Local art showing: INCARCERATION: THE LAST PLANTATION

RECIPE FOR DESTRUCTION, SUPREME INJUSTICE

By James P. Anderson

After being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to
California Death Row over 22 years ago (1979), the
California Supreme Court "DENIED" my "DIRECT APPEAL"
on May 14, 2001. (The decision for the Habeas Corpus
Petition is still pending; it was filed by
court-appointed attorney Alister McAlister). Documents
and records are readily available that show every
court appointed attorney representing me in court has
had difficulties with the California Bar Association
and has been "suspended from practicing law several
times," including an alcoholic (Keith H. Long) who had
seriously contemplated suicide "several times."…

Death Row Artist James P. Anderson, A Case Of
Reasonable Doubt.

By STEVE ARGUE
Artist James P. Anderson has sat in prison, mostly
on death row, for the past 22 years. From the prison
cells where men are warehoused to die at San Quentin
State Prison, his paintings are a reaffirmation of
beauty and humanity. James P. Anderson's painting
"Desire" seems to me to show a pathway to his desire
to live, dream, and create under a system that simply
wants him to die.

Anderson was convicted of the murder of two women
in 1979, but maintains he is innocent.

If James Anderson is innocent he's in good company.
In the year 2000 alone 58 death row inmates had their
convictions overturned largely as a result of new DNA
evidence being brought to light. Still prosecutors
have fought against the use of DNA evidence to
overturn old convictions, even when the lives
innocent people are on the line.,,,



Invitation: INCARCERATION THE: LAST PLANTATION

This is a double solo show. The incredible art of
James Anderson and the mind

expanding lyrics of The WordSlanger , Prescott-Joseph
Center For Community
Enhancement Resident Literary and Dramatic Artist
Ayodele Nzinga.

The art is currently hanging at 920 Peralta, at the
Prescott-Joseph and is
available for viewing every day this week between 1
and 5 PM. Do not miss
this rare chance to see art that other artist hail as
extraordinary. Some
work is available for purchase all pieces are
exceptional.

There will be a reception for this event that features
the spokenword
artistry of WordSlanger as she explores the subject of
incarceration and the
development of the Industrial Prison Complex in
America. Reception and spoken

word show on February 28, at 7:30.

The reception will feature a sumptuous Jamaican buffet
catered by Ma B’s
Cultural Catering. The event is free to the public.
Donations to the Artists
accepted.

Please forward.
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Death Row Artist James P. Anderson, A Case Of
Reasonable Doubt.

By STEVE ARGUE
Artist James P. Anderson has sat in prison, mostly
on death row, for the past 22 years. From the prison
cells where men are warehoused to die at San Quentin
State Prison, his paintings are a reaffirmation of
beauty and humanity. James P. Anderson's painting
"Desire" seems to me to show a pathway to his desire
to live, dream, and create under a system that simply
wants him to die.

Anderson was convicted of the murder of two women
in 1979, but maintains he is innocent.

If James Anderson is innocent he's in good company.
In the year 2000 alone 58 death row inmates had their
convictions overturned largely as a result of new DNA
evidence being brought to light. Still prosecutors
have fought against the use of DNA evidence to
overturn old convictions, even when the lives of
innocent people are on the line.

James P. Anderson has not had the benefit of new
DNA evidence coming to light, especially with the
crime scene never having been secured, but a number of
major questions do cast doubts on the prosecutions
version of events.

James P. Anderson is a black man. He was convicted
by an all white jury in Riverside County, California.
All white juries do not understand issues that Blacks
face in America like police, prosecutorial, and
judicial racism. In addition death penalty juries are
always more likely to convict because all who oppose
the death penalty are excluded from these juries,
making them juries that are more biased towards
supporting the prosecution. An all white death
penalty jury is in fact one that is likely to contain
a number of people who think that all Black people are
criminals, making these jurors incapable of weighing
the evidence even if it is presented fairly. For a
Black man in racist America, an all white death
penalty jury is not a jury of his peers, and is a
violation of his constitutional rights.

