Biography
Roger Champen was one of the Attica Brothers — prisoners indicted after the September 1971 uprising at New York's Attica prison and its bloody suppression, in which the state killed dozens of inmates and hostages. A leader during the rebellion, he became an assistant coordinator of the Attica Legal Defense Committee and himself faced a three-count murder indictment, among the scores of charges (ranging from murder to "possession of prison keys") that Governor Nelson Rockefeller's special grand jury handed down against the prisoners — while the officials responsible for the retaking of the prison went uncharged. The Attica prosecutions of the inmates were eventually largely abandoned, and in 1976 Governor Hugh Carey closed the books on the cases. Documented in The Black Panther (December 8, 1973).
In his February 1972 WBAI interview, Roger Champen said he had been at Attica since March 1971. He described five months of post-rebellion isolation, confined approximately twenty-three and three-quarter hours daily except visits and very short solitary roof exercise. He explained his resistance to becoming submissive and criticized the censorship of family and legal mail. March 1971 is an Attica-arrival month, not necessarily his original arrest or first imprisonment. Source: We Are Attica, PDF pages 12, 13-16, 27-30, https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Prisons_Attica/510.we.are.attica.pdf
The March 1973 Attica News roster prints Roger Champen (Champ) among the uprising prisoner defendants, linked to indictment 5: 34 first-degree kidnapping counts. The table lists maximum statutory exposure, not sentences actually imposed or time served; no custody dates or duration are inferred. Source: https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Attica/510.Prisons.AtticaNewsVol1No1.pdf#page=6
The December 1971 report names him among Attica inmates seeking an injunction against further physical abuse.
