judge Friedman, racist and punkish as he was, wouldn't give Huey the bond. Huey is now in some jail in San Luis Obispo. They had denied him bail while the case goes to the higher courts. He is nothing but a political prisoner.

The whole ten-point platform and program and the Party's true ideology and philosophy came out during Huey's trial, although much of the press didn't want to print it. It would have been in our favour if people had learned the truth. People would have known the real

objectives of the Black Panther Party. Charles Garry is the man who really brought all that out, and was able to set forth the philosophy and ideology of the Black Panther Party. A lot of judges in the future are going to try and cut it off, but they can't separate our ideology and our philosophy from ourselves, when they trump charges up on us and try to railroad us to prisons and jails.