Biography
Linda Backiel was a Philadelphia civil-rights and movement-defense attorney whose clients included Puerto Rican independentistas, the Resistance Conspiracy defendants, the May 19th Communist Organization, and Elizabeth Ann Duke (the M19CO defendant who jumped bail in October 1985 while awaiting trial on weapons-and-explosives charges and lived underground for the rest of her life). After Duke jumped bail, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Backiel to testify before a grand jury about her last conversation with Duke. She refused on attorney-client privilege grounds and was held in civil contempt by U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
She served the first six months of 1991 at the Bucks County Prison. The Third Circuit ultimately vacated the contempt adjudication on procedural grounds in 1990 (the district court had erroneously denied her a public contempt hearing), but the time had already been served. She subsequently relocated to Puerto Rico, where she has practiced as a movement-defense attorney since.
