arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

THE RACIST FRAME-UP OF THE CHATTANOOGA THREE CONTINUES
First-hand account of Chattanooga 3 trial
by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

On Tuesday, January 9th, the trial of the Chattanooga 3 began in Chattanooga, Tennessee, my original hometown. For years, because of my and other grassroots activism against racist vigilantism (KKK) and police murder and brutality, I have been a target of police harrassment and attempted frameups. This includes FBI and other agencies false charges of bombing, shootings, and even soliticitation of assault of a federal informer. None of these fake casehave been successful, I have defeated all of the major attempts at felony charges up to this point, including the original attempts by local prosecutors in this case to charge me with "inciting a riot" at City Hall in 1998 in order to railroad me under the infamous "three strikes" sentencing enhancement laws which allows life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

We defeated this attempt to charge me with a felony when we were indicted for the lesser charge of "disruption of a meeting." But even that charge was seen by us as both unconsitutional and designed to punish us for our political activity, so we would not cooperate with authorities, and "plead guilty". ( NOTE: in the days before the trial, both Damon McGee and Makail Musa Muhammad's attorney's were contacted to offer them "deals" if they would enter guilty pleas and testify against me, but they refused).

The trial began before the same cxlearly biased judge, Rebecca J. Stern, who denounced me openly in court as a "Red Anarchist", "Terrorist" and a "racist in reverse" (since I hate the Klan and other white fascist groups). This is also the judge who alleged a conspiracy by the Black Autonomy International, Anarchist Black Cross, and a variety of other radical groups to terrorize the city through bombings, "violent" anti-police brutality/KKK protests, and then lectured me on why a law like the "disruption" law was needed to get to "political criminals" like me who used legal demonstrations to "slander policemen and government officials." Finally, this is the same judge, (who at this same court session) demanded to know about my (then-recent) trip to Europe, which she claimed was financed by "international terrorists". This was the same judge who heard the case, and postured as being"neutral", that is "fair" to the State of Tennessee and ourselves as Defendants. This, of course, was untrue, but I could not remove her even when I tried to make a court motion to do so. She wanted to hear the case, and toss our convictions as a bone to the DA and city officials!

From the beginning, it was clear that this whole trial was rigged. Our attorneys were told that they could not mention a word about the First Amendment or Free Speech in their court presentation or as a defense to the charge. This cut the heart out of the defense, and my court-appointed lawyer then asked Judge Stern how he was supposed to conduct a defense at all, and she just smiled. That was the idea. It was 1994 all over again, when Judge Stephen Bevil did the same thing in the Chattanooga 8 case, where we were charged under the same statute. The judicial railroad was pulling out of the station!

Next, when I asked to defend myself, she took away that right even though it is clearly within the Tennesee and federal constitutions. She did not want to hear any objects from me during the trial, and told me that we could only speak through our lawyers, who shivering like whipped puppy dogs. I honestly believe that if we had out of town legal counsel or a "radical' lawyer, this would have been challenged on the spot with an appeal to the higher court. But these guys were part of the frameup, so they knew better than to fight.

On the other hand, the prosecution was allowed to do anything it wanted to, and in fact even made arguments against the statut's unconstitutionality, and that we had no right to free speech! Our attorneys just sat there and moaned, even when we demanded that they object! There was no question that we had no way to defend ourselves, and that this was the very idea.

PART TWO: JURY SELECTION

The jury selection gave the surest indicator that we were to be literally railroaded to jail, with no pretense of a fair trial. It was amazing, comical even, if our lives were not involved. The next door neighbor of the prosecutor was there, along with personal friends of the attorneys, and others who should never have been chosen, and should have been stricken by the court judge herself.
Instead, we had to use our few (12) preemptory challenges to get rid of these people. All of this had been planned in advance by county judicial officials, so that we would get the most biased jury possible. We ended up with a biased jury of 13 people (including one alternate), which were primarily old, white, and prejudiced. Mostly from suburban white areas which loathed Black people. The prosecution was allowed to systematically strike four of the seven Black people who had made it onto the jury. It was this jury which was supposed to impartially judge us.

The jury selection actully took all day, because we pressured the attorneys to fight each removal of a Black juror. Four Black women, working class or persons who believed that police lie and frame up people were proven to be "unfit" by the states attorney.
Of course, the biased judge went along with this without a peep, in fact justified it. We were left with two patriotic "clones" of Colin Powell, who had been in the military for many years, and saw it a civic duty to convict us. The one Black womn who did make it was actually part of a number of co-workers from Mckee Bakery, one of which was a jury foreman at another trial and her boss. He literally ordered her to find us guilty when he would see her at work each evening after the trial.

