***
John Sinclair was a key organizer of the White Panther Party in Detroit. As a result of his radical political and cultural activities he was framed by the police on various drug charges – an in – creasingly common police tactic to suppress dissident individuals and groups.
Today John Sinclair, 29 years old, is serving a sentence in Michigan prisons for a term of 9½ to 10 years (the maximum allowed by law) after being convicted in July, 1969, of having given two marijuana cigarettes to an undercover police agent who posed as his friend in the privacy of Sinclair’s home. The original charge was sale of marijuana. This was dismissed when a judge held that Sinclair was unlawfully entrapped into giving the cigarettes to the undercover agent. Yet the same illegal evidence was used to convict him of the possession charge.
Sinclair’s request for bail pending appeal of his conviction was denied by the sentencing judge who said:
Persons convicted of violent crimes, persons alleged to be part of organized criminal syndicates, are granted bail pending appeal as a matter of course in Michigan. But so far the Michigan appellate courts have denied bail to Sinclair. His conviction was affirmed by one Michigan appeals court and he is now appealing to the Michigam Supreme Court. His chief lawyer, Justin C. Ravitz, has argued in the appeal that,
Shortly after his conviction law enforcement officers sought to guard against a reversal of Sinclair’s conviction and his freedom. They pulled out a confirmed and unstable addict on whose testimony they charged Sinclair with conspiracy to bom a CIA office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sinclair had me the witness only once or twice in passing, he does not even know of the existence of the CIA office, and the bombing alleged in the indictment against him occurred more than a year before the witness first sought to implicate Sinclair. This charge is pending in the federal courts. It will be dismissed unless the United States Supreme Court reverses a ruling by the lower courts that there was illegal wiretapping of one of Sinclair’s co-defendant’s.
Michigan prison officials banished him to a maximum security institution in the most remote part of the state and they have sought to isolate him from other prisoners. Yet John Sinclair has remained resolute. While legal action is being taken to secure his release he has brought to public attention the inhuman and degrading conditions prevailing in Michigan’s prisons and jails. Recently he participated as a party to a suit in which a Michigan court has ordered that the largest pre-trial detention facility in Michigan be closed unless officials remedy its abominable conditions within the next few months.
Today John Sinclair, 29 years old, is serving a sentence in Michigan prisons for a term of 9½ to 10 years (the maximum allowed by law) after being convicted in July, 1969, of having given two marijuana cigarettes to an undercover police agent who posed as his friend in the privacy of Sinclair’s home. The original charge was sale of marijuana. This was dismissed when a judge held that Sinclair was unlawfully entrapped into giving the cigarettes to the undercover agent. Yet the same illegal evidence was used to convict him of the possession charge.
Sinclair’s request for bail pending appeal of his conviction was denied by the sentencing judge who said:
‘John Sinclair has been out to show that the law means nothing to him, and to his ilk, and that they can violate the law with impunity… Well, the time has come. The day has come. And you may laugh, Mr. Sinclair, but you will have a long time to laugh about it.’
Persons convicted of violent crimes, persons alleged to be part of organized criminal syndicates, are granted bail pending appeal as a matter of course in Michigan. But so far the Michigan appellate courts have denied bail to Sinclair. His conviction was affirmed by one Michigan appeals court and he is now appealing to the Michigam Supreme Court. His chief lawyer, Justin C. Ravitz, has argued in the appeal that,
‘Marijuana is not on trial here. John Sinclair is not on trial. What is really on trial is the integrity and independence of the judiciary.’
Shortly after his conviction law enforcement officers sought to guard against a reversal of Sinclair’s conviction and his freedom. They pulled out a confirmed and unstable addict on whose testimony they charged Sinclair with conspiracy to bom a CIA office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sinclair had me the witness only once or twice in passing, he does not even know of the existence of the CIA office, and the bombing alleged in the indictment against him occurred more than a year before the witness first sought to implicate Sinclair. This charge is pending in the federal courts. It will be dismissed unless the United States Supreme Court reverses a ruling by the lower courts that there was illegal wiretapping of one of Sinclair’s co-defendant’s.
Michigan prison officials banished him to a maximum security institution in the most remote part of the state and they have sought to isolate him from other prisoners. Yet John Sinclair has remained resolute. While legal action is being taken to secure his release he has brought to public attention the inhuman and degrading conditions prevailing in Michigan’s prisons and jails. Recently he participated as a party to a suit in which a Michigan court has ordered that the largest pre-trial detention facility in Michigan be closed unless officials remedy its abominable conditions within the next few months.
[DAVIS, Angela. If they come in the morning: voices of resistance. NUCFAD: 1971. p. 109-110]
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