Why Mark Curtis must be defended

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by cops at the Des Moines City Jail. X-rays showed his were required to close a deep gash above his left eye. Curtis (left) with attorney Mark Pennington during his Sept. 1988 trial Mark Curtis is behind bars. He was convicted on Sept. 14 of third-degree sexual abuse and first-degree burglary. Curtis is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes he did not commit. Not one shred of physical evidence backs up the charges.

Mark Curtis is a 29-year-old member of the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance. He has been a political activist since 1977.

PBI records show that Curtis was under surveillance for several years while protesting U.S. military intervention in Central America. He has been active in community and union activities since moving to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1986.

Curtis was known to the Des Moines Police Department because two weeks before his arrest he had participated in a march against police brutality. In fact, just hours before his arrest, he had spoken at a public meeting protesting an immigration raid at the Swift meatcutting plant where he worked.

On the evening in question, March 4, 1988, Curtis left his home shortly after 8:45 p.m. He was on his way to make a quick purchase of groceries because he was expecting out-of-town guests to arrive within moments. This is all unchallenged court testimony.

After a few blocks he was stopped by a18or 19-year old Black woman who claimed she was being chased by a man.

The woman refused Curtis offer to call police and instead asked to be driven three blocks to her home so that she could safely make a phone call for help. The woman asked Curtis to accompany her to the enclosed porch to make sure the man chasing her hadn't arrived first. He waited on the porch and the woman went inside.

This is the last time Curtis saw this woman. It is also the time the prosecution claims he attacked a different Black woman in the house, 15-year-old Demetria Morris. Unbeknown to Curtis, he had been led to the Morris home.

But it is precisely here, where the crime allegedly occurs, that the tightly woven frame-up begins to unravel.

Facts of the frame-up Curtis leaves his home shortly after 8:45 p.m.; the police receive a call for help from the Morris home at 8:51 p.m.; the cops testify that they arrive on the scene in 30 to 90 seconds. How could Curtis drive eight blocks, randomly select a home, park his car in front, enter the home, and attempt a rape all in an ever-so-brief span of time?

The prosecution's case just doesn't hold up. In fact, the account of the incident by the alleged victim, 15-year-old Demetria Morris, belies her identification of Curtis as the assailant.

Here are some of the most important facts:

1. Demetria Morris repeated at the trial her previous account of the timing of the alleged rape attempt. In unrebutted testimony, she said the assailant arrived at her home as early as 7:35 p.m. but no later than 8:10 p.m. This was based on her recollection that the attack occurred shortly after the beginning of a television program called "Video Soul." The program actually started at 8:00 p.m.

2. Mark Curtis gave unrebutted and corroborated testimony that he was at a bar with dozens of co-workers from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

3. Demetria's first report of the assailant was that he was 5 feet 6 inches and had heavy smoke on his breath. Demetria said she recognized a tobacco odor because her father smokes. Curtis is 6 feet 2 inches and doesn't smoke. At the trial, she also said that the assailant had a large belt buckle. Mark was not wearing a belt when arrested.

Conviction based on two cops Seeing its frame-up evaporating, the prosecution boiled its case down to the testimony of two arresting police officers. These are the same cops who turned Curtis over to be brutally beaten while in custody 6 SOCIALIST ACTION Mark Curtis the day after he cheekbone was fractured and numerous stitches because he was one of "them Mexican-lovers or colored-lovers."

The arresting cops claim they were responding to a phone call for help from Jason, Demetria Morris' 11-year-old brother.

Jason said that the assailant was inside the porch on top of his sister. Yet, none of Demetria Morris' body hairs, which would appear through normal contact of this kind, were found on Curtis. In addition, no dog hairs from the porch floor were found on him though Demetria was heavily covered with these hairs.

Paul Bush, a forensic expert for the state police, testified that "there was nothing there that I noted to tie the two individuals together as far as seminal fluid or hair is concerned." How could not even one of these hairs show up on Curtis' clothing if he was the assailant? Furthermore, Bush reported that he did find other human hairs on Demetria Morris' body, but they were not from Curtis.

No physical evidence exists to convict Curtis. And the contradictions in the testimony of the alleged victim exonerates him as well.

It was the testimony of the two arresting cops that convinced the jury. But the jury was not allowed to hear about the past record of the chief cop witness, who at one time was "temporarily suspended" from the Des Moines Police Department for "lying" about a previous arrest incident.

Other important evidence amply demonstrating the state's motive in framing Curtis was also kept from the jury. Defense attorneys have cited a number of prejudicial trial errors as the basis for a new trial.

The state prosecutors needed to cover up their complete lack of evidence. But their smokescreen wasn't enough to blind everyone.

One of the motions for a new trial cites testimony from Blanche Stockbauer, one of the jurors in the Curtis case. Her affidavit states that "I was one of four jurors who believed that the State of lowa had not proven their case. ..." Stockbauer had not received proper instructions from the court about deadlocked juries. She stated that "I did not know that, if I continued my vote of not guilty, a mistrial would occur. ...

