The Panthers' Honky Lawyer

When the Black Panthers sought a lawyer to defend Huey Newton on a murder charge a few years ago, so a popular story goes, they tested the attitude of Charles Garry in a long interview. "Are you as good as Perry Mason?" one of them growled at the white San Francisco attorney. "I'm better," Garry replied. "Both of us get our clients off, but Mason's are innocent."

The Panthers happily hired Garry --and they have never regretted it. At Newton's trial, Garry pictured the Panther "defense minister" as a selfless leader of his people and compared his message with that of Jesus, who said: "I came not to send peace but a sword." Despite a public clamor for revenge against Newton, who was accused of murdering a policeman during a Shootout in Oakland, he was convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter. Now Garry, 60, is the top legal defender of other Panther leaders across the nation.

Last fall he became famous as the missing lawyer in the conspiracy trial of the Chicago Eight. Panther Bobby Scale demanded a delay in the trial because Garry was unavailable, recovering from gall bladder surgery. Eventually, a mistrial was declared in Scale's case because of his outbursts. So close is Garry to the Panthers that San Francisco police now call him whenever they issue a warrant for a member of the black militant organization.

Not Afraid. How did a honky lawyer win the complete trust of the Panthers? Garry says that they were looking for an able trial lawyer who could also "project the correct social views in defending his clients." He met all the requirements. Born in Bridgewater, Mass., he was the son of immigrant Armenian parents named Garabedian who later moved to California's Central Valley. He learned about discrimination at an early age. "I was called a goddamned Armenian," he recalls. "Until I finished grammar school, I think I had a fight every single night." After high school, Garry worked in a cleaning shop while attending the San Francisco Law School at night. A convert to socialism during the Depression, he began his career defending trade unions, which were then in their most militant period.

Garry denies ever having been a Communist. But when asked point-blank by the House Un-American Activities Committee some years ago, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer. In so many words, Garry says, "I told them to kiss my ass." Garry believes in socialism, and that belief is one of his closest links to the Panthers, who share his economic views. He also believes in Huey Newton, whom he first met after the Panther was charged with murder in 1967. Garry recalls that Newton had a bullet wound in the stomach and was being fed through a tube in his nose. "With all of that," says Garry, "here was a man who was not afraid. This man is a natural-born leader without any ego."

Fingering Finks. Like many attorneys of his generation, Garry earned his law degree without going to college. As a result, he still has trouble with spelling and syntax. But he is deft at tying a witness in knots and unraveling the emotions of a jury. A man of mercurial moods in the courtroom, he can slouch in his chair and be self-effacing. Or he can jump to his feet and shout angrily, "This is ludicrous!" Defending seven antiwar dissenters who were charged with conspiracy after a violent demonstration at an Oakland induction center in 1967, Garry began his cross-examination of a police informer this way: "Sir, do you know what a rat fink is?" In his closing statement, Garry's eyes grew moist as he spoke of "these young men's lives ruined by this travesty." All seven defendants were acquitted.

When he is not defending unpopular causes, Garry is a specialist in forensic medicine. His skill with juries is particularly useful during personal injury, hospital negligence and medical malpractice suits. Because he now spends so much time with the Panthers, however, Garry claims that this loss of his services has cost his nine-member law firm between $150,000 and $200,000 a year. The Panthers pay him only small amounts from time to time when money is donated to their cause.

Garry's admirers include both veterans of the labor movement and black militants, and sometimes there is a conflict between them. At a testimonial dinner for Garry last May, a waiter who disliked some of the conversation suddenly shouted, "To hell with this bull! Long live the United States of America!" At the Panthers' insistence, the hotel manager summarily fired the man --amid resounding boos from labor leaders and other liberals. Trying to bring his friends back together, Garry rose to explain that the Panthers usually opposed such firings--but the hotel management had obviously so misused the man that he was unaware of his own need for liberation. While that rhetoric may have satisfied doctrinaire Marxists, Garry will need more persuasive arguments when defending the Panthers in their troubles with the law.

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