Gaol battle next to Davis trial

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 11

Gaol battle next to Davis trial

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright?

SAN JOSE (California), March 29.

A convict was shot dead in a gaol-break attempt with hostages next to the Angela Davis courthouse—causing concern to some members of her trial defence team that jurors might be influenced against the black revolutionary.

The drama forced a day’s postponement in the trial of Angela Davis on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy.

She is accused of planning a raid on another courthouse in 1970 in which a judge and three others were shot dead. The defence will deliver its opening statement in her trial today. Yesterday’s incident occurred in a prison next door to the Davis trial venue. Three convicts, parading for sick

call, seized two hostages at knifepoint to try to secure a getaway car. The three convicts made their attempt just an hour before the Davis trial was about to start. A white prisoner, Jacob Zitzer, alias Chuck Williamson, aged 30, a noted prison escaper, was shot dead while his two accomplices, Normel Lucas, aged 22, and Ted Guerrero, aged 24, were overpowered with karate chops before they could cut the throats of their two hostages. The hostages, a medical assistant in the gaol sick bay, Miss Sue Kawamoto, aged 20, and a public defender, Mr Lexander Safonoff, aged 31, were released, shaken but unharmed. Jurors stood around watching armed police swarm to the gaol in scenes that partly recalled the courtroom shooting Angela Davis is accused of helping to plot. Defence sources said that they believed defence lawyers might seek to question jurors about what they saw and whether they were influenced by witnessing the dramatic events at first-hand. But the defence lawyer, Mr Howard Moore, expressed confidence in the jury of nine women and three men, saying: "We are reasonably confident that the people we have on this jury will not let this sway their judgement." The sources said that Angela Davis, who is acting as her own counsel with four lawyers, might deliver the defence’s opening statement today.

The defence rebuttal was expected to attack the prosecution claim that Angela Davis provided guns for the Marin County courthouse shooting because she was in love with the prisoner, George Jackson, and wanted hostages taken to bargain for his release. The prosecutor, Mr Albert Harris, said on Monday that Angela Davis, a Communist university teacher, acted only because of her love for Jackson and not out of a political commitment to secure the release of a black trio of prisoners called the Soledad Brothers, which included Jackson. Jackson was killed in an escape attempt at San Quentin prison in August, 1971.

The defence sources said that the defence would strongly attack Mr Harris’s claim that at a legal conference in July, 1971, that both Jackson and Angela Davis were prisoners, the two had a “passionate, physical involvment” in a holding cell. Miss Stephanie Allan, a spokesman for the defence said today: “There were 15 other people in that room with them. All they did was kiss when they arrived and when they left.”