urys By JIM NEUBACHER Special To The Daily NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The se- lection of the jury which will de- cide the fate of Black Panther Party national chairman Bobby Seale and Connecticut party lead- er Ericka Huggins will begin here this morning in New Haven Coun- ty Superior Court. Seale and Huggins are charged with murder, kidnaping resulting in murder and conspiracy to coin- mit both these crimes in the May, 1969 shooting death of Alex Rack- ley. Police charge' that Rackley, who was working with the Panthers in New York, was executed )n orders from Seale because Rackley was believed to be a police :nfornmer. Fourteen persons were arrested in connection with the incident and 11 of these were subsequently charged. electioi U convicted on the murder charge, Seale and Huggins could face death in the electric chair. Lawyers on both sides say they feel the jury selection may take four to six weeks. Adding on de- lays for Thanksgiving and a two- week Christmas adjournment, it is unlikely that the prosecution will begin presenting its case be- fore January. In a pre-trial motion,' defense attorneys challenged the manner of jury selection on constitutional grounds. They charged that juror qualifications discriminate against poor people and black people, mak- ing it impossible for Seale to, get a trial before a jury of his "peers." Presiding Judge Harold M. Mul- vey denied the motion. No organized demonstrations are expected today, but security precautions are tight at the for- midable marble-pillared Superior for Court Bldg. which faces out on the "green" in central New Haven. On May 1, thousands gathered on the green in a show of solidari- ty with the defendants, and ;tate police officials feared they might try to storm the building. Radical leaders from across the country have called on "the people" to "free Bobby by any means. nec- essary." Since May, state police have continued a two-man, 24 hour watch on the building. Demonstra- tions have been banned within 500 yards of the building, unless they are confined to the green. Since being arrested in Cali- fornia on the charges in August, 1969, Seale has been in prison, his bail denied. During that time, he also faced federal riot charges and conspiracy charges as a mem- ber of the "Chicagd 8." These charges'have since been dropped. seale murder During his 15 months of in- stantial agreement on the details carceration, one of the other of those two days with one strik- Panthers arrested for the Rackley ing, all-important exception-who murder underwent a two-month was responsible for the decision to trial on substantially the same kill Rackley, and what was the ex- charges that Seale faces. Lonnie tent of Seale's involvement in the McLucas was found guilty on only incident? one of the charges-conspiracy to The principle witness for the commit murder. He was sentenced state, P a n t h e r George Sams, to 12-15 years in state prison and charges that Seale gave him orders is currently appealing that con- to have Rackley executed. Sams, viction. by his own admission, was a prin- During that trial, McLucas and cipal figure in the Rackley's kill- another Panther, Warren Kim- ing. In return for testifying for bro, admitted firing the shots the state Sams has been allowed which killed Rackley. In addition, to plead guilty to the lesser charge through testimony from a number of second degree murder. of witnesses and other evidence, Other witnesses, however, say the prosecution built up a picture that Sams was in charge of the of the events leading up to the Rackley incident and that Seale killing-two days of - kidnaping, had no direct connection with the torture, and beating, culminating crime. in the decision to execute the sus- Seale took the stand himself pected informer. during the McLucas trial, against' All of the witnesses are in sub- the advice of his lawyer. He ad- trial to mitted meeting on two separate occasions the day before Rackley's death with several of the Panthers who were subsequently indicted in the killing. But he denied knowing that Rackley was being held pris- oner in New Haven in Panther headquarters, and denied giving any execution order. Thus the task of the prosecution in the Seale trial will be to in- troduce concrete evidence to im- plicate Seale in the Rackley's death. From the evidence which emerged during the McLucas trial, here is a picture of what trans- pired during the period of May 19-21, 1969: , George Sams, Landon Williams, and Rory Hithe joined the New. Haven Panthers from the "nation- al" on the West Coast with orders to "purge" East Coast chapters. Sams, through information from begin a number of sources, says he sus- pected Alex Rackley was an in- former who had exposed to the New York police an alleged Pan- ther plot to dynamite a number of Manhattan department stores. Sams and a group of the Pan- thers kidnaped R a c k 1 e y and brought him to New Haven, to Panther headquarters in New Haven. There, Rackley admitted that he could read-apparently a direct contradiction of what he had previously told the Panthers. Rackley was bound to a chair- a coathanger wrapped around his neck-and was slapped around. Ericka Huggins, George Sams, Warren Kimbro and Lonnie Mc- Lucas were among those present. The Panthers made their own tape recording of Rackley's sub- sequent torture and the interroga- tion. The tape, Sams said later, See SEALE, page 10 i SGC ELECTIONS See Editorial Page IL , tr Iait1 THAWING High-42 Low-31 Cloudy, warmer, chance of showers Vol. LXXXI, No. 65 Ann Arbor, Michigan - Tuesday, November 17, 1970 Ten Cents Ten Pages Te -a e -Daily-Denny