Stephen Mitchell Bingham (born April 23, 1942) is an inactive American legal services and civil rights attorney who, after being a fugitive from justice from 1971 to 1984, was tried and acquitted in 1986 for his alleged role in Black Panther George Jackson's attempted escape earlier from San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California, in 1971.
[2][3][4] His father was an author, attorney, and activist who was elected to the Connecticut State Senate as a New Deal Democrat in 1940 and served one term; he was also the editor and a founder of the left-leaning Common Sense.
[7] In 1964, he graduated from Yale with honors, and spent two months in Mileston, Mississippi as a volunteer in the Freedom Summer civil rights project.
[7] After spending two years in West Africa with the Peace Corps, they returned to Berkeley in the fall of 1967 where Bingham resumed the study of law.
[1] Bingham was accused of concealing a pistol in a tape recorder and smuggling it to Jackson in San Quentin's Adjustment Center.
[1][4] According to Harris, government authorities set up Bingham as a scapegoat to deter other attorneys assisting the "black radical movement".
[11] Georgia State Senator Julian Bond and writer Jessica Mitford were among those noted to have contributed financial or moral support to Bingham.
Defense attorneys contended that prison guards had slipped Jackson the gun, hoping that the incendiary black militant would be killed.
[10] After his release, he worked for an Oakland law firm handling pension litigation, was a member of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, and supported a campaign to free Black Panther Elmer Pratt, who claimed he was also framed by the FBI.
[10] Bingham worked at Bay Area Legal Aid in California, where he was a staff attorney in its San Francisco regional office specializing in welfare law issues.