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In 1970 Jackson and two other inmates at California's Soledad Prison (the "Soledad Brothers") were accused of murdering a guard. Before they went on trial, Jackson's younger brother Jonathan led a raid on the Marin County courthouse in an unsuccessful attempt to capture hostages to exchange for the trio. Jonathan Jackson, two convicts and the judge were all killed. A year later, George Jackson himself was killed while leading an attempt to flee San Quentin. During the struggle, three guards were shot or choked to death. Three others suffered throat wounds, but survived to give dramatic, husky-voiced testimony at the trial. Johnny L. Spain was found guilty of murder and conspiring to escape. David Johnson and Hugo Pinell were convicted of assault. All three could be given life in prison, but Spain and Pinell are already under that sentence, and Johnson is serving a 15-year maximum term for burglary. Still under indictment for conspiring in the escape attempt: activist Attorney Stephen Bingham, the nephew of New York Congressman Jonathan Bingham and grandson of a former Connecticut Governor and U.S. Senator. The state charges that Bingham slipped a 9-mm. Spanish Astra pistol to Jackson, who hid it under an Afro-style wig and used it in the assault. A fugitive from justice, Bingham is thought to be in Canada.
Houten, 27, deserved a new trial on charges that she had joined five members of Charles Manson's bloodthirsty cult in killing Actress Sharon Tate and six others in 1969. The court found that Van Houten had been denied a fair trial because her lawyer, Ronald Hughes, disappeared while the case was in progress; he has still not been found. But the three-judge panel denied the appeals of Manson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel, who claimed that pretrial publicity and improper conduct by the prosecution had denied them justice. Manson, Atkins and Krenwinkel had all been given life sentences earlier.