San Quentin Six
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The San Quentin Six were six
inmate A prisoner, also known as an inmate or detainee, is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement or captivity in a prison or physical restraint. The term usually applies to one serving a sentence in pr ...
s— Fleeta Drumgo, David Johnson, Hugo Pinell, Johnny Spain, Willie Tate, and Luis Talamantez—at
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
's
San Quentin State Prison San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (SQ), formerly known as San Quentin State Prison, is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated area, unincorporated place ...
who were charged with criminal actions related to an August 21, 1971 escape attempt and
prison riot A prison riot is an act of concerted defiance or disorder by a group of prisoners against the prison administrators, prison officers, or other groups of prisoners. Academic studies of prison riots emphasize a connection between prison conditions ...
. The riot resulted in six deaths and at least two people seriously wounded. Among those killed was George Jackson, a co-founder of the
Black Guerrilla Family The Black Guerrilla Family (BGF, also known as the Black Gorilla Family, the Black Family, the Black Vanguard, and Jamaa) is an African American black power prison gang, street gang, and political organization founded in 1966 by George Jackson, ...
and a famous author and radical prisoner. During the attempted escape, which sparked a prison riot on the cellblock, Jackson had possession of a .38 caliber pistol, allegedly smuggled into San Quentin by his attorney Stephen Bingham. Immediately after the incident, Bingham fled the country for 13 years. He returned in 1984 to stand trial, and in 1986 he was acquitted. Bingham's defense team posited the theory that it was prison officials who arranged for Jackson to obtain a gun in the hope that he would be killed in the ensuing melee. Besides Jackson, those killed in the altercation were guards Paul E. Krasenes, 52, Frank DeLeon, 44, and Jere P. Graham, 39, and inmates John Lynn, 29, and Ronald L. Kane, 28. Two other officers suffered serious injuries. The
trial In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, w ...
of the San Quentin Six cost more than $2 million and lasted 16 months, which at the time was the longest trial in California history. Of the six defendants, one was
convicted In law, a conviction is the determination by a court of law that a defendant is guilty of a crime. A conviction may follow a guilty plea that is accepted by the court, a jury trial in which a verdict of guilty is delivered, or a trial by jud ...
of
murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...
, two were convicted of
assault In the terminology of law, an assault is the act of causing physical harm or consent, unwanted physical contact to another person, or, in some legal definitions, the threat or attempt to do so. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may ...
on
correctional officer A prison officer (PO) or corrections officer (CO), also known as a correctional law enforcement officer or less formally as a prison guard, is a uniformed law enforcement official responsible for the custody, supervision, safety, and regulation ...
s, and three were
acquitted In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal means that the criminal prosecution has failed to prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the charge presented. It certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an o ...
of all charges. Specifically, Johnny Spain was found guilty in the shooting deaths of guards Frank DeLeon and Jere Graham. Hugo Pinell was convicted of cutting the throats of guards Charles Breckenridge and Urbano Rubiaco, Jr., both of whom survived. David Johnson was convicted of assaulting Breckenridge. There were no convictions for the killings of Krasenes, Lynn, or Kane. Drumgo, Tate, and Talamantez were acquitted on all charges, which had included counts of murder, conspiracy, and assault.


