Biography
Alfred Cain Jr. was one of three Brooklyn Black Panthers prosecuted after an August 1969 accusation involving the New Dunston Hotel in Harlem. Workers Vanguard’s December 19, 1975 account identifies the other defendants as Ricardo De Leon and Jerome West and attributes the operation to police agent Wilbert Thomas. It reports that the jury acquitted the men of conspiracy but convicted them on other counts, and that Cain actually spent one year in jail during the trial before being released on five years’ probation. The article presents the case as police entrapment; that characterization is attributed to the contemporary publication. The individual admission and release dates are not supplied.
Alfred Cain Jr. was one of three Brooklyn Black Panthers prosecuted after an August 1969 accusation involving the New Dunston Hotel in Harlem. Workers Vanguard’s December 19, 1975 account identifies the other defendants as Ricardo De Leon and Jerome West and attributes the operation to police agent Wilbert Thomas. It reports that the jury acquitted the men of conspiracy but convicted them on other counts, and that Cain actually spent one year in jail during the trial before being released on five years’ probation. The article presents the case as police entrapment; that characterization is attributed to the contemporary publication. The individual admission and release dates are not supplied.
Workers Vanguard no.89, December 19, 1975, PDF page 3; Workers Vanguard no.89, December 19, 1975, PDF page 9.
Contemporary reporting dates Cain’s arrest with Ricardo DeLeon and Jerome West to August 16, 1969, when they left the West Side Highway, and reports that the three were still jailed on $50,000 bail each. It identifies initial robbery-conspiracy and weapons accusations, then a September 9 conspiracy-to-murder indictment also involving David Conyers. The newspaper alleged police entrapment; that characterization is attributed rather than adopted as an independent finding.
