Races: Three Courtrooms

In courtrooms at opposite ends of the continent last week, black militants were the focus of attention:

> In Oakland, Calif., elusive Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver was scheduled to appear for the setting of a trial date on charges resulting from the shooting of two Oakland policemen last April. But Cleaver, who disappeared in late November when his parole was revoked, failed to show up. That left his wife and five friends holding a verv empty bag. They have guaranteed Cleaver’s $50,000 bail, and unless he emerges within six months, the money will be forfeited. As the FBI continued its search for Cleaver, the Internal Revenue Service entered the act. The IRS filed a $59,715.12 lien against him for unpaid taxes on royalties from his book, Soul on Ice, and lecture fees.

> In Elizabeth, N.J., after one of the longest and costliest trials in the state’s history (16 weeks, $750,000), a jury convicted two Negroes and freed eight others in the murder of Patrolman John V. Gleason Jr. In the midst of the five-day race riot in Plainfield in 1967, Gleason, 39, the father of three, shot and wounded a youth who had attacked him with a hammer. He was surrounded by an angry mob of Negroes and stomped, hacked and shot to death. Sentenced to life in prison were Gail Madden, 22, a 250-pounder, whom witnesses identified as the woman in a bright orange dress who stomped Gleason, and George Merritt, 24, who attacked the officer with a meat cleaver. Five of those who were freed had been identified by a witness whose poor eyesight made his testimony worthless. During the trial, some witnesses recanted their testimonv, allegedly because of threats.

> In Trenton, N.J., the state’s superior court reversed the 21½-to-3-year conviction of Playwright LeRoi Jones for carrying guns during the 1967 Newark riot. Jones claimed that Newark police planted two guns in his car. Without deciding the dispute, the three appeals justices ruled that Essex County Judge Leon W. Kapp gave a “devastatingly improper and fatally unfair” charge to the jury. Kapp had also sentenced Jones to 30 days in prison for contempt after the playwright reacted to a ruling from the bench with what the judge termed “an epithet descriptive of excrement.” The superior court, maintaining that Jones had not been given an opportunity to be heard, also ordered a new trial on the contempt charge.