SF Chron story on SF8 shows weakness of case, Come to Prelim Hearing, Mon, June 8, 8 AM

Editor,

Your sensationalist May 24 article, “Idealist’s slaying in ’71 still haunts today,” shows just how baseless the State’s prosecution of the SF8 for the 1971 killing of a SF policeman is. This prosecution is based only on “confessions” tortured out of the defendants by New Orleans police in 1973, but the Chronicle shamelessly helps prosecute the case by insinuating that the SF8 also killed a young woman whom the Chronicle says cooperated in the policeman’s killing. The story says a woman was discovered murdered 37 years ago in Stanislaus County, but gives questionable evidence that she is missing Panther sympathizer Mary Alice Willey, and no evidence that the woman who entered the Ingleside Station to file a stolen purse police report before the killing was Willey, or even an accomplice at all. It’s all spin. This entire SF8 case, with its missing murder weapon, its misplaced records on fingerprints which failed to implicate the SF8, and its DNA evidence which fails to implicate the SF8, is a plan to promote racist conspiracy theories, in hopes of stalling future movements against police brutality and burying the anti-racist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Drop the charges against the SF8 in their Preliminary Hearing on June 8th.

Come to the SF8's Preliminary Hearing.
Demand the charges be dropped.
Monday, June 8th, 8AM rally, 9AM hearing begins
850 Bryant St. (at 7th St.), San Francisco

See SF Chron's article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/24/MNU217OU14.DTL