Riot of August 21, 1971

The August 21, 1971 riot at San Quentin involved deadly fighting between two rival gangs, the Black Guerrilla Family and Mexican Mafia, and resulted in fatalities, injuries, and 26 captured prisoners in San Quentin's "Adjustment Center" (the term used for the maximum-security wing reserved for the most difficult prisoners). The other details about what happened that day are still disputed. Inmate Johnny Spain recalled saying there was only one fact people could agree on: "There was a gun introduced into the Adjustment Center on August 21." The main points of contention were: how the gun got into Jackson's hands, the type of gun used, whether the riot was planned or not, and whether it was a diversion to facilitate an escape. Legal advisers and prison officials supplied various narratives as they struggled to explain what happened. According to the state's initial account, attorney Stephen Bingham and a female assistant arrived at San Quentin for a meeting with George Jackson at around 2:00 pm. The assistant handed a briefcase to Bingham when she was not permitted to enter the visiting room. According to an
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
report, which was based on interviews with prison officials, a cursory search of Bingham's briefcase was performed, and the inspecting guard failed to examine a tape recorder in the briefcase. This report said the briefcase was returned to Bingham after he walked through a metal detector. In a ''
San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...
'' article sourced from prison officials, Bingham's briefcase set off the metal detector. The ''Chronicle'' article said a corrections officer opened the briefcase and found a cassette
tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...
; he inspected its battery compartment to determine if it was functional. Prison officials later came to suspect that the working components of the recorder had been emptied to allow room to insert a handgun with its grip handle removed. Another account alleged that Jackson assembled the gun himself with smuggled parts. But most evidence suggests the gun was already intact when it was received in the prison. After multiple revisions, authorities identified the gun used as a 9 mm Astra M-600 pistol. However, analysts said the 9 mm found next to Jackson's deceased body would have been too large to fit within Bingham's tape recorder, or under Jackson's cap. The Department of Corrections then said the weapon was a .38 caliber Llama Corto made by Spanish manufacturer Llama Firearms. Along with the gun, it was believed that escape-related notes may have been secretly passed between Jackson and his attorney. After the uprising, prison officials reputedly found notes in Jackson's trouser pockets, one of which read, "Take the bullets out of the bag. Hurry and give me the piece in the bag and keep the bullets." Jackson's longtime friend and former Soledad State Prison cellmate James Carr said no such escape notes would be in Jackson's pockets because he knew any escape plotting was tantamount to suicide, and that in fact he had been "in fear of his life for the last couple of years ... he felt the guards were going to kill him." Before his scheduled meeting with Bingham, Jackson was
strip search A strip search is a practice of searching a person for weapons or other contraband suspected of being hidden on their body or inside their clothing, and not found by performing a frisk search, but by requiring the person to remove some or al ...
ed in the Adjustment Center, then escorted to the visiting room. He sat across from Bingham at a wooden table that lacked barriers between the two; they were intermittently observed by guards. Officials speculated that during this time, Bingham passed the gun to Jackson, who concealed it in his hair under a
watch cap A knit cap, colloquially known as a beanie, is a piece of knitted headwear designed to provide warmth in cold weather. It usually has a simple tapered shape, although more elaborate variants exist. Historically made of wool, it is now often mad ...
. The meeting lasted about 15 minutes. Around 2:35 pm, Jackson was escorted by Frank DeLeon back to the Adjustment Center, where another corrections officer performed a second search prior to returning Jackson to his cell. When that officer asked Jackson about what appeared to be a metal object in his hair, Jackson pulled the gun out, pointed it at the officers, and inserted a magazine. He purportedly shouted, "This is it!", and ordered all of the officers to lie face down on the floor. He ordered one officer to get up and activate a switch that opened all 34 cells on the first floor. After Jackson had released the convicts, he repeatedly shouted, "The Dragon has come!" As calls for help went out, heavily armed California Highway Patrolmen and Marin County Sheriff's deputies raced to San Quentin, and also proceeded to block access roads to the prison. Jackson reportedly told the other convicts, "It's me they want", and ran, with pistol in hand, next to Johnny Spain into the prison "plaza". Jackson was immediately cut down from behind by rifle fire. The marksman shot him in the back, where the bullet allegedly ricocheted off his spine or pelvis and exited through his skull. According to the ''Chronicle'', an inmate slashed the neck of officer Charles Breckenridge and dragged him to Jackson's cell; Breckenridge survived. The bodies of officers Frank DeLeon and Paul Krasenes were thrown on top of him, as well as those of two white inmates (John Lynn and Ronald L. Kane). Sergeant Jere Graham was killed by inmates when he came to the Adjustment Center to pick up DeLeon for another assignment. After the riot had ended, 26 captured prisoners in the Adjustment Center (referred to as the "AC 26") were forced to lie face down, strip naked, and were confined in handcuffs and shackles. In the riot's aftermath, the AC 26 said they were repeatedly threatened and beaten by guards. When Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette (the two surviving
Soledad Brothers The Soledad Brothers were three inmates charged with the murder of a prison guard, John Vincent Mills, at California's Soledad State Prison on January 16, 1970. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette were alleged to have murdered M ...
) appeared in court three days later, they were walking stiffly and covered in welts. The AC 26 delivered a petition to the press stating, "We, the undersigned, reeach being held incommunicado.... e aresuffering from both wounds and internal injuries inflicted upon our persons by known and unknown agents of ardenLouis S. Nelson." Luis Talamantez claimed that Adjustment Center lieutenant Richard Nelson had told them, "None of you will ever leave here alive."


