(2 of 3)
The cast is unmanageably large. Some 60 people have to be present for the trial to proceed. Customarily present are Judge Samuel Conti, 58, born and educated in California, reputed to be hard on drug-law violators. He has tried attempted Presidential Assassin Sara Jane Moore and Black Panther David Hilliard. Last February, 4½ months into the Hell's Angels affair, the judge collapsed from exhaustion. Court was recessed as he rested up for two weeks. The prosecution's "Hell's Angels Task Force" sits at a center table: four lawyers and a shifting group of federal agents. Their manner suggests they are not always of one mind. The jury includes 16 citizens of varied colors, classes, sexes and ages, each clinging to a black binder notebook containing identifying pictures of the 18 defendants. Facing them sit the defendants with their lawyers in three tiers of bolted-down seats. The lawyers, some retained and some public defenders, are mostly in their 30s, all exhausted, all affronted by what they feel is excessive judicial hostility to their clients. The word among lawyers in San Francisco is "Don't stroll by the courthouse. You may be tagged as a public defender." In California good criminal lawyers make up to $250 an hour. Public defenders get $20 an hour on court days.
Of the 34 people indicted last June, two submitted their cases on stipulated facts and were found guilty by Judge Conti. Some were "turned" into witnesses, some disappeared, and some are to be tried separately. Of the 18 defendants in this popularly named "Hell's Angels trial" only ten are Angels, or former Angels. Eight never joined the club, including the three women defendants who are wives of various defendants.
Michael Overstreet, 31, never a member, is on the stand. He is heavy, with a wistful, drooping mustache, and he wears a western shirt over a clean T shirt. Overstreet is a fourth-generation Californian with an eleventh-grade education and a year at Heald Engineering College in San Francisco. In his testimony, Overstreet reveals that he has had a somewhat hazy "employment" record: delivering rental cars, work at a packing plant, stretches of unemployment, some "wheeling and dealing" in things like drugs, guns, appliances and cars.
His biggest mistake seems to have been a friendship with a certain Thomas ("Red") Bryant, a Hell's Angel connected with the San Rafael auto body shop that according to the prosecution was a center of drug dealing, mayhem and murder. Bryant appears to be just the type the public thinks of when it thinks of Hell's Angels. In 1975 Bryant, Overstreet, Rick Robles and another Angel were accused in the beating and shooting death of a man called "Hippie Richard." Bryant's testimony helped convict Robles, and the rest went free. Bryant was considered so valuable a witness that he is still enjoying a new life "on the program"—the Witness Protection Program. That has provided him, at taxpayer expense, with immunity, a new name, a credit rating, about $200 a month and a Government recommendation for a small-business loan.
Defense Attorney Clark Summers asks Overstreet, his client, if he saw any changes in Red Bryant's behavior around the year 1975.
A. There was a drastic change in his behavior.