Biography
Gary Lawton was a Black community activist in Riverside, California, one of two men charged with the April 1971 murder of two Riverside police officers — a prosecution his supporters, organized as the Riverside Political Prisoners Defense Committee, denounced as a frame-up. Lawton was the central defendant, tried again and again over the killings; his wife, Charlene, was among the committee members injured in a March 1974 Riverside police attack on a defense-committee picket line. By 1974 Lawton and Gardner had been tried twice, with both trials ending in hung juries (reportedly 11 to 1 for acquittal), and a third trial was pending; the case never produced a conviction. Documented in The Black Panther (April 13, 1974).