Trial

After months of pretrial motions and jury selection, the prosecution, led by District Attorney Jerry Herman, began its opening statement on July 28, 1975. Security in the Marin County Civic Center courtroom was extremely stringent. Throughout the proceedings, all of the San Quentin Six defendants were shackled with chains and leg irons bolted to the courtroom floor, except for Willie Tate who had been paroled in January 1975 and was free on $50,000 bail. The prosecution argued that the riot was part of a conspiracy cooked up by radicals outside San Quentin who wanted Jackson freed. Defense Attorney Charles Garry said the state's escape theory was "garbage"; he insisted the Adjustment Center riot was a spontaneous "emotional upheaval", "a cesspool that overflowed that day", and was not a ruse to engineer an escape. The defense proposed an alternate conspiracy theory, namely, prison and law enforcement officials had set up Jackson to be killed. The theory, as presented by surprise defense witness Louis Tackwood—a former
agent provocateur An is a person who actively entices another person to commit a crime that would not otherwise have been committed and then reports the person to the authorities. They may target individuals or groups. In jurisdictions in which conspiracy is a ...
for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)—was that a 38‐caliber revolver was smuggled into Jackson's possession to lure him into a trap. Unbeknownst to him, the gun was inoperable. The expectation was that he and prisoners sympathetic to him (like the San Quentin Six defendants) would attempt an escape, and that a team of sharpshooters would be ready to assassinate Jackson and the others. This scenario was allegedly devised by the Criminal Conspiracy Section of the LAPD. The prosecution countered that the only conspiracy was the work of Jackson's radical associates who sought to help him violently break out of prison. On August 12, 1976, after a 16-month trial and 24 days of deliberation, the Marin County jury of five men and seven women rendered their verdicts for six of the 46 felony counts. It required 45 minutes for Superior Court Judge Henry J. Broderick to read the verdicts. David Johnson was convicted of one count of felony assault on a guard; Hugo Pinell was convicted of two counts of felony assault on a guard; and Johnny Spain was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The trial ended as the longest in California history, during which 23,000 pages of testimony were collected. In 1989, Spain's two murder convictions were reversed on appeal. Historian Eric Cummins notes how it was a sign of the times in the mid-1970s—in the wake of the
Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the Presidency of Richard Nixon, administration of President Richard Nixon. The scandal began in 1972 and ultimately led to Resignation of Richard Nixon, Nix ...
and FBI
COINTELPRO COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltr ...
revelations—that the defense attorneys were able to argue with some success that law enforcement agencies had implemented a plan to assassinate a black political prisoner (George Jackson) and, in the process, had brought false charges against six other inmates. While the argument was not fully vindicated by the jury's verdicts, the trial of the San Quentin Six contributed to public distrust toward the state attorney general's office, the LAPD, and corrections officials. In an oft-cited quotation, author
James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (né Jones; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'' has been ranked ...
said, "No black person will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did."


