[Freethe SF8] SF 8 supporters reply to Chronicle

[SF-8 case]

I sent a letter to the Chronicle yesterday regarding their terrible 
article.  Although they may not publish any letters, I think it would 
be good for as many people as possible to send a quick message 
expressing outrage over their article.  This could help get a meeting 
with them or support effort to get an op ed supportive of the 8 
published.  Letters can be sent to 
<mailto:letters at sfchronicle.com>letters at sfchronicle.com or through 
their website comments section.

Below are letters from Stuart Hanlon & Michael Lyon which they sent 
and could help people frame their comments although I don't think 
each letter needs to be that detailed since the point is more to 
register our disgust.

Diana Block
*****************************************
 From Stuart Hanlon, attorney for Herman Bell

I am one of  the attorneys for the seven former Black Panthers 
charged with the 1971 murder of a S.F. police officer. Your article 
"Idealist Slaying Still Haunts Today," not only is misleading , but 
contains outright lies and is based on nothing but the speculation of 
your writer or others who know nothing about this case

We have received hundred of thousands of pages of evidence and there 
is no evidence whatsoever that links this young woman to the killing 
of Sgt Young, or her killing to those seven men facing charges, or 
the Black Panther Party or any other organization connected in any 
way to the case. Yet your article says she was likely involved and 
that  the seven men facing charges are responsible for her death.

It is difficult to  imagine any reason why you would print such  an 
article filled with these false innuendos linking the sad and tragic 
death of this young woman with this group of men facing a trial for 
something that happened close to forty years ago  other than a 
blatant attempt  to bias the prospective jury pool against the seven 
men on trial.  It is difficult enough to get a fair  trial 
thirty-eight years after a crime, when evidence is destroyed, 
witnesses dead or senile, and all memories faded by time and age. 
Your article makes the possibility of a fair trial even more remote.

This case is being prosecuted by  the Attorney General  of California 
and investigated by the FBI and SF police department. They don't need 
any more help trying to falsely convict these men from a biased  and 
misinformed  writer and a paper that cares nothing about truth or justice.

****************************************************
Editor,

Your sensationalist May 24 article, "Idealist's slaying in '71 still 
haunts today," shows just how baseless the State's prosecution 
of  the SF8 for the 1971 killing of a SF policeman is.  This 
prosecution is based only on "confessions" tortured out of the 
defendants by New Orleans police in 1973, but  the Chronicle 
shamelessly helps prosecute  the case by insinuating that the SF8 
also killed a young woman whom the Chronicle says cooperated in the 
policeman's killing.  The story says a woman was discovered murdered 
37 years ago in Stanislaus County, but gives questionable evidence 
that she is missing Panther sympathizer Mary Alice Willey, and no 
evidence that the woman who entered the Ingleside Station to file a 
stolen purse police report before the killing was Willey, or even an 
accomplice at all. It's all spin. This entire SF8 case, with its 
missing murder weapon, its misplaced records on fingerprints which 
failed to implicate the SF8, and its DNA evidence which fails to 
implicate the SF8, is a plan to promote racist conspiracy theories, 
in hopes of stalling future movements against police brutality and 
burying the anti-racist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Drop the 
charges against the SF8 in their Preliminary Hearing on June 8th.

Michael Lyon
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