Other elements of the frame-up It is impossible to explain every part of a puzzle in a frame-up. That's why it is often an effective, though twisted, form of prosecution. The defendant has to prove innocence, rather than the state proving guilt.

JANUARY 1989 was brutally beaten 20%:

Curtis defenders, for example, cannot find the woman who originally flagged him down and led him to the Morris house. And we do not know the extent of the Morris family's participation in the frame-up except to say that they are actively working with the police and a discredited political group called the Workers League in spreading patently false information.

Keith Morris, the father of the alleged victim, recently sent a letter to all organizations and individuals who supported Curtis, urging them to rescind their endorsements for a "convicted child-rapist." He states: "I made several attempts to speak with leaders of the Socialist Workers Party in Des Moines, hoping to convince them that they were making a big mistake in defending Curtis. But they were totally uninterested in the facts of this case. Their response was to laugh in my face and flash a wad of hundred dollar bills at me to show how much money they were making from the case." (from the "Open letter to the supporters of Mark Curtis by Keith Morris")

Does this description of Curtis Defense Committee members as mercenary opportunists out to make a quick buck sound credible? Of course not. But Keith Morris does provide us with a little insight into his Stu Singel own credibility.

Morris' way of "hoping to convince" supporters of Curtis was to break the windows of the Des Moines Pathfinder Bookstore, which also serves as headquarters of the Curtis Defense Committee. Shortly before the attack, Morris bragged to several cops that he was "going to kick some ass." Yet the cops did nothing to stop him, and he has still not been charged.

We may never know the answers to every question about this frame-up. Some fainthearts are still questioning the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. One leading liberal recently published a book claiming that the Rosenbergs were guilty.

This is not how anyone should approach victims of capitalist injustice.

Class solidarity

We in Socialist Action take the word of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, the Rosenbergs, and Mark Curtis over the cops, courts, and politicians.

We base ourselves on the mountain of evidence stretching over 100 years' experience with capitalist frame-ups-particularly since the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square martyrs (continued

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Send away for more information and materials that can help Five thousand new endorsers are being sought by March 4, the first anniversary of Curtis' arrest and beating. There is also a special fund-appeal being made to raise $50,000 to help cover defense activities and the crucial appeal for a new trial.

The Mark Curtis Defense Committee can be reached Box 1048, Des Moines, Iowa, 50311. The phone number 246-1695. Express your support-contact them today!

Black Panther Party members protest trame-up and imprisonment o Huey P. Newton at Oakland, Calif. courthouse In 1968. Above: James P. Cannon (I.) and William "Big Bill" Haywood In Moscow in 1922. Below: Ba rtolomeo Vanzetti (l.) and Nicola Sacco in handcuffs during their 1921 on frame-up charges of robbery and murder. They were both executed In August 1927 despite massive international protests.

SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1989 7 (continued from previous page)

were unjustly hanged because they were leading a fight for the eight-hour day.

It isn't simply blind faith in Curtis, the SWP, or other targets of the cops and courts. None of us has a license to kill, rape, or steal simply because we are political activists or racially or sexually abused by capitalism.

But there have to be compelling, indisputable facts to sustain prosecutions launched by a government intent on discrediting political activists and protest movements.

Curtis has far more credibility than a witchhunt prosecution based exclusively on the testimony of two cops. He has his word as a 29-year-old political activist whose 11year-record of fighting for a better world is unblemished. Our confidence in Mark Curtis is bolstered by the fact that there is a complete absence of one single piece of physical evidence against him.

Class solidarity is the most powerful weapon of working people against the injustices of capitalism. Our stategy, therefore, must seek to maximize the political unity of the working class.

Socialist Action members defend Mark Curtis just as we would a member of our own organization.

A long working-class tradition Unconditional defense of victims of capitalist oppression or state persecution has a long history in the working class. The International Labor Defense (ILD) was founded in 1926 by James P. Cannon in collaboration with Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor leader Big Bill Haywood who, himself, was living in Moscow to escape a 20-year frame-up sentence. Cannon went on to become the founder of the American Trotskyist movement.

While the ILD was the chief international defender of Sacco and Vanzetti, it also supported dozens of lesser-known anarchists and union organizers.

The ILD drew up a list of 106 political activists who were victimized by capitalist courts. Each case of these fighters for social justice, some of them long forgotten, was publicized. The class bias of the courts, cops, and politicians was exposed-and the full force of labor solidarity was mobilized. Demonstrations and picketlines were organized in many cities. No one stood alone.

But the ILD was best known for its completely non-sectarian approach to defense. Though the ILD was largely sustained through the efforts of the Communist Party (CP), it is noteworthy that not one of its cases involved a CP member.

Cannon successfully prevented the bitter sectarian disputes inside the CP from interfering with the functioning of the ILD. All victims of capitalist persecution were defended regardless of their individual political orientation. The class principle " An Injury to One is an Injury to All" found political expression in the ILD.

Workers League disruption

The Workers League (WL) is a group claiming to be socialist that actively works with the police and courts against the workers' movement. Its provocative and reactionary actions make it ripe for successful infiltration by the police.