San Quentin Six


Fleeta Drumgo

Fleeta Drumgo (1945 – November 26, 1979) was born to Inez Williams in
Shreveport Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, third-most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. The bulk of Shreveport is in Caddo Parish, Lo ...
, Louisiana. According to the ''
Daily Review The ''Daily Review'' was a daily newspaper published in Hayward, California. Floyd L. Sparks was owner of the ''Review'' from 1944 to 1985, along with '' The Argus'' of Fremont and the ''Tri-Valley Herald''. It was last owned by Bay Area News ...
'' ( Hayward, California), Drumgo moved to
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
with his mother at the age of three. His childhood was difficult, and he had been in and out of juvenile detention homes since the age of 13. According to Fania Davis Jordan, sister of activist
Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of ...
, Drumgo moved to Los Angeles at the age of 14 and got crosswise with the justice system. He was placed in the Preston School of Industry. After his release, he was arrested in a new incident, for attempted murder. He was convicted and sentenced to the Deuel Vocational Institution near Tracy, California. Drumgo was later charged with the December 1966 burglary of a television and radio store in the Los Angeles suburb of South Gate. According to court documents, Drumgo initially admitted his involvement in the break-in after officers found him at the address of the registration of the getaway car used by his accomplice. In early 1967, he was convicted of first degree burglary after waiving a
jury trial A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are increasingly used ...
. He was referred to the
California Youth Authority The California Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), previously known as the California Youth Authority (CYA), was a division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that provided education, training, and treatment services ...
, but they ruled that he was "not capable of reformation under their discipline". In September 1967, the court, pursuant to
California Penal Code The Penal Code of California forms the basis for the application of most criminal law, criminal procedure, penal institutions, and the execution of sentences, among other things, in the United States, American state of California. It was origin ...
, reduced Drumgo's previous conviction to secondary burglary and sentenced him to six months to 15 years in state prison. Jackson, Drumgo, and Clutchette were among the
Soledad Brothers The Soledad Brothers were three inmates charged with the murder of a prison guard, John Vincent Mills, at California's Soledad State Prison on January 16, 1970. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette were alleged to have murdered M ...
indicted for the 1970 killing of a correctional officer at Soledad State Prison. The trio gained national notoriety about this case after Jackson published his memoir '' Soledad Brother'' (1970). They were acquitted at trial in 1972. Twice charged and acquitted for the murder of prison guards, Drumgo was released from prison in August 1976. He had served nine years for the burglary charge. According to Peter Collier and
David Horowitz David Joel Horowitz (January 10, 1939 – April 29, 2025) was an American conservative writer and activist. He was a founder and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC); editor of the Center's website '' FrontPage Magazine''; and ...
, Drumgo approached attorney Charles Garry two weeks after the May 1979 shooting of Fay Stender by alleged suspect Edward Brooks; he hoped to sell information he had regarding the attempted murder. Collier and Horowitz wrote: " rumgowas a member of the Black Guerrilla Family, that he had known of the BGF's plans to shoot Fay two weeks before the event and that he was willing to sell information. He reappeared on several occasions, sometimes wearing a gun in his belt, and named a former prisonmate of Brooks as head of the BGF and the man who had ordered the shooting." Drumgo was fatally shot in Oakland on November 26, 1979; he was living with Clutchette at the time. According to Oakland police, Drumgo had been shot by more than one weapon. Witnesses reported two men leaving the scene, one with a shotgun and one with a handgun. His killers were never caught. At his funeral, Drumgo was eulogized by Angela Davis as a "communist martyr".


David Johnson

David Johnson (born circa 1947) was serving a sentence for burglary of five years to life when the escape attempt occurred. During the resulting trial, guard Charles Breckenridge testified that Johnson had attempted to strangle him. On August 12, 1976, Johnson was convicted on one count of assault. He was released from prison in 1993.


Hugo Pinell

Hugo Pinell was born March 10, 1945, in
Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...
. His family immigrated to the US. He died in prison at age 70, after being stabbed on August 12, 2015, by two other inmates (members of the
Aryan Brotherhood The Aryan Brotherhood (AB or The Brand) is a neo-Nazi prison gang and an organized crime syndicate that is based in the United States and has an estimated 15,000–20,000 members both inside and outside prisons. The Southern Poverty Law Center ...
) at New Folsom Prison. In 1965, Pinell was convicted of rape in San Francisco, sentenced to life imprisonment, and assigned to San Quentin State Prison. In 1968, he was convicted of attacking a guard and transferred to
Folsom State Prison Folsom California State Prison is a California State Prison in Folsom, California, United States, approximately northeast of the state capital of Sacramento. It is one of 34 adult institutions operated by the California Department of Correcti ...
. In June 1970, he was convicted of a similar assault and transferred to the
Correctional Training Facility Correctional Training Facility (CTF), commonly referenced as Soledad State Prison, is a state prison located on U.S. Route 101 in California, U.S. Route 101, north of Soledad, California, adjacent to Salinas Valley State Prison. Facilities Th ...
in Soledad, California. At Soledad, he was awaiting trial on charges of attacking another guard in December 1970. On March 3, 1971, Pinell fatally stabbed correctional officer Robert J. McCarthey at Soledad after luring him to his cell under the guise of needing a letter mailed. McCarthey died in
Fort Ord Fort Ord is a former United States Army post on Monterey Bay on the Pacific Ocean coast in California, which closed in 1994 due to Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) action. Most of the fort's land now makes up the Fort Ord National Monument, ...
Army Hospital two days later. By the time of the trial for the uprising at San Quentin, Pinell was serving a life sentence for rape, and for three other violent offenses committed while in prison. Pinell was reported by a San Quentin spokesman to have been subdued by guards on March 26, 1975, after he stabbed his defense attorney, Lynn Carman, during a conference at the prison. Carman denied having been stabbed or wounded, and declined additional comment on the matter. One witness to the incident reported that Carman was left bleeding from the mouth. During the trial, two San Quentin guards, Charles Breckenridge and Urbano Rubiaco, Jr., testified that Pinell had cut their throats. On August 12, 1976, Pinell was convicted of two counts of felony assault by a prisoner serving a sentence for
life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life impr ...
. In 1985, he was serving his sentence in Folsom State Prison. In January 2009, Pinell lost his ninth bid for parole while at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California. His prison term was extended by another 15 years. On August 12, 2015, Pinell, aged 70, was killed in a
prison riot A prison riot is an act of concerted defiance or disorder by a group of prisoners against the prison administrators, prison officers, or other groups of prisoners. Academic studies of prison riots emphasize a connection between prison conditions ...
at New Folsom Prison. Because of his repeated assaults on officers, he had been kept in
solitary confinement Solitary confinement (also shortened to solitary) is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single Prison cell, cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to ...
for almost 45 years. He was returned to the general population two weeks before he was killed.


