Angela's Return

It was one of the most secretive, security-shrouded prisoner transfers ever planned in the U.S. Less than 24 hours after Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan had denied her final petition, thus ending a ten-week fight against extradition to California, the prisoner was awakened shortly before 3 a.m. Escorted from the Women's House of Detention in Manhattan, she was hustled into a prison van, one of a procession of at least ten vehicles. Soon after it was under way, the caravan suddenly split up in several directions to foil any pursuers, one decoy car heading toward each of the New York area's three major commercial airports.

Meanwhile the van and its escort sped along a carefully prearranged route that ended at McGuire Air Force Base, 76 miles away in New Jersey. There, surrounded by nine sheriff's deputies and two prison matrons, she was whisked aboard a plane for the flight to Hamilton Air Force Base in California. Finally, after another heavily guarded auto procession, Angela Davis was locked up in the Marin County jail, a few hundred feet from the scene of the grisly courthouse shootout last August that she is accused of having helped plan.

Officials said that the elaborate preparations, including the special plane, were ordered after they had received threats from terrorists. These included a reprisal threat against New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who signed the extradition order--many from right-wing fanatics who wanted to assassinate the 26-year-old black militant before she went to trial.

At her arraignment the following day, Margaret Burnham, her attorney and childhood friend from Alabama, asked for a continuance of the hearing until the defendant could choose her California defense counsel. Angela, wearing a minidress, and Afroed, spoke only twice to the court during the 15-minute session, answering "Yes" in a barely audible voice to two of Superior Court Judge E. Warren McGuire's procedural questions.

The bloody episode that led to the murder and kidnaping charges against Angela occurred next door to where her hearing took place. On Aug. 7, Superior Court Judge Harold Haley and four other people were taken hostage in the midst of a trial by the three defendants and a 17-year-old youth, who had smuggled guns into the courtroom. In a wild shootout with police that followed, three of the hostages were wounded. The judge and three of the fugitives were killed. Defendant Davis, who had taught philosophy at U.C.L.A. until last June, is accused of murder, conspiracy and kidnaping. Police alleged that she purchased and provided the four smuggled guns, which, under California law, makes her as culpable as the actual murderers if convicted.

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