DAVIS TRIAL

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32880, 1 April 1972, Page 17

DAVIS TRIAL

Denial of charges SAN JOSE (California). March 31. The black revolutionary, Angela Davis, told a Court trying her'for murder that a prosecution claim that she plotted a courthouse shooting in August, 1970, because of her love for the black prisoner, George Jackson, was "utterly fantastic.” Delivering the opening statement in her own defence, Angela Davis, charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in the shooting, said that she was totally innocent of all charges against her. Speaking in a calm voice, Angela Davis told the nine women and three men of the all-white jury that she had started working for the release of a black trio of prisoners known as the Soledad Brothers long before she met George Jackson. Jackson, killed in an attempted escape from San Quentin penitentiary in August, 1971, was one of the brothers. The two others. Fleeta Drumgo, aged 26, and George Clutchette, aged 29, were acquitted on Monday of charges of murdering a white prison guard. Angela Davis, aged 28, told the Court that the prosecutor, Mr Albert Harris, had deliberately set out to prove that she was not interested in politics and the conditions of all prisoners but was only motivated by the alleged love for Jackson. "He is taking advantage of the fact that I am a woman,” she said, adding that women were supposed only to act in accordance with the dictates of society under their passions and emotions. “This was an example of male chauvinism,” Angela Davis said.