“This may have been more political theater than physical threat, but it cannot be denied that the Black Power style scared whites half to death. There was some satisfaction in that, even if the results were not always politically productive” (199).
John Frey was killed during the height of the Black Panther's fame. Before the trial took even place, people were led to believe that a Black Panther had murdered a policeman in cold blood. Alternatively, people fighting for the Black Panther cause believed that Huey Newton was being set up by the government and denied a fair trial. Similar to the case with Robert Teel in Blood Done Sign My Name, protests and violence ensued with the trial. The reactions to the trial was a culmination of the racial tensions that had been building up across America, and the fact that Huey Newton was a symbol of the Black Panther Party.
The Huey Newton case: The case was against Huey Newton, co founder and Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, for murdering police officer John Frey in October of 1967. It began when Officer Frey and his partner pulled Newton over for a traffic stop. The police questioning became heated, and led to a shootout between Newton and the two police officers. Newton was shot in the stomach; then, he shot the two police officers, killing one. Newton then ordered a bystander, Dell Ross, to drive him to the hospital. Newton was on probation at that time. The charges were first-degree murder, felonious assault, and kidnapping.
Interview With DA D. Lowell Jensen: I had the opportunity to interview former Alameda Country District Attorney, D. Lowell Jensen, who prosecuted Huey Newton in the 1967 trial. Jensen described the trail as "public and dramatic", as there were protestors surrounding the courthouse for days. Due to the protestors and Newton's high position in the Black Panther Party, the trial had heavy, nation-wide media coverage. Mr. Jensen recalled that it was difficult for the jurors, who eventually held a motion to change venue. The trial took three months, and it took the jury an unusually long time- four days- to deliberate. Jensen remembered the tenseness between races at that time, and further violence that took place in Oakland after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in 1968.
Trial: According to the transcripts of the trial, Huey Newton used his responses in the courtroom as a political forum. He outlined the objectives of the Black Panther Party and described broader, systematic judicial prejudices against Blacks in America. D. Lowell Jensen frequently objected on the basis that Huey Newton's claims were irrelevant to the case at hand. The prosecution's argument hinged on the fact that Newton's probation status was still in effect at the time of the crime. Seeing as he was found guilty of the previous crime, Newton was forbidden to have a firearm. The defendant claimed that his prohibition had ended that day, and that he was driving home to celebrate when he got pulled over by the police officers. However, he could not prove that his probation had ended. The Black Panther Party lawyer, Charles Garry, argued that the Alameda Grand Jury System was "unconstitutional, secretive, and prejudiced against minorities and the poor" (California Court of Appeals). Garry claimed that this case was an attempt by the police to destroy the Black Panthers and Huey Newton. He also said that a jury by peers was impossible because Blacks were underrepresented on juries. After much dispute about black representation, the jury was ultimately composed of 11 White people and one Black person. The kidnapping charges were dropped because the van driver refused to testify, and claimed that he could not remember the events as they occurred. Newton was acquitted on the murder and kidnapping charges but sentenced 2-15 years for voluntary manslaughter.
After the Trial: The jury decision was a disappointment to both sides. Huey Newton went to jail for three years, then the defense appealed the decision for a re trial in 1970. During the first trial, the judge had not informed the jurors of the option to convict Newton of involuntary manslaughter, because he could have been disoriented and unconscious after Frey shot him. The charge was changed to involuntary manslaughter, but the prosecution presented virtually the same case as before. The jury's ultimate decision was a mistrial. District Attorney Jensen reluctantly dropped the charges against Newton in December of 1970.
Newton was freed, but did not fare well in the years that followed. In 1978, Newton was convicted of possessing an illegal weapon but subsequently acquitted of assault. Charges that he murdered a prostitute were dismissed in 1979 after two mistrials. His studies in social philosophy earned him a doctorate in 1980, but his problems with alcohol and drugs persisted. In 1989, he pleaded no contest to embezzling $15,000 from a public grant to a Black Panther Party-operated school.
Huey Newton was killed by an Oakland drug dealer on August 22, 1989.