Biography
Larry Michael Spain, known as Johnny Spain, was the only one of the San Quentin Six convicted of murder for the events of August 21, 1971. Born to a white mother and Black father in 1949 in Mississippi, raised in California after his mother sent him north to escape rural anti-Black violence, he was sentenced to life in 1967 at age 17 for murder during a robbery. Inside he became close to George Jackson and a member of the Black Guerrilla Family. He was convicted in 1976 of two counts of murder of guards Frank DeLeon and Jere Graham at San Quentin during the August 21, 1971 incident. The conviction was overturned by the Ninth Circuit in 1985 on the grounds that the trial judge had unconstitutionally ordered him chained to his courtroom seat. The state declined to retry. He was paroled in 1988 and lived in California until his death on March 6, 2008.
Black Panther Party member and one of the 'San Quentin 6,' tried for the events of Aug. 21, 1971 in San Quentin's Adjustment Center on the day George Jackson was killed; The Black Panther Vol. 15 (1976) covers the roughly 16-month trial, in which he was defended by attorney Charles Garry. Spain alone among the six was convicted of murder (a conviction later overturned in 1988). [Source: The Black Panther (Black Panther Party newspaper), Vol. 15 (1976); digitized at marxists.org — https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/index.htm]
