[Freethe SF8] SF Labor Council passes resolution - Dismiss all charges against SF 8

[SF-8 case]

San Francisco Labor Council Resolution - Adopted February 9, 2009


Calling for Attorney General Jerry Brown to 
dismiss all charges against the San Francisco 8 defendants

Whereas, Herman Bell, Ray Boudreaux, Richard 
Brown, Henry (Hank) Jones, Jalil Muntaquim 
(Anthony Bottom), Harold Taylor and Francisco 
Torres, seven men collectively known as the San 
Francisco 8 defendants [charges having been 
dropped against Richard O’Neal], are a group of 
community activists who have devoted their lives 
to serving their communities and making a 
difference, and are fathers, grandfathers, even grandfathers; and

Whereas, all of these men were members or 
associates of the Black Panther Party for 
Self-Defense (BPP), a primary target of the FBI’s 
unconstitutional COINTELPRO program in the late 
1960s and early ‘70s, a program designed to 
disrupt and destroy a number of progressive 
organizations in many United States cities; and

Whereas, in 1973, three Black activists – 
including one of the defendants – were arrested 
in New Orleans and tortured by local police, and 
interrogated by two San Francisco police 
detectives at intervals between the torture, 
which lasted several days, during which the three 
men were separated from each other, stripped 
naked, covered with wool blankets soaked in 
boiling water, beaten with slapjacks, suffocated 
with plastic bags tied over their heads, sleep 
deprived, kicked, beaten, shocked with electric 
cattle prods on their genitals, anus and under the neck; and

Whereas, statements resulting from the New 
Orleans torture were used to bring charges in the 
mid-1970s in several jurisdictions (including 
charges for the 1971 killing of a San Francisco 
police officer); all of these charges were 
dismissed when the judges learned that these 
‘confessions’ had been coerced under torture; and

Whereas, in 2007, after 36 years, the prosecution 
re-filed the charges against the San Francisco 
8  based on the same tortured ‘confessions’ 
illegally obtained in 1973. By September 2007, 6 
of the 8 who were eligible for bail were released 
thanks to the support of their families and 
supporters, who saw the case as a continuation of 
the COINTELPRO attack on the Black liberation movement; and

Whereas, this case was reopened based on 
questionable claims of "new" evidence; and

Whereas, the San Francisco District Attorney’s 
office declined to renew the prosecution of these 
community activists, but the California Attorney 
General imposed the current prosecution of this 
case, and the jail and court costs of potentially 
millions of tax dollars to be incurred by the City of San Francisco;

Therefore be it Resolved, that in the name of 
fairness, justice and human rights – and to 
express our outrage that this prosecution based 
on coercion and tortured ‘confessions’ in this 
36-year-old case would be allowed to proceed – 
that the San Francisco Labor Council calls on 
California Attorney General Jerry Brown to drop 
all charges against the San Francisco 8 defendants;

And be it further Resolved, that this resolution 
be forwarded to affiliates for concurrence and action.
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