Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A Funny thing happened on the way to the Chauncey Bailey Murder Trial

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Like Hamlet, I hesitated for weeks trying to decide whether I should attend the murder trial of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, my friend and colleague who was assassinated by other friends of mine.


What a conundrum! Immediately after the incident happened that dreadful morning of August 2, 2007, on the streets of downtown Oakland, I wrote an article entitled The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, for I knew I was caught in a conflict between my friends, the suspected Black Muslim Bakery brothers and Chauncey Bailey, a fellow writer.


I have known the brothers since they were children, for I was a friend of their father, Dr. Yusef Bey, who made his transition amid a variety of legal charges relating to sexual improprieties.

And Chauncey had covered my artistic productions for years, down to his last days on earth when he rushed upon me at my Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway. He wanted to show me a review he'd written of my book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy. He came to show me a copy of what he'd written to let me know he wasn't jiving because it did not appear in the paper as promised the week before. He wanted me to know it would appear in that weeks paper. I asked him for his copy of the article but he said no, then disappeared in a flash, the flash turned out to be eternity, for he was slain the next day.


Finally the trial began, four years later. The Oakland community was exhausted from the Oscar Grant slaying by a BART police, followed by street riots at my classroom, 14th and Broadway. Chauncey was slain a few blocks up the street at 14th and Alice, near a tree. I wrote a article for the Oakland Post entitled The Cross and the Lynching Tree, in honor of Chauncey.


Today I gathered enough energy to make my way to the trial, riding my bike down 14th Street pass the tree where my friend was slain. I wondered why there was no shrine in honor of the man who sacrificed his life in search of truth. For sure, the truth he was searching went beyond an expose' of the supposed bankruptcy proceedings of the Black Muslim Bakery, for which his alleged killers are charging was their motivation for the dastardly deed they committed.


We know better. We know Chauncey was working on stories of more importance than matters that were public information. We know he was uncovering corruption at City Hall and the Oakland Police Department. Mothers of drug dealing children had called him to attend a meeting at Allen Temple Baptist Church to see if he would inform the OPD that they should stop shaking down their children for drugs, money and jewelry, because they were putting their children's lives in danger with drug dealers who refused to believe their children were victims of police shakedowns. The dope dealers wanted their money or the lives of the petty street dealers.


When Chauncey asked the police about these matters, they shined him on and threatened him a few days before he was killed. Ironically, the officer in charge of the crime scene, Longmire, was also a mentor of the Bakery brothers.


The morning of the assassination, Publisher Paul Cobb was walking up 14th Street from West Oakland to meet Chauncey at 14th and Franklin, the Post Newspaper office. Chauncey was walking from his East Oakland apartment near Lake Merritt. Chauncey did not know the killers were following him, had staked out his house the night before. They had done a dry run that night, timing how long it took from their car to his apartment. They wanted to kill him that night but decided not to do so for some reason.


Strangely, the mentor of the killers, OPD officer Longmire, had been at the bakery that night, before they went to kill Chauncey. Their car had a GPA device planted by the OPD, their phones were tapped. There are transcripts of the phone conversations. According to the transcripts, while the brothers were outside Chauncey's apartment, they engaged in three conversations with journalist JR, for some unexplained reason.


But for sure the brothers were in a killing mode, so we can't imagine what they were chatting with JR about. People wonder why he has not been interrogated by the police, especially since he claims Chauncey was his friend. Why did he not inform Chauncey that killers were at his door, to the contrary, he was busing conversing with the killers while they staked out the journalist, supposedly his comrade and colleague.


As Paul Cobb walked up 14th to meet his editor to discuss Chauncey's upcoming trip to Vietnam to bring a dowry for a wife, Chauncey neared 14th and Alice, first stopping at MacDonald's for breakfast. There he met a hustling addict named Tony that Chauncey often gave a few dollars. He met Tony then walked on toward 14th and Alice when the killers approached, warning Tony to get out of the way as he smoked Chauncey with a shotgun, then sped away in a white van.


Ironically, Officer Longmire, mentor of the Bakery brothers, is in charge of the crime scene. When Paul Cobb, Oakland Post Publisher, walked Tony over to Longmire's car and presented him as an eye witness, the officer drove away. He didn't need Tony. His case was solved.


In less than twenty four hours there was a raid on the Black Muslim Bakery compound and when the suspected assassin Broussard tried to throw the shotgun out his bedroom window, it was quickly recovered and Longmire had a confession from Broussaard. Case closed!


Not so fast. The murder weapon was traced to an Arab liquor store the Bakery Brothers had invaded for selling alcohol. The officer is suspected of telling the brothers that weapons were in the store, since the stores and the Yemeni owners are well known by the OPD, including any weapons they possess.


