Children of the Revolutionary

On July 19, Watani enters his parole hearing dressed in mandatory prison blues and sporting a thin, stylish pair of violet-tinted glasses. Calm and poised, he politely sits down opposite the two-member parole board and their massive, imposing desk, cluttered with documents and files relating to his case. Across the room, a Los Angeles district attorney, sent to fight Watani's release, eyes him carefully. Watani simply waits patiently to make his opening statement. It's a moment he has been anticipating for quite some time, and when it comes, Watani goes for broke, telling the parole board that he refuses to participate in what he labels a "sham hearing."

"I think that if more prisoners would stop participating in this system, it would be harder to justify those exorbitant salaries taxpayers are paying them," he reads from a written statement. Watani then stands to be led back to his cell, while the shocked parole board continues the hearing without him.

It's a legal maneuver - one designed to earn Watani a concrete release date. In 1976, while Watani was in Suriname, California passed the Determinate Sentencing Law, which eliminated vague sentences like Watani's seven years to life, in favor of definitive, set terms. Upon his return, Watani and his lawyers argue, he was supposed to have had a hearing to come into compliance with the new law, but this never happened, and his freedom remains the sole prerogative of the parole process.

"I'd rather they slapped me with 30 years than have to deal with the politics of parole," he later tells me. "Even if I got through the board, my case would go to the Governor's Office. Since Willie Horton, politicians just stopped letting people out."

Watani's faith in the system wasn't always so compromised. "When I first came back to San Quentin, I thought I'd serve my time, do a few years and then get paroled. So long as I played by the rules, stayed out of trouble and did what they asked of me, they'd let me out so that I could take care of my family."

But reality has proved itself far more severe. Including the time prior to his escape, Watani has now served 18 years. He's been denied parole eight times in the past 13 years and holds little hope that any subsequent parole boards will see the light - "not with all the lies and misrepresentations that willfully distort my case."

He has a point: A letter from Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton's office, signed by Commanding Officer Captain Greg Hall and sent to the parole board on February 14, 2005, indicated the LAPD's strong objection to Watani's parole based on his "disregard for the life and suffering of another."

"[Watani] Stiner murdered two victims by shooting them with a firearm for unknown reasons," the letter said.

Of course, Watani was never accused of shooting anyone, leading one to wonder whether Bratton's office even reviewed Stiner's file before finding him unfit for parole.

Even more infuriating to Watani is the confusion of charges against him. He was convicted of both second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder - two charges that should be legally irreconcilable for the same crime.

"Conspiracy to commit murder necessarily means first-degree murder because it involves planning, premeditation and deliberation," says David Feld, a Bay Area lawyer who has taken an interest in Watani's story. "Second-degree murder excludes premeditation and deliberation. The verdicts are inconsistent."

At least one Black Panther agrees. Geronimo Pratt, who was Bunchy Carter's chief of security at the time of his killing, has since said he doesn't believe the UCLA shootings were a conspiracy, but were instead the tragic result of a spontaneous altercation.

"One of the Panthers pulled out a gun, which subsequently caused Us members to pull their guns to defend themselves," he's quoted as saying in UCLA professor Scot Brown's book Fighting for Us: Maulana Karenga, the Us Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism.

But parole hearings are not courts of law, and members of the parole board are political appointees of the governor - neither judges nor lawyers. Evidence not present in an inmate's prison file is disallowed, and, as revealed by the letter from Chief Bratton's office, standards for truth and accuracy for evidence in this file are not the same as in a court of law - where the threat of perjury or rigorous cross-examination is present.

"The results of these hearings are the completely subjective opinions of political appointees," says Patricia Fox, the attorney who represented Watani at his most recent hearing. "Opinions that are subject to the scrutiny of the governor who appointed them."