The WL is actively promoting suspicions and doubts about the Curtis case to disrupt the SWP and to sabotage attempts to build solidarity. This group replaces facts with innuendo. It substitutes slanderous conjecture for physical evidence. And most of what it says is based on information supplied by the cops.

This group has a long history of provocative and disruptive activities within the workers movement. The whole movement should repudiate their actions.

The Workers League began a smear campaign in the mid-1970s against founding leaders of the SWP like Joseph Hansen and George Novack. The WL actually claimed that they, and others, were Stalinist agents who organized the 1940 murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Preposterous as it may sound today, the WL persists in these lies. Gerry Healy, former leader of the Workers' Revolutionary Party in Britain, originated these slanders to explain the SWP's opposition to his own sectarian policies.

In 1977, the WL escalated its verbal abuse and began physically assaulting SWP members. A couple of years later, WI member Alan Gelfand actually petitioned the courts to take control of the SWP and appropriate its internal records. Gelfand claimed this was necessary in order to obtain information proving the SWP was run by PBI agents.

Then as now, the WL insists that the "SWP is an organization riddled with police agents and provocateurs." The WL passes off perverse fabrications as "factual evidence supporting the charge of government control of the SWP."

No one is exempt from these attacks. Yesterday it was Hansen and Novack. Today Mark Curtis is the target. The WL infers that Curtis is an agent because he was hired by a defense plant several years ago after being "publicly identified as a YSA member in The Militant," the newspaper of the SWP.

Nature of frame-ups

The WL cannot claim to be a part of the workers' movement or expect to be treated as such when it collaborates with the cops and courts to attack the movement.

spread the word about the Mark Curtis case.

In defense cases, it is important to recognize that physical violence is not the only weapon used by the government against political activists. With the full resources of its state apparatus, capitalism has tremendous capacity to distort, manipulate, and even invent "evidence" against opponents of the status quo.

Institutions like the FBI, CIA, and National Security Council exist to disrupt, disorient, and discredit social protest movements and even governments that oppose imperialist policies.

The Bay of Tonkin provocation, for example, was staged off the shores of North Vietnam in 1964 in order to justify sending more U.S. troops to Vietnam. Even though we antiwar activists did not have the facts, we correctly took the word of the Vietnamese fighters against the U.S. government's description of the event. Several decades later, documents have proven that the U.S. government did indeed lie, about the alleged attack on American warships.

Working people should always take the word of the oppressed against the capitalists. This is true even when we do not have hard supporting evidence. We simply do not possess the resources to unravel all aspects of a carefully woven frame-up.

But the capitalist state does have these resources. Numerous eyewitnesses are produced and physical evidence is supplied which "proves" the guilt of the accused.

The frame-ups of the Black Panther Party members, the Wilmington 10, and Joanne Little all occurred in the last 20 years, but they differed little from the earlier frame-ups of Joe Hill, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

In each case, evidence was manufactured to obtain convictions. Racist and anti-communist prejudice was the glue that kept these dirty frame-ups from crumbling.

We must unconditionally and automatically accept the word of working-class fighters and victims of racial or sexual abuse against the word of cops or other agents of the capitalist state. This is true even when the state's case rests on the testimony of alleged victim at P.O is (515)

who, themselves, are Black, or unionists.

Many of the prosecution witnesses against the Black Panthers were Black. The recent John Sayles film, Matewan, records an historical incident where the top union organizer was framed up for rape by mineowners using testimony from a working-class woman. This type of cynical manipulation, and more, has repeated itself throughout history• Defend Mark Curtis!

An immediate response to appeals for aid from the oppressed or sections of the working-class movement is also absolutely necessary to stop or limit the extent of victimization. Capitalists must be taught that attacks on individuals or organizations opposed to the status quo will meet resistance from the whole movement-and fast.

Solidarity is, therefore, fundamentally a mass-action oriented political approach, not only a moral rejection of injustice.

When a member of Socialist Action is attacked, our whole membership is mobilized to make the capitalists pay a heavy political price for every person they seek to victimize.

To ensure this automatic reflex, we have absolute trust among ourselves. Our confidence in one another is based on our common acceptance of a class-struggle program. We fight to build a world free from class oppression, violence, racism, and sexism. We have no interest in stealing, raping, murdering, or drug-running. Only capitalists and their cronies profit from these crimes.

We extend this same trust and confidence to rebel fighters everywhere. Our solidarity with the oppressed and other sections of the workers' movement is based on our common pro-working class orientation. We solidarize with all fighters for a better world and with all oppressed victims of this system.

A serious campaign in 'support of Mark Curtis is the best political preparation any fighting organization can make to defend itself. That is what we mean when we say everyone has a stake in defending-and freeing-Mark Curtis.

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Esteban Volkov recounts visit with sister, who had been living Young Seva with Esteban Volkc Trotsky and Natalia in Mexico in 1939...

steb Vol (OV ovich's last years in Mexico, and, for the first time, they interviewed my sister about her life's story.

We also met with the Memorial group. The Action rally taking place in an adjoining auditorium. I was told there were about 500 people present.

So I addressed the group and commended them for their magnificent work. Then, upon