[Freethe SF8] 6 brothers on the street and in court with Herman & Jalil

[SF-8 case]

[]

  Photo credit Scott Braley

Due to attorney schedule conflicts, the 
collateral estoppel hearing originally scheduled 
for today in the SF 8 case was re-scheduled until October 10th at 9:30 am.

Meanwhile spirits were high in front of the 
courthouse and later in the hallway as 6 of the 8 
brothers were present in style, wearing their 
best, greeting the numerous supporters and 
speaking with the press. As they noted, their 
presence in the community and back with their 
families is unprecedented in a case like this. 
Community support is what made it possible for them to be out on bail.

More sobering is the fact that they were 
separated in the courtroom from their 
co-defendants, Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell – 
Both of whom remain in chains and shackles, both 
of whom have spent 36 & 34 years in prison so 
far, both of whom are parole eligible in New 
York, and both of whom remain an inspiration to 
their co-defendants and to all of us. Ray 
Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Hank Jones, Richard 
O’Neal, Harold Taylor and Cisco Torres were 
instead, seated in the jury box with their 
attorneys. (Now that would make a fine jury!)

Judge Moscone did allow the eight to remain in 
court to confer together once supporters left. 
This is a very rare occurrence and an indicator 
of possible future meetings as well as an 
indicator of how the judge is acknowledging the 
rights of the defense to work collectively. The 
eight had been meeting together in the SF County 
Jail on a weekly basis before they were freed on bail.

Attorney Stuart Hanlon, representing Herman Bell, 
asked the judge to be aware that issues remain 
with the obtaining of full discovery in the case.

All SF Police cases use what are called 
“inspector chronos” or chronological reports. 
These reports list all acts the police do in the 
case. The prosecutors have been asked to provide 
chronos on ongoing attempts to question or 
pressure some defendant’s family members.

“Our concern is that the Attorney General is 
hiding discovery, or avoiding turning it over, by 
saying there are various agencies involved and 
they don’t really know, or are not sure, what the 
different agencies are doing,” according to 
Hanlon. The defense has been demanding an 
organized and indexed method of turning over 
hundreds of thousands of pages of discovery (done 
on DVDs). There continue to be delays despite 
joint meetings with the prosecutors to expedite the process.

For example, until earlier this month, the 
reports of DNA tests taken in June of 2006 were 
not made available. These DNA samples were taken 
in coordinated, early-morning raids throughout 
the country and included Jalil Muntaqim being 
pulled from his cell in New York and transported 
to another prison by an armed tactical squad 
(<http://www.jerichony.org/jalil.html>http://www.jerichony.org/jalil.html) 
in the middle of the night merely in order to 
swab his mouth. All this suited the media hype 
and drama that the prosecution orchestrated, but 
after delays of over a year, all the reports came 
back negative, matching none of the eight 
brothers to any evidence in the case.

“We are also going to deal with this by getting 
to the bottom of the mysterious Operation Phoenix 
– we want to see who is involved, which agencies 
are doing what, and who is in charge and 
responsible for what. This way, the prosecutors 
cannot hide behind ‘I don’t know.’  We will soon 
be filing motions asking for evidentiary hearings 
to shed light on this mystery – Operation Phoenix,” explained Hanlon.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/cdhrsupport_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20070924/a33ce116/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: clip_image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 11625 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/cdhrsupport_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20070924/a33ce116/attachment.jpg