Assata: An Autobiography (33 page)

Q. Do you believe that you could?
A. I think so.

Example number two:

Q. Do you feel that based upon whatever information you may have accumulated about the case from any source whatsoever that you have already formed an opinion in your mind as to the guilt or innocence of this defendant?
A. I would think-yeah, I would think that she was guilty, yeah.

Q. You feel that she's guilty?
A. Yes.

Q. And let me ask you another question. In the event that you might be selected to serve as a juror in this case, do you feel that you could sit and listen to the evidence and judge it impartially, apply the law the judge gives you, set aside this opinion that you have already formed?
A. Yes, I probably could.

Q. And then still judge impartially whether she's guilty or innocent?
A. Yeah. Depending on the evidence and all that.

These were typical of the answers given. The judge refused to remove the above two jurors for cause (on the basis of bias that would prevent them from being fair and impartial jurors) and our peremptory challenges were quickly exhausted. Remaining on the final jury were two friends, one girlfriend, and two nephews of new jersey state troopers. The so-called jury selection process was the biggest farce in legal history.

About halfway through the so-called jury selection process i was ready to call it a day. As bad as this jury sounded, it looked even worse. I didn't want to participate. But almost everyone on the defense team thought not participating was a mistake. "If you don't, we'll never get anything on the record. You'll never even be able to convince an appeal court of anything. You've got to get up there and tell your side of the story. We can prove by the medical testimony that you were shot in the back with your hand raised in the air. We can prove that Harper shot first. We can prove hat after you were shot, your hand was paralyzed and, from the location of his gunshot wound, it would have been impossible for you to have shot him with your left hand. We can prove that Harper shot first. We can prove this if you take the stand. We can prove…”

I was tired of this case. I damn sure didn't believe that any appeals kourt was going to free me or that any racist white, prejudiced jury was either. It was obvious i didn't have one chance in a million of receiving any kind of justice. The financial problems, expert witness problems, personality problems among the lawyers, in addition to rotting away in solitary confinement, had taken their toll on me. Every day when i entered the kourtroom i felt like i was entering the theater of the absurd. I wanted no part of it. The lawyers said that i could create a political climate which, they thought, would force the appeal court to give in if i participated in the trial and put on the record the fact that i was innocent. They were convinced that at the last minute the forensic chemist they were trying to locate in Canada was going to come in and save the day. I didn't put any stock in that, but i knew that keeping the momentum going around what was happening was important. I decided to remain and participate, even though it was killing me.

The trial went absurdly on. An all-white jury was selected, based on the advice of Kunstler and the Jury Project, who decided that even though the jurors seated in the panel were horrible, the others were worse. Not only did the judge deny my motion to act as co-counsel, he refused to permit the lawyers to read my opening statement to the jury. The defense team's headquarters, located in New Brunswick, was broken into, papers rummaged through and stolen, and the judge refused to investigate, calling the motion "frivolous." The state's witnesses, almost all of whom were pigs, got up and said whatever they were told to say. We had no expert witnesses to refute or even evaluate their testimony. The main witness, Harper, the state trooper i was supposed to have shot, testified he had told an "untruth" on direct examination but denied it was a lie.

I spent most of the trial looking up at the ceiling and hating myself for sitting there in the first place. When the time came for me to testify, i was shocked. I had thought i would be able to go into everything-being a fugitive, how i became a fugitive, the entire political scenario that led to being in the kourtroom. But then they told me something about "opening the door." Opening the door, it was explained, was like opening Pandora's box. If i gave the political reasons for my being a fugitive, the prosecutor could then introduce all kinds of prejudicial "evidence" that had nothing to do with what happened on the turnpike in order to show my "criminal intent." If i "opened the door," the prosecutor would be able to introduce manuals of guerrilla warfare and a whole stack of other material they found in the car that had nothing to do with this trial. In the absence of political witnesses (whose subpoenas for their appearance the judge had refused to issue) who would have testified about COINTELPRO's systematic attack on the Black Liberation movement, and on Blacks in general, my testimony would have been distorted. I wanted to back out completely, denounce the trial, but it was too late. The only way out was to testify, get my side of what happened on the record, and avoid "opening the door." The year of solitary confinement had made me almost mute. As i testified, i held on to a small picture of my child.

