[Ppnews] Tortured ex-Panther is still main government witness

[Political Prisoner News]

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/25//cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/25/MNGAUNOPVJ1.DTL>Ex-militant 
seen as likely to testify at cohorts' trial
- <mailto:jvanderbeken at sfchronicle.com>Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle 
Staff Writer
Thursday, January 25, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/25/MNGAUNOPVJ1.DTL&type=printable

More than 30 years ago, Ruben Scott testified against his alleged 
Black Liberation Army brethren in the slaying of two New York City 
police officers.

Now, defense attorneys suspect, Scott will be alone among the former 
militants to testify against his one-time confederates, who were 
charged Tuesday in the 1971 slaying of San Francisco police Sgt. John 
Young and a larger conspiracy to kill police.

While state prosecutors won't say whether Scott will take the witness 
stand, defense attorneys say he is the only insider whose testimony 
has ever been used to convict BLA members of a crime.

And he is the only former BLA member previously indicted in the 
slaying of Young whom prosecutors have chosen not to name again in 
the current case. The charges against him were dismissed in 1976.

"We assume he is a witness for the government -- he had a case 
dismissed in San Francisco on this very same incident," said Stuart 
Hanlon, a lawyer for Herman Bell, an alleged leader in the group who 
was convicted when Scott testified in the New York case and who now 
is accused of killing Young with a shotgun.

If Scott is slated to take the stand for the prosecution, a major 
issue will be whether his testimony should be allowed -- or believed 
-- because of statements he long ago gave implicating himself and two 
other reputed BLA members in Young's slaying while incarcerated in a 
New Orleans jail.

The confession led to the 1975 indictments of Scott, Harold Taylor 
and John Bowman in the ambush attack on San Francisco's Ingleside 
Police Station that resulted in Young's death and the wounding of a 
civilian clerk.

But the statements were ruled inadmissible because of court findings 
that they had been obtained after the men were tortured by New 
Orleans police and denied access to defense lawyers.

Scott, in a taped interview with a radio journalist in December 1975, 
said he was subjected to days of torture in New Orleans. The abuse 
relented, he said, only when he was speaking to federal agents and 
San Francisco police.

(played during an Africa Today program at this link)
http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=10569&page=1&type=all

He recounted how he was stripped and punched in the stomach and 
chest. He said at one point his feet were put in a water tank and he 
was threatened with electrocution. New Orleans police also stuck him 
with cattle prods and needles, he said.

"They have a little thing: They don't hit you in the face, where it 
would show," he said. One investigator cocked a gun and threatened to 
shoot him through the ear "to see if the bullet would come out the 
other ear," he said.

Over a period of four to five days, he said, "New Orleans police 
department would whup on you, beat you, then bring you to the FBI to talk."

The alleged abuse occurred two years after Young was shot on Aug. 29, 
1971, when at least three men stormed into Ingleside Police Station 
and, through an opening in the station's bulletproof glass, blasted 
the veteran police officer with a shotgun, killing him. A civilian 
clerk also was shot in the attack, but she survived.

The current charges name Bell as Young's killer. Also named in the 
charges is another man convicted of killing the New York officers, 
Anthony Bottom. They are also accused of orchestrating a larger 
conspiracy to kill officers between 1968 and 1973. Taylor and Bowman, 
who recently died, are also named in the charges, as are Richard 
Brown, Francisco "Cisco" Torres, Ray Boudreaux and Henry Watson 
Jones. Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth is charged but has not been 
arrested. Richard O'Neal, a custodian at San Francisco City Hall, is 
named in the broader conspiracy but not in the Young slaying. Brown 
and O'Neal appeared in San Francisco Superior Court on Tuesday but 
did not enter a plea.

Hanlon, Bell's defense lawyer in the new San Francisco case, said 
that given what Scott has been subjected to -- and other statements 
he has made at odds with his past confession -- his credibility as a 
witness is doubtful.

"He has given various statements saying he was tortured," said 
Hanlon. "He's just all over the place. He had been tortured. He is a 
tortured soul."

Scott also recounted the torture when he testified in 1975 to help 
convict BLA members Bell, now 59, Bottom, now 55, and the late Albert 
Nuh Washington of the slayings of the two New York police.

The prosecutor in the New York slayings, Robert Tanenbaum, now a 
private lawyer in Beverly Hills who co-wrote a book on the case, said 
Scott's testimony helped gain convictions of three men in the May 21, 
1971, slaying of New York police Officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini.

The first trial of five men originally charged in the New York 
officers' death did not go well for prosecutors, Tanenbaum said. 
After the first trial ended in a hung jury, a New York police 
investigator went to New Orleans to talk to Scott again, Tanenbaum recalled.

The investigator said Scott had previously suggested he had an "ace 
in the hole," Tanenbaum said. At that point, Scott -- facing charges 
in San Francisco in the slaying of Young four years earlier -- 
suddenly agreed to testify against the five men who were accused, 
helping secure three convictions. The charges against two brothers, 
Francisco and Gabriel Torres, were dismissed during the second trial.

Scott, at the time of the second trial, was being held on suspicion 
of a bank robbery in New Orleans.

It was Scott, Tanenbaum said, who led authorities to a missing gun 
that belonged to one of the New York officers. Scott went to 
Mississippi with authorities, who unearthed the gun where Scott said 
he watched Bell bury it on a farm where Bell grew up.

"Everything he said to us was corroborated -- when you put a witness 
on, you vouch for his credibility as an officer of the court. I 
thought he was credible. Based on the corroboration, I thought he was 
highly credible," the former prosecutor said.

Scott also recounted how New Orleans police tortured him into 
confession, using cattle prods, Tanenbaum said. He also expressed 
fear to the judge that his life was at risk in custody.

Amid the allegations of abuse, the first San Francisco case collapsed 
in 1976. The grand jury indictment was dismissed after a court found 
that the men lacked counsel and had been tortured in New Orleans.

Michael Burt, who represents Boudreaux in the Young slaying, said 
Scott apparently testified before the grand jury that later indicted 
him. Burt said he has records showing that Scott was the only one of 
three accused who got such a subpoena. He apparently was a 
cooperating witness, Burt said.

Still, Burt said, defense lawyers have never seen any grand jury 
testimony by Scott or anyone else in the indictment.

"The file is missing -- we have made lots of efforts to get it," Burt 
said. "The original file and testimony and everything that happened 
are no longer part of the public record."

E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at 
<mailto:jvanderbeken at sfchronicle.com>jvanderbeken at sfchronicle.com.

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