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The kangaroo court which convicted Curtis was the culmination of an elaborate frame-up scheme by local police to victimize a political activist. This conviction represents a dangerous and ominous precedent which gives the police a green light to frame-up other political activists.

Mark Curtis's version of events the night of the alleged rape have been corroborated by witnesses:

At 5:00 p.m. on March 4, Curtis attended and spoke at a public meeting, organized at the United Mexican-American Cultural Center, to protest an INS raid that occurred earlier in the week at his plant. Seventeen Latino workers were arrested for alleged possession of false papers, causing a furor which became known as the case of the Swift 17.

After the meeting, Curtis and others went to a local bar/restaurant called Los Compadres. At the trial, one of those with Curtis, Brian Willey, corroborated this and stated that Curtis left at 8:30 p.m.

Curtis says he went right home because he was expecting some out-of-town friends to arrive. When he saw they hadn't arrived, he called a neighbor at 8:45 p.m. to ask if she would let them into her house because he was going to the store to buy groceries for a dinner he was organizing the following night. This fact, too, was corroborated during trial testimony.

When he left his house shortly thereafter, Mark Curtis's nightmare began.

As Curtis was driving to the local HyVee grocery store, he stopped for a red light five blocks from his house. A light-skinned Black woman, about 18 or 19 years old, came up to his car and pleaded with him to 16 SOCIALIST ACTIO • Mark Curtis faces a second trial on October 10 on charges of assaulting cops who brutally beat him. Send messages to Polk County Attorney James Smith demanding that those charges be dropped and the cops who beat Curtis be prosecuted. Address messages to Polk County Attorney James Smith, Room 408 Courthouse, 500 Mulberry St., Des Moines, Iowa 50309.

• The Mark Curtis Defense Committee needs to raise another. $7,500 in funds by September 30 for the immediate expenses involved in preparing new defense committee literature and the next round of legal moves. Just the transcripts of Curtis' trial, which are needed to prepare for his appeal, will give her a ride home. She told Curtis that a man at the nearby TNT Bar was chasing her.

Curtis let the woman into his car and offered to call the police. She refused this and asked only that she be driven home. She gave him directions, and Curtis drove her to a house three blocks away. Unbeknown to Curtis, this house was the home of Demetria Morris.

When they arrived, the woman asked Curtis to wait inside an enclosed porch while she went inside to make sure the man chasing her wasn't there. Curtis waited there as the woman disappeared inside. It was the last time he ever saw her.

A moment later, Curtis heard a noise behind him, and the next thing he knew he OCTOBER 1988 cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000. Contributions should be sent to the Des Moines defense committee. Checks for tax-deductible contributions may be made out to the Political Rights Defense Fund, Inc.

• To get defense committee materials, including fact sheets, petitions, and buttons, contact the Mark Curtis Defense Committee, P.O. Box 1048, Des Moines, Iowa 50311. Telephone (515) 246-1695.

• Write to Mark Curtis. His address is Mark Curtis, Marion County Jail, Knoxville, Iowa 50138. Copies of the letters, as well as protest messages to Smith, should be sent to the Des Moines defense committee.

was being grabbed from behind by cops. One cop, Officer Joseph Gonzalez, pushed Curtis through the house to a back bedroom, handcuffed him, and then pulled down his pants.

Beaten in jail

Gonzalez told Curtis he was under arrest for rape and took him out to a waiting police van. At the jail, two cops ordered him to strip naked and proceeded with an interrogation. They asked Curtis if he was one of "them Mexican-lovers or coloredlovers," and told him he would have to confess to raping "that woman."

Curtis refused to talk until he had a lawyer present. He was then thrown to the floor, punched, kicked, and whacked across an attacker lying on top of his sister on the porch floor and called the police.

Fair trial?

From the beginning, a public witchhunt atmosphere was whipped up, as the prosecution presented its case almost daily in the Des Moines Register, the city's only daily newspaper.

Before and during Curtis's trial, which began on Sept. 7, presiding Judge Harry Perkins did his best to stack the deck against Curtis's defense.

• He ruled that no testimony or reference could be made to the beating that Curtis received at the police station the night he was arrested.

• He ruled against calling any FBI agents as witnesses during the trial, effectively blocking defense attorney Mark Pennington's attempt to establish that Curtis was a target for FBI investigation and harassment.

In recently released FBI files concerning their investigation of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Curtis's name was prominently mentioned as a leader of the Birmingham, Ala., chapter of CISPES. Such evidence clearly suggests a link with the Des Moines Police Dept. "Red Squad" and one of the motives for the frameup.

• Judge Perkins also ruled against allowing Curtis's lawyer to pursue a line of questioning concerning the credibility of Officer Joseph Gonzalez. Gonzalez had been suspended for several days from the Des Moines police force and placed on one-year probation in 1978 for brutalizing a suspect (continued on 15)