When i sit back today and examine why i participated in that trial, i think i must have been crazy. I guess i had been through too many trials and gotten too many acquittals and let that stuff go to my head. (Three other indictments had been dismissed. One in Queens state supreme court, charging me with killing policemen, was dis missed because the judge, after examining the grand jury minutes, determined there was not even enough evidence for me to have been indicted. The other two, one in Brooklyn supreme kourt and the other in supreme kourt in New York County, were dismissed for failure of the state to bring me to trial for six years after the indictments had been returned.)

Participating in the new jersey trial was unprincipled and incorrect. By participating, i participated in my own oppression. I should have known better and not lent dignity or credence to that sham. In the long run, the people are our only appeal. The only ones who can free us are ourselves.

I was transferred on April 8, 1978 to the maximum security prison for women in alderson, west virginia, the federal facility designed to hold "the most dangerous women in the country." I had been convicted of no federal crime, but under the interstate compact agreement any prisoner can be shipped, like cargo, to any jail in u.s. territory, including the virgin islands, miles away from family, friends, and lawyers. Through the device of this agreement, Sundiata had been transferred to marion prison in illinois, the federal prison that was the most brutal concentration camp in the country.

Alderson was in the middle of the west virginia mountains, and it seemed as if the mountains formed an impenetrable barrier between the prison and the rest of the world. It had no airport, and to reach it, days of travel were necessary. The trip to alderson was so expensive and difficult that most of the women received family visits only once or twice a year.

I was housed in the maximum security unit (msu) called davis hall. It was surrounded by an electronic fence topped by barbed wire, which in turn was covered by concertina wire (a razor-sharp type of wire that had been outlawed by the Geneva Convention). It was a prison within a prison. This place had a stillness to it like some kind of bizarre death row. Everything was sterile and dead.

There were three major groups in msu: the nazis, the "niggah lovers," and me. I was the only Black woman in the unit, with the exception of one other who left almost immediately after i arrived. The nazis had been sent to alderson from a prison in California, where they had been accused of setting inmates on fire. They were members of the aryan sisterhood, the female wing of the aryan brotherhood-a white racist group that operates in California prisons and is well known for its attacks on Black prisoners.

Hooked up with the nazis were the manson family women, sandra good and linda "squeaky" froame. Sandra had been sentenced to fifteen years for threatening the lives of business executives and government officials, and froame was serving a life sentence for attempting to kill president gerald ford. They were like the Bobbsey twins and clear out of their minds.

They called themselves "red" and "blue." Everyday "red" wore red from head to toe and "blue" wore blue. They were so fanatic in their devotion to charles manson that they wrote to him everyday, informing him about everything that happened at msu. They waited for his "orders," and you can be sure that if he told them to kill someone they would die trying to do it. Also hooked up with the nazis were the hillbilly prisoners: an obese sow who never bathed and walked around barefoot and a tobacco-chewing butch who acted like she was in the confederate army. There was one "independent" nazi who had fallen out with the others. She sported a huge swastika embroidered on her jeans.

Luckily, Rita Brown, a white revolutionary from the George Jackson Brigade, a group based on the West Coast, was among the four or five "niggah lovers." She was a feminist and a lesbian, and helped me to better understand many issues in the white women’s liberation movement. Unlike Jane Alpert, whom i had met in the federal prison in New York, and whom i couldn't stand either personally or politically, Rita did not separate the oppression of women from the racism and classism of u.s. society. We agreed that sexism, like racism, was generated by capitalist, imperialist governments, and that women would never be liberated as long as the institutions that controlled our lives existed. I respected Rita be cause she really practiced sisterhood, and wasn't just one of those big mouths who go on and on about men.