Gainer Fraser speaks at forum S pe ers disuss repression in U'S. By ZACH SCHILLER Philadelphia Labor Committee leader Steve Fraser and local attorney Don Koster spoke to some 25 persons at the Michigan League last night on repression in the United States. Koster listed the police raid on the Sunnygood Commune last year and Sunday's alleged raid on the Ypsilanti Cross Street Collective as examples of local repression. He claimed that "police across the nation are using the storm'trooper tactics of the Nazi's to attempt to gain control." ,Koster claimed that "what's 300,000 dead in Pakistan Tidal wave toll among highest in world history DACCA, East Pakistan (M - The confirmed count of dead reached 32,871 yesterday in the cyclone and tidal flooding that smashed the Bay of Ben- gal coast, one of the world's most densely populated areas. But Pakistani officials still spoke of a final toll of around 300,00.0-making this one of the world's w o r s t natural catastro- phies. One official mentioned 500,000. Here in Ann Arbor, the Pakistan Students Association has appealed to University students and city residents for funds to be used for relief programs in Pakistan. Donations should be addressed to Pakistan Relief Fund, Ann Ar- bor Bank South University Branch. All funds will be forward- ed from the bank to the president of Pakistan's cyclone relief fund through the Pakistani embassy in Washington. The world's worst natural disas- ter on record is the 1887 flood that took 900,000 lives in China's Honan Province. Historians say 300,000 persons perished in the Bay of Bengal area in a storm and tidal waves in 1737. The area is a cyclone alley that is frequently hit, with heavy death tolls. A flight over the stricken south- ern zone yesterday gave this oic- ture: Devastation is virtually com- plete in the southern half of Bhola Island. The island's rice crops and those on neighboring Hatia Island and the mainland are destroyed. Most bodies have been buried in mass graves. Survivors, spotted from the air in the 800-square- mile area hardest hit, wandered on high ground above the water still covering much of the flat land; which provided paddy rice for sur- rival and then became a grave- yard for those who lived on it. Blood from crushed cattle stain- ed the fields where their carcasses; were flung by the winds and water. Nearly two million people live in1 the area. I: SGC open despite pro ble m~s By JONATHAN MILLER Student Government Council elections begin today, but with a revised schedule of polling places due to administra- tive problems, it was announced last night. SGC President Marty Scott made the announcement af- ter a special SGC meeting called to discuss problems result- ing from what Scott called "incompetence" on the hart of the elections directors. There had been speculation before the meeting that the elections might be postponed. Polling will now take place today at the Undergraduate Library, the Michigan Union and the Fishbowl from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the medical school from noon to 1 am., the engi? neering school from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and at Bursley Hall, South Quad and East Quad at meal times. The action taken in reducing the New ton to number of voting places came af- ter the two election directors, Johnp g Gislisson and Jennifer Brand fail- speal at ed to enlist enough pollworkers to staff the voting stations, accord- ing to both Scott and SGC Vice Huey P. Newton, Black Panther President Jerry De Griek. party minister of defense, will polls Cross St. collective after search Collective members claim ,Ypsi police illegally searched house Brief Sit-in at church i' Members of the Washtenaw County Black ;Economic Develop- ment League and Welfare Rights Organization (BEDL-WRO) brief- ly occupied the Memorial Christ- ian Church on 730 Tappan yes- terday afternoon in their contin- ' uing drive to obtain funds for local poor people. BEDL Vice-President Hany Bry- ant, and Vicki Price, the two pro- testers at the Memorial Christian Church, were demanding financ- 4 ial reparations for black people and recognition of BEDL-WRO by the church as legitimately repre- senting the county's poor black and disenfranchised. going on in our backyard" is indicative of the situation across the country. Fraser, indicted Nov. 4 for pos- session of explosives with intent to use, began his speech with a condemnation of Philadelphia Po- lice Chief Frank Rizzo, claiming that Rizzo has a "long and variPd history in organizing political frameups." Fraser then reviewed the activi- ties of his organization, the Labor Committee, a former faction of the Students for a Democratic Society and a member of the Na- tional Caucus of Labor Commit- tees. He stated that the major actions of the committee involved organizing blacks, students in high schools and colleges, and workers in Philadelphia. Fraser claimed that there was a "deliberate plan on the part of the city of Phila- delphia to discredit our organiza- tion" because its goals involve a radical change in the operation of. society. By LARRY LEMPERT Members of a collective house in Ypsilanti charged yesterday that police acted illegally in searching their home Sunday night. David Cahill, an occupant of the dwelling at 605 W. Cross said po- lice made the search without proper warrants and unneces- sarily ransacked the upper floor of the house. The police were searching for watches stolen from an Ypsilanti store. The watches were not found. Events leading to the search be- gan early Sunday morning. Ac- cording to Cahill, who works for an Ann Arbor lawyer, police enter- ed