Johnny Spain

Johnny Larry Spain was born July 30, 1949, in
Jackson Jackson may refer to: Places Australia * Jackson, Queensland, a town in the Maranoa Region * Jackson North, Queensland, a locality in the Maranoa Region * Jackson South, Queensland, a locality in the Maranoa Region * Jackson oil field in Durham, ...
, Mississippi, to Ann Armstrong, a white woman, and Arthur Cummings, a black man, from their extra-marital affair. He was originally named Larry Michael Armstrong, using the surname of his mother's husband, Fred Armstrong, a beer truck driver. While making a delivery to a nightclub in Utica, Mississippi, Fred Armstrong asked the black owner if she would adopt his six-year-old mixed-race boy. The woman said she could not, but contacted her husband's cousin in California, who agreed to do so. At the age of six, Spain was adopted by Johnny and Helen Spain in Los Angeles, and was renamed Johnny Larry Spain. At the time of the escape attempt at San Quentin, Spain was serving a life sentence for robbery homicide. At 17, he had killed a robbery victim who resisted. Attorney Charles Garry opened his defense of Spain in the San Quentin Six trial with expert testimony from
Philip Zimbardo Philip George Zimbardo (; March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was an American psychologist and a professor at Stanford University. He was an internationally known educator, researcher, author and media personality in psychology who authored mo ...
, a
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
professor and psychologist. On August 12, 1976, Spain was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of guards Frank DeLeon and Jere P. Graham. He was the only one of the Six convicted of murder. The conviction was overturned on appeal by federal judge
Thelton Henderson Thelton Eugene Henderson (born November 28, 1933) is an inactive senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He has played an important role in the field of civil rights as a la ...
, because Spain had been shackled with 25-pound chains throughout the proceedings, which could have biased the jury against him. After his conviction was overturned for murdering the two San Quentin guards, Spain continued to serve time at
Vacaville Vacaville is a city located in Solano County, California, United States. It is located from Sacramento, California, Sacramento and from San Francisco, it is on the edge of the Sacramento Valley in Northern California. The city was founded in ...
for his prior robbery-homicide conviction. He was paroled in 1988 after serving a total of 21 years. He tried several jobs and finally found work in community relations in San Francisco. His daughter Sahara Sunday Spain, whom he had with photographer Elisabeth Sunday, became a poet who was profiled at age 9 in ''The New York Times''. Professor and author Lori Andrews published a biography about him: ''Black Power, White Blood: The Life and Times of Johnny Spain'' (1996).


Luis Talamantez

Luis Talamantez was born circa 1943. In February 1966, he was convicted of
armed robbery Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person o ...
in Los Angeles. Talamantez was acquitted in 1971 of the murder charge related to San Quentin. He served 5 more years of his sentence for the 1966 armed robbery. After being released on parole on August 20, 1976, he was taken to a celebration party at the home of his primary defense attorney, Robert Carrow, in Marin County. In 1985, Talamantez was reported to be "living in the South".


Willie Tate

Willie Tate was born circa 1944 or 1945 in Selma, Alabama, where he lived until he was six years old. His father was a sergeant in the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...
. The family moved to
El Paso El Paso (; ; or ) is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The 2020 United States census, 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the List of ...
, Texas. However, Tate could not attend school as there was no kindergarten or first grade for black children. The family moved to California and settled in Fresno when he was about eight years old. According to the '' San Francisco Bay Guardian'', Tate was picked up as a runaway at the age of 14 and served 10 years in prison for "minor offenses". On April 26, 1977, Tate was critically wounded after being shot by Earl Satcher, the leader of a group of ex-convicts called Tribal Thumb. In 1985, Tate was reported to be a "fugitive on a Fresno drug warrant".


References

{{Reflist, 2 1971 in California 20th-century American trials Prison riots in the United States Quantified groups of defendants