Marvin Smith

Marvin Smith was a California prisoner, transferred from Soledad to San Quentin, who became a figure in the prison movement. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and with holding guards hostage but was acquitted by a jury; San Quentin officials nonetheless kept him locked in a maximum-security adjustment center. In 1971 he filed suit in U.S. District Court to bar the prison from punishing him for acts of which a jury had acquitted him. The underlying incident, per The Black Panther, was his stepping in to break up a fight between a guard and another inmate, Johnny Miller — who had witnessed a guard's misconduct and refused a payoff.