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They weren’t nonviolent like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or India’s Mahatma Gandhi. Instead, members of long-standing Black revolutionary groups, who opposed police brutality, have spent decades aging away in state prison systems. Last week, a Pennsylvania judge freed former Black Panther member Russell “Maroon” Shoatz from prison, according to Democracy Now!
78-year-old “Maroon” Shoatz, a member of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army, received a life sentence in 1970. This was due to his involvement in an attack on a Philadelphia police station, resulting in one officer’s death and another’s injury.
Black Panthers fade away as public perception of police changes
At a time in the 1960s and ’70s when police brutality wasn’t regularly captured on film, members of Black revolutionary groups took it upon themselves to protect their communities. In some cases, they resorted to violent confrontations with armed agents of the government.
Today, police officers kill 1,000 U.S. civilians per year on average, according to Mapping Police Violence.
Yet, there’s also a wide range of activists, organizations, nonprofits, politicians, and even some police organizations that are working to transform the system into something resembling equitable justice.
Decades ago, however, supporting equal rights for Black people was hardly a national concern. Through any means necessary, Black revolutionaries sought to violently transform the justice system themselves, and state prison systems haven’t forgotten.
From escaping prison to winning solitary confinement lawsuit
For his part, former Black Panther member Russell Shoatz earned the nickname “Maroon” after escaping prison twice before. The name refers to enslaved Africans in the early Americas who escaped their Spanish captors and created free communities.
Meanwhile, after his second capture, Shoatz shifted to a diplomatic approach. He lobbied lawmakers to repeal life sentences without parole, even becoming the President of Pennsylvania Association of Lifers in 1983.
However, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections wasn’t impressed and placed him in solitary confinement for a total of 22 years. Shoatz was eventually released from solitary in 2014 and sued the state’s DOC for “cruel and unusual” treatment.
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In his deposition, he described the cramped space he lived in for 23 hours a day as “approximately 84 square feet of floor space”, adding “the presence of the steel bunk, and toilet diminished the actual area wherein one could walk”.
Shoatz also described mental health impacts from his punishment, which included severe depression and anxiety. “I was infantilized for so long,” he added in his deposition.
Against the odds, he won his lawsuit in 2017. Shoatz was awarded $99,000 and a permanent reprieve from solitary confinement. He had assistance from his attorneys, which included representatives of the Abolitionist Law Center, to thank.
Law Center devoted to releasing political prisoners
A decades-old organization spawned out of advocating for Pennsylvania state prisoners, the Abolitionist Law Center describes itself as a “public interest law firm inspired by the struggle of political and politicized prisoners, and organized for the purpose of abolishing class and race based mass incarceration in the United States.”
After winning the lawsuit on behalf of his client Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, Abolitionist Law Center Executive Director Brete Grote praised the decision.
“My talk with Maroon today was very moving. There are no words to adequately convey the significance of his release to the general population for him and his family,” Grote said in 2017. This is a significant victory for a growing people’s movement against solitary confinement and the human rights violations inherent in mass incarceration.”
Meanwhile, the successful litigation didn’t result in Shoatz’ release from prison. A judge released him on “compassionate release” on October 26, 2021 after he spent nearly 50 years behind bars.
Family accuses prison system of killing Russell “Maroon” Shoatz through medical neglect
The release is bittersweet for his family, as they assert the Pennsylvania prison system let his medical conditions deteriorate to an irreparable state. Shoatz is currently in hospice care battling stage four colorectal cancer and must receive nutrients through an IV.
“What’s in the transcripts are the evidence that the prisons don’t have the capabilities to take care not just of their healthy prisoners, they definitely don’t have the ability to take care of their geriatric prisoners, and that they have effectively killed my father,” Russell Shoatz III recently told media.
Like political prisoner, Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, some other former Black Panthers have spent decades behind bars. They have done so even after aging and developing chronic health conditions that would no longer make them a danger to society.
Some have even died in prison. Former Black Panther Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald died at 71 in a California prison this year, following about 51 years of incarceration.
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