[Pnews] COINTELPRO target Marshall Eddie Conway released after 44 years in prison

[Prisoner News]

  COINTELPRO target Marshall Eddie Conway released after 44 years in prison

*http://www.examiner.com/article/cointelpro-target-marshall-eddie-conway-released-after-44-years-prison*

March 6, 2014

Marshall Eddie Conway was released from a Maryland prison on March 4 
after nearly forty-four years behind bars for a crime he says he didn't 
commit. Conway, freed over an unconstitutional jury instruction, denied 
any role in the 1970 murder of Baltimore police officer Donald Sager. 
Conway was Minister of Defense of the Baltimore Black Panthers 
<http://www.examiner.com/topic/black-panthers> and a target of 
COINTELPRO 
<http://www.examiner.com/article/crimes-of-cointelpro-heard-at-northeastern-law-school-seminar>, 
the notorious FBI counterintelligence program, at the time of his arrest 
for the shooting of Sager and a partner.

Two Black Panthers, Jack Ivory Johnson and Jackie Powell, were arrested 
near the crime scene and confessed claiming the killing was part of an 
initiation into the group.

Bob Boyle, Conway's attorney of twenty years, explained the legal 
maneuver which gained Conway his freedom:

"We've actually been trying various legal ways to get Eddie Conway out 
of prison for many, many years, some based on the counterintelligence 
program, on the unfairness of his trial, on ineffective assistance of 
trial counsel. A few years ago, the---then, a few years ago, the Court 
of Appeals of Maryland held that the jury instructions, which were 
typically given in trials in the early 1970s---in fact, up until 
1980---were unconstitutional. Specifically, the judge told juries back 
then, and up until 1980, that the jury need not follow the instructions 
of the court, that the instructions are simply advisory, which means 
even though the judge told the jury that the prosecution had to prove 
its case beyond a reasonable doubt, for example, he also told the jury, 
"Well, you could ignore that instruction, and it's up to you whether to 
vote guilty or not guilty."

Boyle continued, "And over the course of the last few months, we reached 
an agreement with the state's attorney to resentence Mr. Conway to time 
served. And as a result of that agreement, he was released yesterday 
after... nearly 44 years in prison---actually, 43 years and 11 months."

Conway, an Army veteran and postal worker, was arrested at his job while 
sorting mail. A policeman, Roger Nolan, claimed he exchanged gunshots 
with Conway in a dark alley in the vicinity of the Sager murder.

Conway told Democracy Now 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/5/exclusive_freed_ex_black_panther_marshall> 
why he joined the Black Panthers. "I looked at all the different 
organizations, and the Black Panther Party represented at least a 
serious attempt to start feeding the children, to start educating the 
population, to start organizing healthcare and stuff like that. So I 
joined and started working with them," said Conway.

"I think some of the most active people in the organization was 
targeted, followed around by the COINTELPRO 
<http://www.examiner.com/topic/cointelpro>, and opportunities were 
created with agent provocateurs or police informers, or even just 
incidents were created, that ultimately led to them destroying like 25 
of our 37 state chapters in a period of 18 months. And they locked up 
the primary leadership, all the national leadership, or they chased them 
out of the country. And then they started focusing on the secondary 
leadership. At that time, I was considered part of the secondary 
leadership. And they pretty much locked us up or framed some of us or 
chased some of us out of the country....But by the time we found out 
that COINTELPRO was out there and operating, pretty much the Black 
Panther Party had been destroyed."

Noam Chomsky has studied COINTELPRO and commented, "COINTELPRO, which 
you mentioned, is actually the worst systematic and extended violation 
of basic civil rights by the federal government 
<http://www.examiner.com/government>. It maybe compares with Wilson's 
Red Scare. But COINTELPRO went on from the late '50s right through all 
of the '60s; it finally ended, at least theoretically ended, when the 
courts terminated it in the early '70s. And it was serious."

Chomsky blamed the FBI for the "Gestapo-style assassination of two black 
organizers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, literally."