I'm sure that a lot of prison officials thought i'd never leave the place alive. It was the perfect setup for a setup, and i dealt with the situation seriously. I didn't look for trouble, but i let the nazis know that i was ready to defend myself at any time, and that if they wanted ass (like they say in prison) they would have to bring ass. I made it clear to them that i hated them as much as they hated me, and that if anybody's mother had to cry it would be theirs, not Ms. Johnson. After a few run-ins, the nazis stayed out of my way.

After i had been at alderson for a while, we learned that the msu would be closed down because it had been declared unconstitutional. A phase-out stratification program was implemented that enabled those in msu to leave it during the day and to participate in the same activities permitted those in the general population. I got a job working on the general mechanic's crew, was allowed recreation, attended classes, and was able to eat and visit with the other women in general population.

Many of the sisters were Black and poor and from D.C., where every crime is a violation of a federal statute. They were beautiful sisters, serving outrageous sentences for minor offenses. Similar to the situation that existed at the federal prison in New York, some women could not afford to buy cigarettes without forgoing necessities, while others had money, contacts, wore fur coats, and lived as if they were in a different prison. That small group of women had been convicted of drug trafficking. Rumor had it that they per formed the same services in prison as they had on the street, only now they worked for the guards.

One day, as i was returning to davis hall, a middle-aged woman with "salt-and-pepper" hair caught my eye. She had a dignified, schoolteacher look. Something drew me towards her. As i searched her face, i could see that she was also searching mine. Our eyes locked in a questioning gaze. "Lolita?" i ventured. "Assata?" she responded. And there, in the middle of those alderson prison grounds, we hugged and kissed each other.

For me, this was one of the greatest honors of my life. Lolita Lebron was one of the most respected political prisoners in the world. Ever since i had first learned about her courageous struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico, i had read everything i could find that had been written about her. She had spent a quarter of a century behind bars and had refused parole unless her comrades were also freed. After all those years she had remained strong, unbent and unbroken, still dedicated to the independence of Puerto Rico and the liberation of her people. She deserved more respect than anyone could possibly give her, and i could not do enough to demonstrate my respect.

In our subsequent meetings i must have been quite a pain in her neck, falling all over myself to carry her tray, to get a chair for her, or to do whatever i could for her. Lolita had been through hell in prison, yet she was amazingly calm and extremely kind. She had suffered years of isolation in davis hall in addition to years of political and personal isolation. Until the upsurge of the movement for Puerto Rican independence in the late 60s, she had received very little support. Years had gone by without a visit. For years she had been cut off from her country, her culture, her family, and had not been able to speak her own language. Her only daughter had died while she was in prison.

I supported Lolita a hundred percent, but there was one thing about which we did not agree. At the time we met, Lolita was somewhat anticommunist and antisocialist. She was extremely religious and, i think, believed that religion and socialism were two opposing forces, that socialists and communists were completely opposed to religion and religious freedom.

After the resurgence of the Puerto Rican independence move ment, Lolita was visited by all kinds of people. Some were pseudo revolutionary robots who attacked her for her religious beliefs, telling her that to be a revolutionary she had to give up her belief in God. It apparently had never occurred to those fools that Lolita was more revolutionary than they could ever be, and that her religion had helped her to remain strong and committed all those years. I was infuriated by their crass, misguided arrogance.

I had become close friends with a Catholic nun, Mary Alice, while at alderson, who introduced me to liberation theology. I had read some articles by Camillo Torres, the revolutionary priest, and i knew that there were a lot of revolutionary priests and nuns in Latin America. But i didn't know too much about liberation theology. I did know that Jesus had driven the money changers out of the temples and said that the meek would inherit the earth, and a lot of other things that were directly opposed to capitalism. He had told the rich to give away their wealth and said that "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). I knew a little bit, but i had too much respect for Lolita to open my mouth carelessly. I decided to study liberation theology so that i could have an intelligent conversation with her.

I never got around to it, though. The maximum security unit closed, and i was shipped back to new jersey. Lolita is free now, and she is no longer isolated from what is going on in her part of the world or in her church. I know that wherever she is, she is praying and struggling for her people.