the building at 1:45 a.m., claim- ing they were in "hot pursuit" of a person who had robbed the Purple Haze, a nearby boutique. Police seized property alleged to be stolen and a person, who was not a collective member but had 1 apprently just entered the build- course of a search," he said in the ing, said Cahill. News article. The law enables police to enter When the police departed, phot- a building without a search war- ographs were taken and nearly a rant if they were in "hot pursuit" dozen faculty members from Eas- of a criminal. tern Michigan University and Cahill said, however, that "other witnesses in the neighborhood" had convinced him the police were not actually in "hot pursuit" of the person they apprehended. If this was true, he added, the police acted illegally by entering without a search warrant. In a statement yesterday, Cahill said, "Illegal procedures were fol- lowed, but the police were on their good behavior and no destruction was committed." According to Cahill, "vandal- ism" occurred when the police re- turned Sunday evening around 7:00 p.m. "There were about 15 men," he said, "With machine guns, carbines, riot gear-looking for watches." District Court Judge Edward Deake had issued a warrant for goods stolen from the Clothes Horse, another Ypsilanti store which had been broken into about the same time as the Purple Haze. On the main floor of the house, the police "did not disturb proper- ty too greatly," Cahill's statement said. "On the upper floor, containing the living quarters, however, the police did not even make a pre- tense of searching," the statement continued. "Two rooms dividers were kicked down, contents of drawers-and the drawers themselves - were strewn on floors, personal belong- ings including financial records were littered about, and the bed- rooms were rendered uinlivable." it other schools were called in to witness the condition of the house. The county prosecutor's office indicated yesterday they had re- ceived word that some people in the house had complained about the way the search was con- conducted. A formal complaint can be made to the Ypsilanti Police Depart- ment, the Ypsilanti City Council or to the prosecutor's office. Several collective members have indicated their willingness to file criminal and civil charges against officers responsible for illegal acts. "Appropriate action in court will be taken soon," Cahill said. Brand, the assistant elections director, is in the center of the controversy. John Koza, who runs the computer operations of the election accused Brand last night; of attempting to take control of that task. Koza claimed that Brand had attempted, to get the computer "password" and account number of SGC from the secretary at the computing center. The other discrepancy discussed last night was that there were three mistakes on the ballot sheet. Koza claimed that Brand and Gislisson were both requested by him to provide a sample ballot for his inspection but that they did not comply. Neither Gislisson nor Brand were available for comment last night on either of Koza's charges. Scott said last night there would probably be an investigation of the circumstances before the election but that "everyone ex- pects the election to run smooth- ly." speak at 8 p.m. tonight in H ill Auditorium. The appearance is be- ing sponsored by the Black Stu- dent Union (BSU). BSU announced yesterday that persons entering the auditorium will be searched, for security rea- sons. BSU spokesman Dave Wes- ley said that this was necessary for Newton's protection, and urg- ed those coming to hear Newton to arrive by 7:30 p.m. In a s t a t e m e n t yesterday, President Robben W. Fleming said, "That it should be necessary to search people attending a lecture on University premises is some- thing which we find repugnant to the kind of climate which ought to prevail on a campus." "Attendance at the lecture is, of course, voluntary, and it is our understanding that anyone who has purchased a ticket and now wishes a refund will have such a request honored," he added. A BSU statement yesterday said, "we are in solidarity with the par- ty and their quest for liberation and self-determination for all op- pressed people." EXECUTIVE COUNCIL Students By ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ and BOB SCHREINER The creation of a student-faculty legis- lature in the literary college appears to be the top priority of every candidate seek- ing a seat on the executive council of the LSA student government in this week's elections. Thirteen students are running for eight vacancies on the eight-month old body. Currently, the executive council is com- vie forL studying literary college governance. In a preliminary draft report last month, the committee called for the creation of the student-faculty legislature, although it is unclear whether the proposal will be re- tained in the committee's final report. The candidates for the executive coun- cil are also nearly unanimous in t h e i r support of broad changes in the literary college's degree requirements, g r a d i n g system, and counselling program. With the terms of three incumbents FSA sea ts them during the interviews, can be sum- marized as follows: " Pete Prahar, '72, is sharply critical of the present members of the executive coun- cil, charging them with failing to ac- complish anything important during the first eight months of their tenure. He places great emphasis on establish- ing better communications with the LSA faculty in an attempt to gather support for reforms he supports, including: -a pass-fail option for all courses, 11101 --------------- - i MM INI