"I mean, the FBI set up the assassination. The Chicago police actually 
carried it out, broke into the apartment at 4:00 in the morning and 
murdered them. Fake information that came from the FBI about arms stores 
and so on. There was almost nothing about it. In fact, the information 
about this, remarkably, was released at about the same time as 
Watergate. I mean, as compared. And in this case, this is a case of 
justice being done, even though it's delayed.

Conway's attorney, Robert Boyle, commented: "Eddie went to trial at a 
time when COINTELPRO was still active and the jury did not know that 
there was this campaign to neutralize the leadership and the 
organization of the Black Panther Party. And so, he---although it was 
presented---tried to be presented at trial that there was this campaign 
of neutralization and people being framed up, we and his lawyers at the 
time lacked the information to do so. So, this has to be looked at in 
that context, and also in the context that many of the victims of 
COINTELPRO, you know, remain in prison today. Many, many---there are 
former members of the Black Panther Party who have been in jail for 40 
years or more.

"There was a de facto war being waged between the police and the black 
community," Boyle explained. "Eddie Conway was a well-known person in 
the Baltimore Black Panthers. If it wasn't Eddie, it was going to be 
someone else from the Party."

The prosecution also relied on a jailhouse informant 
<http://%22It%20was%20an%20extremely%20weak%20case%20against%20himhttp://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-03-04/news/bs-md-ci-eddie-conway-black-panther-released-20140304_1_former-black-panther-police-officer-killing> 
named Charles Reynolds, who testified that Conway detailed the crime to 
him as they sat together in a cell, including a little-known detail 
about a watch stolen from the wounded police officer.

Supporters have focused on the idea that Conway was set up and Nolan 
misidentified the man he was chasing. The Panthers at the time were 
under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO, 
a clandestine war on political activists waged by J. Edgar Hoover. 
Hoover's role in the case remains shrouded, the result of shredded and 
redacted COINTELPRO memoranda.

In 2001, the Baltimore City Council passed a resolution urging Governor 
Parris Glendening to pardon Conway, calling him a political prisoner 
innocent of murder. The governor ignored the resolution.

Conway's case is eerily like that of Ed Poindexter 
<http://www.examiner.com/article/prison-interview-with-ed-poindexter-on-cointelpro-and-the-omaha-police> 
in Nebraska. Poindexter is half of the Omaha Two 
<http://www.examiner.com/topic/omaha-two-1>, Black Panther leaders 
imprisoned for the murder of a police officer. Mondo we Langa 
<http://www.examiner.com/article/federal-judge-says-supreme-court-got-it-wrong-on-black-panther-mondo-we-langa>(formerly 
David Rice) was Poindexter's co-defendant in the April 1971 trial that 
convicted them for the murder of Omaha police officer Larry Minard, Sr.

Like Conway, Poindexter was an Army veteran turned postal worker. For 
both men Black Panther activities had to be squeezed in around the 
shifts at the post office.

In Conway's case there was no direct physical evidence linking him to 
the murder. In Poindexter's case there was no direct physical evidence 
<http://www.examiner.com/article/omaha-world-herald-photo-disproves-police-account-omaha-two-cointelpro-case> 
linking him to the murder.

However, the two cases have a sharp distinction. In Conway's case, J. 
Edgar Hoover 
<http://www.examiner.com/article/j-edgar-hoover-signed-off-on-secret-cointelpro-plan-to-guide-omaha-police>'s 
role remains unclear, forever shrouded by shredded paper. In 
Poindexter's case, Hoover's role is documented in FBI reports. Hoover 
gave the command to withhold a laboratory report from the FBI Crime 
Laboratory on the identify of the anonymous 911 caller who lured Minard 
to his death by bombing in a vacant house.. Hoover gave the order to let 
a killer get away with murder in order to pin the crime on Ed Poindexter 
and Mondo we Langa.

Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa remain incarcerated in the 
maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary, serving life sentences, 
while they continue to deny any involvement in the death of Minard.

There is one other difference between Conway's case and that of 
Poindexter.. Maryland courts are willing to correct past mistakes. 
Nebraska courts are not.

*For further information see Crime Magazine 
<http://www.crimemagazine.com/j-edgar-hoover-and-framing-omaha-two>*

/Permission granted to reprint/

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