The wealthy have the benefit of being defended by
the best legal representation money can buy. James P.
Anderson was defended by a public defender, Keith
Long, who was suspended from the bar while working on
his case. He was suspended after not showing up in
court for clients that had paid him to defend them.
A couple reasons he gave for not showing up were that
he was an alcoholic and that he often considered
committing suicide. Incompetent attorneys are very
common in death penalty cases, but it is almost
impossible to get a new trial based on ineffective
assistance. The systems message is clear, the lives
of the poor and working class are cheep in America,
justice is only for those who can afford it.

Anderson maintains that he was framed-up by the
actual killer who he says is Fred Anders. Anderson
says Fred Anders, a white man, was angered by the
interracial relationship between Anders's sister,
Sheila Lynn Anders and James P. Anderson. In addition
Anderson states that Fred Anders had the additional
motive to frame him because Anderson had just found
out about Fred Anders sexual assault of a 9-year old
girl.

The prosecution called only one eyewitness to the
murders to testify, Fred Anders. A crucial piece of
police evidence does back up Anderson's claim that it
was Fred Anders who committed the crime, a piece of
the murder weapon was found in Fred Anders jacket
pocket. That section of the murder weapon was a 3 to
4-foot piece of rope that forensically attached to the
rope used to hang Louise Flanagan. Also found in Fred
Anders pocket was a knife. The prosecution never
answered what this was doing in Fred Anders pocket.

The District Attorney on the case, Thomas Douglas,
told the hanging jury that Fred Anders had passed a
polygraph test with flying colors. Later, under
questioning, that same DA admitted he had lied,
stating that no polygraph was given, even though his
statement during the trial is part of the court
record. This lie no doubt played a role in the
conviction of James P. Anderson and shows the
prosecutors dirty attitude towards the case and James
P. Anderson.

Fred Anders was the brother of Anderson's
girlfriend, Sheila Lynn Anders. All three had been
traveling together although Anderson didn't really
know Fred Anders. James Anderson informed this
reporter that it was while the three were driving that
he found out the extreme prejudice of Fred Anders.
Detective B. Byers wrote in his police report that
Sheila Lynn Anders had stated that her blood brother,
Fred Anders, and not James P. Anderson, had committed
the murders. She later changed her story after the
prosecution, in violation of federal law, allowed Fred
Anders to visit her in jail. Suddenly she changed her
story and backed up her brother, but she wasn't called
as a witness by the prosecution. Obviously her
testimony would have been useless to the prosecution
with her earlier statements of James P. Anderson's
innocence being on record, but she was now useless to
the defense as an eyewitness.

Particularly damaging to the defense of James P.
Anderson was the testimony of Deborah Baros claiming
that she was an eyewitness to another murder committed
by James P. Anderson in 1978. This was a murder of a
gas station attendant named Jack Mackey. Yet while
the prosecution claims that her statements
were consistent with evidence, the fact of the matter
is that she gave 2 different versions as to what
happened in taped interviews. In addition Deborah
Baros claims that James P. Anderson communicates with
her telepathically, she states that she remembers many
things through dreams, and claims that her imaginary
son Anthony was riding with them in the car when they
committed the murders. The prosecution admits that
Deborah's son Anthony was imaginary based on various
evidence, but considered her a good witness even with
her unable to state one version of what took place.
Obviously Deborah Baros could not differentiate
between reality and her own dreams and hallucinations,
and her testimony should not have been allowed.

Deborah Baros is under the powerful medications
premarin, Tylenol with codeine, fioricet, xanax,
darvocet, amitriptyline, mellaril, mebaral, and
prophenol. She is taking these medications as a
result of "mental anguish" caused by a New Hampshire
court taking her real children away in 1987 for her
alleged sexual abuse of them.

It is very damaging to have someone come forward
and claim to be a witness to the defendant carrying
out a similar crime to the one they are being accused.
This is true even when the witness is not very
credible and other evidence in the crime are purely
circumstantial. The accusations of similar crimes
weigh heavy in the minds of the jurors, making them
less apt to rule in favor of any reasonable doubts
they may have.

