Biography
William Arthur Christmas was a San Quentin prisoner and a witness for James McClain at McClain’s Marin County courthouse trial. On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson entered the courtroom with weapons and attempted to free McClain and other prisoners. Christmas joined the attempted escape and was killed in the gunfire outside the courthouse. Christmas was born in 1943. The sources located confirm that he was imprisoned at San Quentin but do not identify the conviction, sentence or starting date of that imprisonment.
Safiya Bukhari identifies William Christmas as a San Quentin prisoner brought to the Marin courthouse as a witness in James McClain’s trial. He was killed during the August 7, 1970 courthouse escape incident. His underlying conviction and original admission day remain unresolved; his death is recorded as death in custody, without a false release date.
The Magee mistrial account names James McClain and William Christmas among those killed in the August 7, 1970 Marin courthouse escape attempt and identifies Magee as the surviving inmate. Its account attributes the killings to prison guards; that attribution is retained as the newspaper’s description, without assigning new physical endpoints or altering separately established cases.
Washington Area Spark, Vol. 2 No. 9, April 13–May 11, 1973, PDF page 11.
The state report’s escape appendix individually names him among the Marin County prisoners and describes the courthouse confrontation. It incorrectly heads the event September 7, 1970; that date is not used to overwrite an independently established chronology. Jonathan Jackson’s presence in the same narrative does not establish that Jackson was already a prisoner. The appendix is a retrospective law-enforcement account.
Report of the New York State Policy Study Group on Terrorism, November 1985, PDF page 83.
