Fred Burton
Biography
Fred "Muhammad" Burton was associated with the Black Unity Council and was convicted in the 1970 killing of a Philadelphia police sergeant, Frank Von Colln. He has been imprisoned in Pennsylvania since the early 1970s.
Black liberation prisoner who has maintained his innocence for over four decades. Convicted in 1971 of conspiracy in the August 1970 shooting death of Philadelphia police sergeant Frank Von Colln at the Cobbs Creek Park guardhouse, allegedly carried out by a group called 'the Revolutionaries.' Prior to his arrest, Burton worked at a phone company, was a respected member of his community, and his wife was pregnant with twins. He has been incarcerated in Pennsylvania prisons since 1970 — among the longest-held Black political prisoners in the United States.
Frederick Burton is a former Philly Black Panther and an innocent man who has diligently attempted to prove his innocence to the courts for 47 years. In 1970, Burton was arrested as part of the Philly 5, a group of men accused of an alleged attack on the Philadelphia Police Department’s Cobb Creek Guardhouse that left one officer killed. The case stems from a highly racially charged period in Philadelphia history while Frank Rizzo served as Police Commissioner and the FBI's COINTELPRO was actively targeting the Panthers. Hugh Williams, was arrested at the scene; he was brought into the police station where he was chained to floor and repeatedly beaten until he wrote a confession. His pregnant wife, Marie Williams, was brought in and interrogated for 19 hours as she heard her husband being tortured in a nearby room. Williams's testimony was inconsistent; she refused to testify first, then exonerated Burton, claiming she had no idea of his involvement. Williams was then subjected to a closed immunity hearing, later testifying she overheard a meeting in which an unidentified person said, "Let’s off some pigs.” This was the only evidence tying Burton to the action. The Commonwealth intentionally struck every African-American from the active jury. The all white jury sentenced Burton to a life term for murder. A decade later, a great deal of exculpatory evidence was found, including a pretrial letter where Williams stated she was forced to lie in court.
Burton became an organizer in prison and a teacher advocating for racial justice and religious freedom. Of the more than 50 years Mr. Burton has been in prison, 33 of them have been in a maximum security facility. He spent 11 years in solitary.
