A Motive in a Diary?

Was Angela Davis, avowed Communist and former instructor in philosophy at U.C.L.A., an integral part of the wild and bloody struggle to rescue the Soledad Brothers?

For nearly two months now Prosecutor Albert Harris Jr. has been trying to persuade a jury that Miss Davis provided the guns and is just as guilty as if she had pulled a trigger. Harris does not claim that he can prove Miss Davis' involvement directly. Instead, he is trying to provide the classic ingredients of a successful prosecution based on circumstantial evidence: that she wanted to commit the crime (motive), that she could have done it (means and opportunity) and that she then acted as if she had done it (guilty behavior afterward).

No one contests that she bought the shootout weapons. Or that she was friendly with young Jonathan Jackson, perpetrator of the Marin County courtroom kidnaping in which a judge and three others died. The prosecution argues that such facts show means and opportunity. Miss Davis' flight into hiding after the plot failed will be offered as proof of guilty behavior.

Pulse Beats. But without proof of motive, the rest of the case is inadequate. Prosecutor Harris contends that the hostages were to be traded for the freedom of the Soledad defendants, particularly Jonathan Jackson's older brother George, and that Miss Davis took part in the plot out of her love for him. Miss Davis, who actually met George Jackson only once, has said that she became interested in the Soledad case for political reasons and that she felt "affection" for Jackson. But Prosecutor Harris has emphasized passion rather than politics. To back his allegation, he produced three letters Miss Davis sent to Jackson, including one that states, "I have come to love you very deeply." And there is an 18-page "diary"--made up of other writings to Jackson--that goes considerably further. Composed exactly one year after her meeting with Jackson, the diary ranges over "the many things I planned to tell you for which there just wasn't enough time." She recalls seeing him at an earlier courtroom hearing: "As I re-experience this now, my pulse beats faster, I begin to breathe harder, and I see myself tearing down this steel door, fighting my way to you, ripping down your cell door and letting you go free." The prosecution obviously hopes to show that she had tried to carry out that vision.

It will not be easy. The Davis authorship of the unsigned typescript was verified by prison officials who did not get a warrant before checking her typewriter; the defense objected and lost, but it will again charge an invasion of privacy if an appeal becomes necessary. Even more complications arise from the fact that the diary was written eleven months after the Shootout, when Miss Davis was already in jail. The jury might well forget that the diary's strong words are not necessarily a reflection of her feelings just before the kidnaping. The key question, therefore, is whether the diary's relevance outweighs its prejudicial effect.

Judge Richard Arnason has already ruled that parts of the diary are too rambling to be relevant. But all last week he was pondering the complexities of admitting into evidence an edited version prepared by the prosecution. Without the diary, says Prosecutor Harris, "we might as well all pack up and go home."

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