Marin County Civic Center attacks
The event received intense media coverage, as did the subsequent manhunt and trial of Angela Davis, an ousted professor from UCLA with connections to George and Jonathan Jackson, and the Black Panthers.
Nolen's petition charged that guards and officials at the facility knew of "existing social and racial conflicts" and that they had been seeking to excite them through "direct harassment and in ways not actionable in court," including the filing of false disciplinary reports and intentionally leaving black inmates' cells unlocked to put them in danger of assault.
[1] Furthermore, inmates claimed that the guards intentionally barred them from taking the wounded prisoners to the hospital, allowing the three shooting victims to bleed for nearly twenty minutes before they were finally taken to receive medical aid.
Thomas Meneweather, a black inmate who was present for the shootings and reportedly attempted to carry Alvin Miller inside, stated, "I started to walk toward the door through which we had entered the yard but the tower guard pointed the gun at me and shook his head.
[citation needed] On January 17, 1970, four days after the shootings,[5] prison guard John Vincent Mills (aged 26), was beaten, dragged up three flights of stairs and tossed to his death.
On March 16, 1970, white guards William Monagan and Wallace Coffman were held hostage for approximately 45 minutes by five inmates before tear gas was deployed to free them.
Six days later, the body of a white convicted robber, Roy William Turner, age 22, was found shoved under his prison cell cot.
[9] In August 1970, a group associated with the Soledad Brothers organized an armed assault on the Marin County courthouse to demand George Jackson's immediate release.
[12] On the day before the kidnapping, Angela Davis and Jonathan Jackson were alleged to have been in a rented yellow utility van at the Marin Courthouse.
[12][15] Jackson sat among the spectators for a few minutes before opening his satchel, drawing a pistol and throwing it to Black Panther defendant James McClain.
Jackson then produced an Iver Johnson paratrooper-style, vertical front-gripped M1 carbine with a 20-round "banana"-shaped magazine from his raincoat as McClain held the pistol against Judge Haley's head.
He then told court officials, attorneys and jurors to lie on the floor while another San Quentin inmate, Ruchell Magee (aged 31), who was to have witnessed at McClain's trial, went to free three other testifying prisoners from their holding cell.
Road flares, which were used to simulate sticks of dynamite, were held against Judge Haley's neck before being replaced with the sawed-off shotgun which was fastened under his chin with adhesive tape.
The kidnappers, after some debate, then secured four other hostages whom they bound with piano wire: Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas and jurors Maria Elena Graham, Doris Whitmer, and Joyce Rodoni.
Around this time, Jim Kean, a photographer for the San Rafael Independent Journal, arrived at the building after he had heard news of the incident from police radio in his car.
As Jonathan Jackson drove the hostages and three convicts away from the courthouse, front passenger McClain shot at the police stationed in the parking lot.
Judge Haley died as a result of potentially fatal wounds from both the shotgun which had been taped to his neck, as well as a pistol shot to the chest that was fired either by the kidnappers or by the police.
Haley died as a result of wounds from the shotgun which had been taped to his neck and a pistol shot to the chest from a .357 magnum that Christmas had taken from Sheriff Louis Mountanos.
Prosecutor Thomas (who had taken a .357 magnum pistol from Jackson) and Deputy David Mori shot McClain fatally in the back and seriously wounded Magee in the chest.
Nolen, respectively, eventually filed a $1.2 million damage suit against corrections officer Opie G. Miller for the deaths of their sons during the Soledad Prison shooting of January 13, 1970 (described above).
[24] Jet magazine reported in its May 22, 1975, edition that the families ultimately received a total of "$270,000 from the state of California after an all-white jury decided that eight prison employees had caused the inmates' deaths".
