Alex Rackley, a Panther from New York, arrived at the office of the New Haven Panther Party (the apartment of Panther Warren Kimbro) late Saturday night or early Sunday morning May 16, 1969. On Sunday morning George Sams, who had also just arrived in New Haven and who represented himself as a Panther from the national headquarters of the Party, accused Alex Rackley of being an in former. Sams beat Rackley and ordered Warren Kimbro to beat him. Lonnie McLucas, who had never seen either Sams or Rackley before, entered the apartment while this was happening. Then, under Sams' orders, Rackley was brought to the basement of the apartment and tied to a chair by McLucas. Sams ordered Lonnie to boil water. He then ordered that a tape recording be made while he beat Rackley and poured boiling water over him, ostensibly in an attempt to extract information from him. After approximately an hour Rackley, badly burned, was brought upstairs where he remained tied and intermittently under guard, according to Sams' orders, until early Wednesday morning, May 19, 1969.

At that time Sams ordered Warren Kimbro and Lonnie McLucas to borrow a different car and told them they were going to take Alex Rackley to a bus station and let him go. The car was borrowed. Alex Rackley, still bound at the hands and neck, was led to the car by Sams and Kimbro. Sams had a 45, Kimbro (according to McLucas) a rifle. Lonnie McLucas was driving. On the highway, Sams ordered McLucas to turn off into the woods, saying he had decided to release Rackley there. He ordered the car stopped at the end of a dirt road. The four men walked a short distance into the woods. Sams then handed the gun to Kimbro and said, "Ice him, it's orders from national." Kimbro shot Rackley through the head. He spun around and fell to the ground, apparently dead. Sams, Kimbro, and McLucas began to return to the car. Sams gave the 45 to McLucas and told him to go back and make sure Rackley was dead. Believing there was a rifle in the car which Sams and possibly Kimbro might have used on him had he refused, Lonnie McLucas walked back into the woods and fired a shot into Rackley's body. In all medical probability, Rackley was already dead when the second shot was fired.

The above is a recital of events reduced to the minimum. What it omits is coherence, possible motives, explanations of why people acted as they did or what they believed, at any time during the three days of Rackley's detention in the apartment, was going to happen.

The 14 Panthers who were indicted for conspiracy to commit murder included all the people who had been in the Kimbro apartment at any time during the three-day period. Of these 14, two were juveniles and will not stand trial. Three, Loretta Luckes, Warren Kimbro, and George Sams, plea-bargained and also will not stand trial. This leaves the present New Haven 9.

"Plea bargaining" is probably a foreign term. This is how it works Loretta Luckes, Warren Kimbro, and George Sams agreed to plead guilty to the charges against them and to testify for the State. In return they received the State's assurance that their parole will not be opposed. Even with life sentences, they could possibly be released in eight years.

In the cases of most poor (and there fore of most black defendants) plea-bargaining is a useful tool of the courts. The efficiency of the judicial system depends on a high percentage of defendants pleading guilty and by passing jury trials. A man with an over-worked, court-appointed lawyer who is not deeply involved in his case is likely to take the certainty of the lesser sentence involved in pleading guilty rather than risking a jury trial and a possible longer sentence, regardless of his guilt or innocence. In the New Haven case, plea-bargaining had an extra dimension. Bobby Seale was present in New Haven for only one day, May 18, 1969, to make a speech at Yale. The only possible way he could be implicated in Alex Rackley's death is by the testimony of some other Panther directly involved who would say that Seale ordered Rackley's questioning, detention and murder.

Moreover, it is common practice in the State of Connecticut for defendants charged with conspiracy to be tried together, and all the defendants in this case requested to be tried together. In this instance, however, the state separated their cases and decided Lonnie McLucas would be tried first. Why? Several extra-legal explanations are suggested. First, if any defendant testified in behalf of another at a separate trial this testimony, possibly self-incriminatory, could be introduced as evidence in his own trial. (All the other defendants, except Bobby Seale and Peggy Hudgins, who is in love with Lonnie McLucas, declined to testify at McLucas' trial.) Second, and more important, a conviction of one alleged conspirator makes conviction more likely for the others. Find Lonnie McLucas guilty, and there's a better chance of finding Bobby Seale guilty.

The New Haven radical community says that all the Panthers, who have endured a great deal of harassment while in jail for over a year, wereoffered the same deal Loretta Luckes, Warren Kimbro, and George Sams took.

Loretta Luckes is a young woman who had been a Panther for only a short time when Alex Rackley was murdered. Her unfamiliarity with the Panthers and the New Haven community probably influenced her action. Nevertheless, her testimony contained nothing particularly damaging to Lonnie McLucas, and no information about involvement on Bobby Seale's part. Warren Kimbro and George Sams had the most to lose by standing trial, since Sams had ordered the murder and Kimbro had fired the fatal shot.

Lonnie McLucas testified that until the moment Rackley was actually shot. he neither knew nor believed Rackley was going to be killed. Only Kimbro and Sams offered any evidence that directly contradicted this statement. Both remembered on the stand (though neither had mentioned this in any previous statement) that the night of the murder Lonnie McLucas had telephoned to Hartford to ask for more guns, indicated he knew Rackley was going to be killed. (Lonnie McLucas denies making this telephone call.) Only George Sams offered any evidence directly implicating Bobby Seale: he said Seale ordered him to kill Rackley. (Warren Kimbro, whom Sams testified was present at this conversation, said that he was asleep at the time.)

Sams' credibility therefore becomes an extremely important issue. In and out of state mental institutions for four years, he was tested as having an IO of 65. (In prison, this year, his IO was testified at 85.) Sams served as Stokely Carmichael's bodyguard before he joined the Panther Party. In 1968 he was expelled from the Party for stabbing a fellow-member in the leg, but was reinstated due to Stokely Carmichael's intervention. (Carmichael and the Panthers have since severed any working relationship in disagreement over the question of black nationalism.)

According to Bobby Seale, Sams was on the list of "non-functionary" Party members at the time of the murder. Lonnie McLucas's attorneys, Theodore and Michael Koskoff, wanted to call witnesses who would have testified about Sams' previous behavior, but this information was deemed irrelevant by the court. One witness would have described a similar episode in Sam's past when he bound and threatened to murder a man be accused of being an informer in San Francisco. Two women would have testified that Sams had attempted to rape them.

Sams himself testified that while in the Panther Party he always considered himself "Stokely's man." On the stand, Sams tended to speak very quickly, to mispronounce names (such as Fred "Hamilton" for Fred Hampton), to offer political explanations that were unintelligible. When mentioning Stokely Carmichael, however, he spoke more slowly and in a tone that seemed to indicate great respect.

If we do not believe that Sams was acting under orders from Bobby Seale or other Panther officers whom he has implicated (Landon Williams and Rory Hithe) his own history suggests motivation for his actions: a possible desire to ingratiate himself with Carmichael and harm the Party which once expelled him, and a tendency toward sadism. His testimony at Lonnie McLucas' trial would then be explained by his desire to exonerate him self and to tell the story most satisfactory to the Prosecution. (Whether Sams was also working as an agent provocateur, which would explain the tape recording, will probably remain unresolved.)

Lonnie McLucas was not in New Haven at the time the other New Haven Panthers were arrested. He returned, learned of the arrests, stayed for a short while to try and help gather bail money, and then began driving to Panther national headquarters in Berkeley, California. He said he was planning to make a report and then turn himself in. It seems probable he was also trying to reach national head-quarters in a desperate search for clarification as to George Sams' status in the Party and his reasons for ordering Rackley's murder.