Biography
Willie Brazier Jr. was an early member of the Seattle Black Panther Party and a University of Washington student. He and Lewis Jackson were convicted in the 1969 Fidelity Mutual Savings Bank robbery prosecution. Brazier was released on bail on May 2, 1969, then returned to custody after the court revoked bail on May 9; his appeal challenged that detention and other trial rulings. He was subsequently held at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary.
Seattle detective Stanley K. Fridell testified that Brazier was convicted in the Fidelity Bank robbery case on October 22, 1969 and sentenced to twenty years. He initially mentioned a ten-year arson sentence following an April 6, 1968 arrest, but later clarified that Brazier had first received probation and that he believed the state dismissed the ten-year sentence when the federal bank-robbery prosecution proceeded. The hearing therefore does not support adding ten years of actual imprisonment to the federal sentence. The twenty-year figure is an imposed sentence, not a verified duration served.
