[Pnews] Former Black Panther Romaine ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald seeks parole after 49 years behind bars

[Prisoner News]

http://sfbayview.com/2018/05/former-black-panther-romaine-chip-fitzgerald-seeks-parole-after-49-years-behind-bars/ 



  Former Black Panther Romaine ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald seeks parole after 49
  years behind bars

May 1, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

*/by Ann Garrison/*

On April 26, former Black Panther Herman Bell was released from prison 
in New York State after 45 years. That leaves at least 10 surviving 
members of the Black Panther Party behind bars, including Romaine “Chip” 
Fitzgerald, who is currently held at the California State Prison-Los 
Angeles. His next parole hearing is scheduled for May 4.

Fitzgerald was convicted of murdering a security guard and attempting to 
murder a highway patrolman after he and fellow Panthers were stopped for 
a broken tail light in 1969. He pled innocent at the time but has since 
changed that plea to “no contest.” He has spent 49 years behind bars, 
more time than any other former Panther. I spoke to his friend Arthur 
League, a former Panther who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

*Ann Garrison*: Arthur, why hasn’t your friend Chip Fitzgerald been 
paroled, despite eligibility, for so many years?

*Arthur League*: Well, his case has been handled so much differently 
than those of other people with similar cases that you can only draw one 
conclusion: It’s because he was a member of the Black Panther Party. 
Chip’s been in prison for 49 years, but there’re people who’ve been 
convicted of multiple murders who’ve been released.

Every time you raise that question, the state responds that people like 
Chip are just common criminals, not political prisoners. And I would 
argue that they release common criminals.

People who were not members of the Black Panther Party or who were not 
political are released, but Chip and other former Panthers and political 
people are not released. It’s not rocket science to see the disparity 
and conclude that he’s still inside because he’s a former Panther. He’s 
gone to the parole board with many years of what’s called “clean time,” 
but they still haven’t released him.

*AG*: “Clean time” meaning with no record of prison rule infractions?

*AL*: Yes.

*AG*: Chip grew up in the Los Angeles area, in Watts and Compton, and 
became active in the party for only two years before he was sentenced to 
death at age 20. Can you tell us about the organizing he did in the Los 
Angeles area?

*AL*: Chip took a lot of responsibility for the breakfast program. He 
was the one who opened the facility where we served breakfast in Los 
Angeles – breakfast for children. Some of the kids who are grown up now 
still remember him.

He did general party work; together we sold newspapers, organized 
political education classes, and escorted seniors to get their checks 
cashed so that they wouldn’t be harassed by people trying to extort 
money from them. That’s the general Panther work that we did.

*AG*: If you listen to Chip’s 2007 voice interview on Indybay 
<https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/22/18455393.php> or read his 
letters, it’s clear that he’s still full of love for people, not just 
Black people but all oppressed people. He said he wants to go back to 
the neighborhood he worked in and talk to the youth about building 
community instead of fighting amongst themselves. Can you imagine that?

*AL*: Absolutely. He took risks in prison by telling the youth there 
that they should be building community instead of gangs.

*AG*: Chip’s trial, including jury selection, lasted only five days, and 
he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted when the 1972 
US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was “cruel and unusual 
punishment” and therefore unconstitutional because – as employed – it 
was racist and “arbitrary and capricious.” Can you tell us about Chip’s 
trial and his legal representation at the time?

*AL*: Well, like a lot of people without many resources, he was 
represented by a public defender, and public defenders don’t have a lot 
of resources to defend their clients even if they try. But for a capital 
trial to go on for basically four days – though technically I guess 
there was a fifth day – that kind of lets you know what his 
representation was like.

He had very poor representation. Regrettably, that’s the way it was. But 
a four- or five-day death penalty case? I don’t think so.

*AG*: And does he have legal representation for this parole hearing in 
the first week of May?

*AL*: Yes, he does.

*AG*: Chip mailed me a memorandum that was given to him over two weeks 
ago, notifying him of a list of “confidential information” that would be 
held against him at his parole hearing. It seems that anonymous, aka 
“confidential,” informants alleged that he was involved in various kinds 
of gang activity from March 2010 through November 2012, before the 
prison hunger strike in 2013.

Someone or some people seem to have reported that he was an 
“associate/member” of the Security Threat Group (STG)-I Black Panther 
Party, the STG-II Black Panther Party, the STG-1 Black Guerrilla Family 
and an influencer or leader of the STG-II East Coast Crips. In an 
allegation so racist that it should be illegal, someone accused him of 
being “influential and/or in a leadership position amongst the Black 
inmate population.” That’s actually printed on the memo from the 
California Department of Corrections.

Chip said that all these allegations were made after a security squad 
discovered that Romaine Chip Fitzgerald was in their prison, then 
started closely monitoring his mail and confiscated all his property 
looking for evidence of criminal or gang activity. He said there was 
none, so they fabricated these allegations that now urgently imperil his 
hope of finally being paroled next week. What’s your response to this 
record attributed to anonymous informants?

*AL*: From 2010 to 2012, their so-called informants were supposedly 
telling them that Chip was a member of the Black Panther Party, but the 
party had been dissolved 30 years earlier, in 1982. Everyone knows Chip 
was a Panther in 1969 when he was arrested. But in 2010, 2011, and 2012? 
Really?

And he was never a member of any of those other groups, but it’s stuff 
like this that keeps people like Chip locked up for years on end. Once 
the lying starts, they (prison authorities) seem unable to stop, they 
just keep adding more and more, no matter how unbelievable it is.

The word they love most is “anonymous.” How do you contest anonymous 
informants?

*AG*: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

*AL*: If Chip isn’t paroled, he should be able to win his freedom by 
filing a writ of habeas corpus in Los Angeles Superior Court saying that 
the parole board’s ruling is “arbitrary and capricious.” That means it’s 
based on the whim of the parole board, not on the law or his prison record.

*AG*: Does he have the legal help he needs to do that?

*AL*: Not yet, and after 49 years in prison, Chip doesn’t have 
resources. If anyone has legal help to offer or suggest, or financial 
resources to help pay for legal help, they can contact the editor of the 
San Francisco Bay View newspaper, editor at sfbayview.com 
<mailto:editor at sfbayview.com>.

/Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco 
Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy 
and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes 
region. She can be reached at //ann at kpfa.org/ <mailto:ann at kpfa.org>/. /

//Romaine Fitzgerald, B-27527, CSP LAC B4-50, P.O. Box 4490, Lancaster 
CA 93539//

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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