Word: rackley
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Last week the panel of ten whites and two blacks answered in the affirmative. After deliberating for 33 hours over six days-longer than any other jury in Connecticut's history-it convicted McLucas of conspiracy to murder for his role in the 1969 slaying of Alex Rackley. The maximum punishment is 15 years. At the same time, the jurors acquitted McLucas of three other charges that carried heavier penalties, including the capital offense of kidnaping resulting in death...
...external circumstances were not harrowing enough, the jurors were subjected to macabre evidence and testimony. Color slides of Rackley's bullet-torn and tortured body were shown. Tapes were heard of the victim's whimpering voice, recorded by his fellow Panthers as they interrogated him before the killing. McLucas admitted that he had driven the car that took Rackley to the murder scene and that he had fired the second of two shots. The defendant insisted, however, that he had been an unwilling and-until the last moment-unwitting participant in the crime...
...McLucas, 24, whose conviction will now be appealed, the judicial system worked as it should have. It treated him as an individual rather than a symbol of a radical movement. But the jury's verdict did not resolve some issues. Who was ultimately responsible for killing Alex Rackley? Was the Panther hierarchy culpable? State Prosecutor Arnold Markle has his own plans to find out. Seven more Panthers, including Party Chairman Bobby Scale, still await trial in the case...
Prosecutor Arnold Markle has eyewitness statements from two participants in the crime, George Sams Jr. and Warren Kimbro, implicating McLucas in the torture and murder of Rackley. Markle also has a confession from McLucas made to an FBI agent that he fired the second shot into Rackley. Both Sams, a former bodyguard for Stokely Carmichael, and Kimbro, a Connecticut Panther leader, have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Sams' testimony named Scale as the man who gave the murder order...
...crucial issue in the case is the credibility of Sams and, to a lesser degree, of Kimbro. Sams' claim that he was acting under orders from Scale conflicted with earlier testimony from Kimbro. Kimbro had said that the order to take care of Rackley came from Rory Hithe and Landon Williams, members of the party's national leadership who are currently fighting extradition from Colorado. Sams also contends that on the night of the torture, Scale visited Kimbro's house, where Rackley was being held, and gave Sams the order to "do away with him." In court...