Biography
Ricardo Chavez-Ortiz was a Mexican man sentenced to 20 years for a 1972 political airline hijacking in which he took no ransom and asked only to broadcast the injustices facing minorities; The Black Panther Vol. 15 no.13 (1976) reports the Committee to Free Ricardo Chavez-Ortiz and a motion to modify his sentence and release him.
Ricardo Chávez Ortiz was a Mexican-American who became a hero of the Chicano movement. On April 13, 1972 he boarded Frontier Airlines Flight 91 and, using an unloaded pistol, diverted it to Los Angeles — demanding not ransom but airtime on the news, where he delivered a rambling address protesting police brutality, racism and the mistreatment of Mexican-Americans. Convicted of air piracy and sentenced to life (later reduced to twenty years on appeal), he became a movement cause célèbre; The Black Panther reported in 1976 that his attorneys were filing a motion to modify the sentence and win his release.
The September 1972 Liberated Guardian reports that Chavez-Ortiz was then held at McNeil Island for a ninety-day psychiatric observation following his July Los Angeles hijacking conviction. It describes the life sentence as provisional pending that evaluation and a later final sentencing decision. The ninety days are an ordered observation period, not a verified completed stay, and the article does not establish his eventual release date. Source: https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Attica/510.liberated.guardian.September1972.pdf#page=13