For police and DA's motivated by racism, other
political motivations, corruption, or just a desire to
close a case the manipulation of mentally vulnerable
people for false testimony has occurred in other
cases. In the case of Leonard Peltier the FBI coerced
a mentally ill South Dakota woman named Myrtle Poor
Bear to testify against him in order to gain Leonard
Peltier's extradition from Canada. Myrtle Poor Bear
says that the FBI threatened to take her children
away. She says the FBI also showed her pictures of
Anna Mae with her hands cut off. Anna Mae was an
Indian activist who is widely believed to have been
murdered by the FBI. Myrtle Poor Bear says that after
the FBI showed her the gruesome pictures of Anna Mae
the FBI told her that she would look even worse when
they were done with her, that they would put her
through a meat grinder and no one would even be able
to recognize her.

Under this kind of intimidation Myrtle Poor Bear
testified that she was the girlfriend of Leonard
Peltier, even though they had never met, and that she
was a witness to Peltier's involvement in killing two
FBI agents, even though she was not. Myrtle Poor Bear
later recanted this testimony.

There is no evidence of such manipulation in the
particular case of the testimony of Deborah Baros, but
we should understand that someone like Deborah Baros
would be susceptible to manipulation. The fact that
the prosecution lied about a polygraph test that was
not given to Fred Anders shows that prosecution was
capable of anything.

The use of only two eyewitnesses: one who does not
even know the difference between reality and dreams,
and another who potentially carried out the two other
murders and who was carrying a piece of the murder
weapon in his pocket raises serious questions in this
case. The fact that the prosecution did not call a
third eyewitness, Sheila Lynn Anders, because she
originally had said that James P. Anderson was
innocent, is also telling of the weak case against
James P. Anderson.

The standard for guilt is supposed to be guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt, yet an all white pro-death
penalty jury raised on the prejudices of the
mainstream media does not usually have a proper grip
of reality to understand what a reasonable doubt is
and why it is important. The fact that juries are
selected in death penalty cases, eliminating all who
have the sense to oppose the death penalty, is one
more reason why the death penalty should be abolished.
The flimsy evidence used to convict James P. Anderson
and how unreliable convictions really are should make
everyone question the death penalty. Death is
permanent.

When I spoke to James P. Anderson on the phone from
San Quinton he told me that before all this happened
he had no idea how corrupt the system really is.
Really the death penalty is a weapon of terror held by
a racist system, and nobody is safe. Adding to the
inhumane treatment of being on death row, James P.
Anderson has not been able to get proper medical
attention for a condition that has impaired his sight
and gives him constant headaches.

While the abolition of the death penalty will not
assure justice, there will be no justice as long as
there is a death penalty. The death penalty must be
abolished! Death penalty juries must be abolished!
We demand proper medical attention for James P.
Anderson! Free James P. Anderson!

http://www.cafepress.com/iconoclastssf


http://www.lynnerutter.com/jamesanderson/index


James Anderson Interviews, The Dagger Magazine
http://www.thedagger.com/thedagger/anderson/index.html

Canadian Coalition Against The Death Penalty (CCADP)
Web Page for James Anderson
http://members.xoom.com/ccadp/jamesanderson.htm

Medical Files
http://members.nbci.com/ccadp/medicaljames1.htm

Police Reports
http://members.nbci.com/ccadp/anderson-policereports.htm

The Art of James Anderson: The Dagger Magazine
http://www.thedagger.com/thedagger/anderson/ja_art.htm

The Art of James Anderson: Canadian Coalition Against
the Death Penality
http://members.xoom.com/ccadp/jamesanderson.htm

The Art of James Anderson: Iconoclast Productions
http://www.geocities.com/aamulticon//james.html

James Anderson: Surviving the System
http://www.survivingthesystem.com/anderson_james.htm#art

James Anderson T-Shirts
http://cafepress.com/iconoclastsf

http://www.todesstrafe-usa.de/death_penalty/dp_e.htm

More records:
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex-5.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex-6.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex-7.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex11.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex12.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex13.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex14.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex16.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex7a.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex7b.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex7c.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex7d.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex8.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex9a.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandex9b.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandleg1.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandleg2.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandleg3.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandleg4.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandleg5.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandmed1.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandmed2.jpg
http://www.ccadp.org/Jandmed3.jpg

James Anderson
PO Box C 11400 2E66
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, California
94974 USA

This article and paintings by James P. Anderson are available for publication. Please contact James Anderson or Steve Argue at (651) 645-5347 or steveorchid [at] yahoo.com