It was during the second day that the Hamilton County Sheriff, John Cupp staged the event of having an agent provocateur come into the courtroom with a gun and a bag of ammunition, described variously as .38 calibre "hollow-point" and .9 mm bullets. Then we saw a guy run out of the courtroom, screaming that he was going to get some of "bin Laden's men". Although he had come up to us during the lunchtime break when we were having a demonstration outside, none of us knew the man by name. This agent who called himself "Omar" shook our hands and then stood
around (perhaps for police photographers in hiding to film us together) all during the demonstrator. It was as we were getting ready to return to court for the afternoon session that a flood of police officers waded in and blocked our entrance. They bellowed out that all persons who were going to attend this trial would have to be searched, and surrender their possessions to officers for
inspection. They provided no explanation.

When we got inside however, we were finally told of the incident, and the first person in the room, Damon McGee, was even shown the bullets by an officer, and then told that the man had a gun. This guy claimed that he and his colleagues removed the man from the courtroom, but when we suspiciously asked why the guy wasn't arrested, were met with blank stares. When we demanded that our attorneys call for a hearing on the incident, they refused and the
judge refused to even address the issue.

Yet it was the main news story the next day, AND ALL OF THE
NEWS STORIES SEEMED TO IMPLY THAT WE WE TRYING TO ESCAPE, TO DISRUPT THE TRIAL, THAT 'OMAR' WAS PART OF A PLOT, AND OTHER LURID (but untrue)THINGS.
Now, add this to the totally negative reporting going on EACH DAY of this case, and clearly the jury (and the whole city) was beseiged with negative propaganda. That is why we had tried to get a change of venue to Knoxville in the first place, but the judge would not have it, and she also turned down our motion for mistrial. It took us pressuring our weak court appointed lawyers to get them to even rasie our demands that three jurors known to have discussed this be removed from the trial. They finally did raise it, and we were to proceed with 10 jurors, although what we really wanted to do is to get rid of the entire jury.

This provocation was apparently done by the Sheirff to not only prejudice the jury and make them fear for their lives, but also justify Sheriff Cupp's demands for additional money for tighter courtroom security. Now it's my understand that not only did he not arrest "Omar", but actually returned the bullets to him so that he could television interviews with them. They were never kept as
evidence anyway. Now underestand that there is a law in
Tennessee, T.C.A. 39-17-1306, which allows for up to 7 years in prison for bring a gun or bullets in a courtroom, so how is this guy allowed to brag on television about bringing the bullets into our trial. Purportedly, as soon as he walked in , he sauntered over and gave them to a cop. This was clearly a set-up! We face the danger now of an additional prosecution by racist court and cop officials.

It took about an hour for the jury to find us guilty, there was no deliberation and actually no trial. We did not have the effective assistance of legal counsel. It was clear from the beginning that our court-appointed attorneys were throwing the case, and was not interested in an aggressive defense. In fact, I do not think they were capable of doing so, they were not even aware of free speech or First Amendment law, and had virtually no skills. But because we are poor people, we did not have the money to hire high-priced talent. The truth is that in America, you are innocent until found broke! That is why the prisons are full of Black and Latino and poor white people, and each one of them had an attorney!

Where do we go from here? First, we appeal the case if we can get other attorneys. No one has stepped forward to help us yet, and the local lawyers in Chattanooga are pretty much out of the question. We may have to file an appeal without a lawyer, rather than risk being sold out again by a quack incompetent lawyer from the Public Defender's office. In fact, I sought to represent myself at trial, but was illegally prevented from doing so by the trial judge.
The disgrace is that the Left Legal community, civil rights groups and others will not even answer our letters, less known discuss the matter.

The Chattanooga 3 case is still one of the most serious First Amendment cases in this country. Because of our railroading, it is NOW that much easier to crush demonstrators in Washington, D.C. (on April 16th), the Republican and Democratic Conventions,where hundreds were arrested under similar disruption statutes. We need to understand that these disruption statutes are the U.S.
government's new COINTELPRO and "thought control" measures
to intimidate activists with criminal charges and beat down legal forms of dissent. YET WE DID NOT RECEIVE THE LEVEL OF
SUPPORT THAT WE WERE ENTITLED TO, we were sold out by both Black and Left political factions that disagree with our
politics and militant stance on police brutality. Legal groups that are active in such cases refused to support us, political groups refused to make a peep, and influential individuals who could have helped us raise money were unresponsive. But remember this: if we are allowed to be crushed, or be jailed without a fight by
groups of activists all over the country, then all of you will be next. You need to understand this. Even if you disagree with our Anarchist politics, our form of Black radicalism, or whatever else you see yourself apart from, the government does not care. The government wants to crush us all! We must give solidarity to one another when the state brings charges: Anarchist, communist or any variant of Black radical. Anything else is a sellout of our
principles.

SUPPORT THE CHATTANOOGA 3 CASE! COME TO THE
JANAURY 24th DEMONSTRATION TO PROTEST THE
SENTENCING AND CONVICTIONS!

For information: International Committee to Support the
Chattanooga 3 , Banco_midwest@hotmail.com or
Komboa@hotmail.com, for background case information, please
go to: http://Sf.indymedia.org/lke.php