Biography
Gary Lawton was a Black community activist in Riverside, California, one of two men charged with the April 1971 murder of two Riverside police officers — a prosecution his supporters, organized as the Riverside Political Prisoners Defense Committee, denounced as a frame-up. Lawton was the central defendant, tried again and again over the killings; his wife, Charlene, was among the committee members injured in a March 1974 Riverside police attack on a defense-committee picket line. By 1974 Lawton and Gardner had been tried twice, with both trials ending in hung juries (reportedly 11 to 1 for acquittal), and a third trial was pending; the case never produced a conviction. Documented in The Black Panther (April 13, 1974).
The Riverside Political Prisoners Defense Committee’s account, reprinted in February 1975, described Lawton’s community boycotts, opposition to the Indochina war and police monitoring. It said his May 19, 1971 arrest was followed by prolonged isolation in county jail. By the account’s writing, charges against co-defendants Nehemiah Jackson and Zurebu Gardner had been dismissed and Lawton faced trial alone. This retrospective account does not replace the separately documented March 1973 end of his initial jail period.
In an April 2, 1973 interview published in The Militant, Lawton described his initial confinement in Riverside County Jail and the later trial and detention in Indio. He said inadequate food led him and other prisoners to stage three hunger strikes, followed by months in segregated cells, and reported losing weight from 215 to 165 pounds. These are his attributed accounts of confinement conditions. The interview corroborates the already recorded March 30, 1973 release on bail; it does not establish an additional custody interval.
