New Haven Black Panther trials

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On May 20, 1969, Black Panther Party founder and national chairman Bobby Seale spoke at Yale University. He, Ericka Huggins, and nine New Haven area Black Panthers (in addition to two juveniles) were subsequently tried for the May 21 murder and kidnapping of Alex Rackley, a New York Black Panther who had allegedly come under suspicion of being an informer, tortured, and killed in the wetlands of Middlefield, Connecticut, his body dumped into the Coginchaug River. The first trial, of the local defendants (commonly referred to as the "New Haven Nine", an allusion to the "Chicago Seven"), set new records for the scale of judicial proceedings in Connecticut. It was the first in Connecticut to have metal detectors installed at the courtroom doors; jury selection took six weeks, a Connecticut record, and the jury deliberated for six days, another Connecticut record. It was established that Rackley had been held at New Haven Panther headquarters at 365 Orchard St., the home of Panther Warren Kimbro, and tortured and killed by Kimbro, Bridgeport, Connecticut Panther Lonnie McLucas, and national Panther field marshal George W. Sams, Jr., alleged by some to have, himself, been the actual informant.^[1] McLucas was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in prison, while Kimbro and Sams both turned state's evidence in return for reducing the charge to second degree murder with a mandatory life sentence; each spent four years in prison.^[1]^[2]^[3]

In October, 1970, the trial of Seale and Huggins was held; this time an even larger undertaking, involving a full four months of jury selection. The defense argued that the killing had been purely a local affair with no involvement by the national figures, pointing to the actual perpetrators of the crime having been identified in the previous trial with no evidence pointing to Seale or Huggins other than Sams' testimony. The jury was unable to reach a verdict, deadlocked 11 to 1 for Seale's acquittal and 10 to 2 for Huggin's acquittal, and the prosecution declined to retry the case.^[3]^[4] In the aftermath of the trial, commentators noted that both the Panthers and the FBI had had their reputations severely tarnished by the public revelation of their unsavory activities.

The trial became a national cause celebre due to the pervasive feeling that the government, in particular J. Edgar Hoover's FBI with its COINTELPRO program, was waging a no-holds-barred war on the Panthers and the United States left in general. Beginning on May Day, 1970, with the pretrial proceedings, twelve thousand Panthers and their supporters arrived in New Haven individually and in organized groups, housed and fed by community organizations and Yale students in dormitories, meeting en masse on the New Haven Green across the street from the Courthouse daily to hear protest speakers including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines (at that time a graduate student at Yale). Many taunted the New Haven police and in return were tear gassed and retreated to their temporary quarters leading the police behind them to half-heartedly assault the dormitories, as was customary for such demonstrations at the time, but on the whole it was peaceful, with very little injury or property damage and only two minor bombings. The National Guard were kept ready on the highways into the city, but police chief Jim Ahern determined that the city police were controlling the situation adequately, and that the presence of the Guard would only inflame the situation; the events at Kent State University a few days later were to prove him prescient. Yale chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, stated, "All of us conspired to bring on this tragedy by law enforcement agencies by their illegal acts against the Panthers, and the rest of us by our immoral silence in front of these acts," while Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. issued the statement, "I personally want to say that I'm appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass that I am skeptical of the ability of Black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the U.S." While Yale (and many other colleges) went "on strike" from May Day until the end of the term, like most schools it was not actually "shut down", but classes were made "voluntarily optional" for the time and students were graded "Pass/Fail" for the work done up to then.

Along with other Yale law students, future US Senator and first lady Hillary Rodham volunteered to monitor the trial for violations of civil rights, for the American Civil Liberties Union. Years later, during the United States Senate elections, 2000, a widely circulated urban legend would erroneously ascribe responsibility for "getting the defendants off" to her, as well as to future head of the Clinton U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Bill Lann Lee, who was a Yale undergraduate at the time.^[5] Although both were much too junior to have had any role in the actual legal defense, according to John Elvin of Insight magazine, "Insight reviewed biographies of Hillary Clinton by Milton, [David] Brock and Roger Morris for this story and lengthy selections from such other biographies as Barbara Olson’s Hell to Pay. Together, relying on primary and other firsthand sources, they unquestionably back David Horowitz’s contention that Hillary was a campus leader during the Panther protests";^[6] Lee apparently played no prominent role in any protests.^[4]

Detective Nick Pastore, who arrested Seale and brought him to New Haven to stand trial, went on to become New Haven's Chief of Police, widely renowned for his successful policy of community policing, and now heads a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, DC named Criminal Justice Policy. Thirty one years later, when Seale returned to New Haven to speak at the Yale Repertory Theatre, he presented Pastore with a pink porcelain pig and a hug.^[3]