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Two weeks after this, a Panther named Nelson Lee Malloy was found, moaning, under a pile of stones in the Nevada desert. He had been shot and left for dead. As a result, Malloy is paralyzed for life from the neck down. He reluctantly told police that he had helped two Panthers escape after the attempted assassination of Gray, and that the Panthers had tried to silence him.
Newton vehemently denies any involvement in these shootings. Sitting in a visiting room on the tenth floor of the Alameda County courthouse, wearing white prison overalls, he admitted in an interview with TIME that the attacks "might have been the result of overzealous party members," but he quickly added, "There's no way my interests could have been served by activities like that." Indeed, he still sees most of his difficulties as a consequence of police harassment. During one of his last weeks out of prison, he claims, he was stopped three times by the police. Says Newton: "The cops said, 'Don't move, but put up your hands.' When I put up my hands, I dropped my cigarette. I was cited for littering."
Many citizens, both white and black, share the police suspicion of Newton and blame him for more than he has been charged with. The Oakland Tribune has published a number of stories suggesting that Panthers are dealing in drugs and extorting money from nightclubs, and one reporter covering these incidents had her car fire bombed.
But Newton has been remarkably successful in defeating the charges against him. Callins, the beaten tailor, changed his story several times, and when the case went to trial last month, he said he could not remember who had hit him. Newton was acquitted of assault, convicted only of the relatively minor gun charge for which he was sentenced last week. Newton was also involved in a barroom shooting in Santa Cruz last May, but charges against him were dropped. As for the killing of Kathleen Smith, Newton says: " don't know anything about it. I had heard I was going to be set up."
Newton talks of a bright future. Although the Panthers now number no more than 500, roughly half their strength a decade ago, he sees them as "very much alive because our survival programs are alive." He has been studying at the University of California for a doctorate in the history of social consciousness, and he looks forward to teaching at the Panther school and participating in local politics. "I plan to work in Oakland," he says. "I love Oakland."