Biography
Donnell Thomas was one of four Black men charged in the October 3, 1969 hold-up killing of liquor-store clerk Mason Branch at Crown Liquors on Grant Road in Tucson, Arizona. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in the gas chamber, and was imprisoned on death row at the Arizona State Prison alongside his cousin and co-defendant David Williams. The case rested on a statement attributed to a one-eyed, heroin-using witness, Lucius Sorrell, whom the State had had declared incompetent to testify; prosecutor Horton Weiss. Police claimed the defendants were Black Panthers, which The Black Panther (April 17, 1971) said was false. Documented in The Black Panther.
On November 7, 1973 the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Thomas’s conviction but reduced his death sentence to life imprisonment. Its original opinion confirms his November 6, 1969 arrest in Oakland. It dates the Crown Liquors killing October 4, 1969, whereas the contemporary newspaper report says October 3. The sentence reduction did not end his imprisonment, and the reviewed opinion supplies no actual physical release date.
