I remember circulating free Gary Tyler petitions back in the 1970s.
http://themilitant.com/2016/8021/802152.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 21 May 30, 2016
Gary Tyler, framed up in 1974, walks free from Louisiana prison
Joan Griswold/Handout via Reuters
Gary Tyler, framed up at age 16 for the death of a Caucasian student
during a desegregation fight, shown here before his release from prison
in Angola, Louisiana.
BY ARLENE RUBINSTEIN
Gary Tyler, 57, walked free April 29 after almost 42 years locked up in
Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He had spent his first nine
years in solitary confinement, initially on death row.
At age 16, Tyler was framed up on charges of killing a Caucasian youth
during a racist attack on a busload of Black high school students who
were part of a desegregation program in Destrehan, Louisiana.
As the bus carrying Tyler and other Black students attempted to leave
school on Oct. 7, 1974, it was surrounded by a brick-and-bottle throwing
mob. A shot rang out. Timothy Weber, 13, standing across the schoolyard
with his mother, was fatally shot.
The police searched the students and the bus for more than three hours.
When Tyler protested the cop harassment, he was arrested for “disturbing
the peace.” When he refused to confess to killing Weber, he was beaten
by the cops.
The police coerced testimony against Tyler from fellow students, who
later recanted. Police eventually located a gun in Tyler’s seat, despite
having found nothing during the first search. The gun had been stolen
from a police firing range used by the very cops who arrested Tyler and
were investigating the case. No fingerprints were found on it, nor was
any testing done on the bullet.
Tyler was convicted of murder by an all-white jury in 1975 and sentenced
to death. At 17, he was the youngest person on death row in the United
States. Over decades, Tyler unequivocally maintained his innocence. His
mother, Juanita Tyler, helped lead campaigns for his freedom that won
support around the world, up to her death in 2012.
“There’s a lot of space in between when Gary Tyler went to prison and
his release. What didn’t change was his ability to see an injustice,”
Norris Henderson, executive director of Voice for the Ex-Offender in New
Orleans, told the Militant in a phone interview May 16. Henderson is
also founder of a program to help former inmates once they leave prison.
“Gary was exposed to the Angola Three,” Henderson said, referring to
Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, who were held in
solitary confinement in Angola prison for decades after organizing
prisoners to fight against dehumanizing conditions. The last of the
three, Woodfox, was finally released in February.
“Death row and solitary were on the same tier of the prison,” Henderson
said. The Angola Three “looked out for Gary, helped him navigate his
situation. They helped him to become the individual he is today — just
as they have educated all of us.”
“We thank the people whose work has helped us to be able to witness
this,” he added.
No pardon, no new trial
In 1976, Tyler’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. Under
Louisiana law, a pardon is required in order to get paroled from a life
sentence. Three times the parole board recommended his release, but the
governor refused. In 1990 Gov. Charles Roemer cited Tyler’s failure to
complete his high school equivalency test as a reason, but Tyler had
repeatedly requested entrance into Angola’s educational programs and was
told they were full. The same year, the state attorney general argued
against a pardon on grounds that Tyler had “demanded he be allowed to
correspond with socialist and communist publications such as Socialist
Worker.”
Tyler never got a new trial. In 1980, the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated
his conviction and ordered a retrial on the grounds that the judge’s
instruction to the jury to find that Tyler had “intended the natural and
probable consequences of his act,” made the trial unfair. When the state
appealed, the same court reversed its order for a new trial, but
maintained that the judge’s instructions were unconstitutional. The U.S.
Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal.
In 2012, the Supreme Court struck down mandatory life terms without
parole for juveniles. The decision said that they should have the right
to argue for parole or to be resentenced. Authorities in Louisiana,
Michigan and Pennsylvania said the ruling was not retroactive, and
refused to apply it to Tyler and 1,100 other workers behind bars. In
January this year the Supreme Court ruled that the decision was
retroactive.
This led to an April 29 resentencing hearing where Tyler accepted a plea
bargain of 21 years for manslaughter, having already served twice that
time, walking out of court free at last.
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