Additionally, between the Muslim Bakery and this store are a myriad liquor stores, so why did the brothers go to this one to protest the sale of alcohol? The first CEO after the death of Yusef Bey was Antar Bey who was killed when he was carjacked for expensive rims. The Brothers knew his suspected killer hung out at that liquor store. Thus, the brothers had multiple reasons for attacking the store: protesting the sale of alcohol, weapons, and the suspected killer of their brother, Antar.


When I arrived at the courthouse the trial was on lunch break. I saw a brother I knew coming out of the courthouse. He told me he'd passed a note to the judge asking for a retrial because according to him the accused killer was mentally incompetent. Once inside, I would agree with him, but the brother had many questions about the trial. He claimed the persons who killed Chauncey had also tried to kill him. He asked me had I seen Nisa Bey, one of Dr. Bey's many wives who had left him sometime before he passed away, yet she was the one who alerted the mother of the brothers charged with the killing of Chauncey. She was at the Post Newspaper when the son-in-law of Freda Bey arrived. She had ordered him to deliver bankruptcy documents to Chauncey.


Speak and the devil will appear! Minutes after the brother spoke Nisa's name, she drove up. She told us she had been in a car accident and this was the first day she was able to drive. She didn't know why she was being called as a witness, for she knows nothing. She promised to contact me later and drove off with the brother who invited her for lunch.


Months ago I had tried to write Nisa's biography, but even though there are nine CDs of my interviews with her (now deposited as part of my archives at the Bancroft library, UC Berkeley), we could not reach a contractual agreement. Nisa had been the National Captain of the women for the Nation of Islam under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Her biography was tentatively entitled Seven Years in the House of Elijah Muhammad as told to Marvin X.


As the trial was about to resume, I passed through security at the courthouse and entered the court room. Brossourd was already on the stand. Bey IV was seated at the table with his lawyer, along with Antoine Mackey and his lawyer, all three charged with not only the assassination of Chaucey Bailey, but two other murders, a brother named Roberston and a white boy named Wills.


I looked at Broussard in his red jump suit, the color of those in protective custody. He had the look of a frightened puppy, a sick puppy. I looked at Bey IV, a man I had known since he was a child. Although he turned around a few times, mostly I could only see his profile. I could see he had matured since incarceration, gained weight, had a little moustache and beard. He wore a suit. Antoine Mackey had a shadow of a beard and sat calmly throughout. Bey IV would turn to look briefly at the audience. I am sure he noticed me. I was seated in a row with journalists, no doubt from the Chauncey Bailey Project, the Monkey Mind Media version of the assassination.


Paul Cobb says he had called for the Chauncey Bailey Project but once formed, they did want to hear anything he had to say as per the police involvement in the assassination.


Paul told of a meeting with the Chauncey Bailey Project at which Harry Harris, the long embedded writer at the OPD, flipped out at the assertion of police involvement. I was seated directly in back of Bob Butler, a black journalist who is part of the CBP. Of course, Paul, myself and other writers have formed the Black Chauncey Bailey Project to disseminate our version of the assassination since the Monkey Mind Media has no intention to go beyond the Miller Lite version that the Muslim Bakery Brothers were the sole culprits. The CBP has no intention to pursue the possible role of the OPD as co-conspirators.


It would certainly behoove the case of Bey IV to pursue the OPD connection, if he is to ever see the light of day.


Court came to order and Broussard proceeded with his testimony as the State's witness who has made a deal to avoid the death penalty as well as life without the possibility of parole.


Broussard's testimony was painful. It revealed his abysmal ignorance of the English or American language. He was constantly asked if he understood terms, and at the same time the court had to be sure they could translate his language. It was tuck and go. Often he would answer yes and no simultaneously. The judge would try to translate for the defense attorney, often to no avail. For example, he was asked did he approve of his lawyer speaking with the media. He said yes and no! Asked to explain, he said he told his lawyer no, don't speak with the media, but yes, his lawyer did indeed speak to the media because he read the interview the next day.


We suspect most criminals suffer dual diagnosis: ignorance and mental illness. Broussard appears to fit the mold. When asked what he was to receive for killing Bailey, he said a credit score so he could get a loan to open a business. When asked what he was going to do the day after he assassinated Bailey, he said he was going to leave the Bakery and go to some school where he could obtain his GED.


He told how he was asked to stand post the night after killing Bailey, but he fell asleep, only to awaken the next morning while a police raid was in progress, during which he tried to throw the murder weapon out the window to no avail. He soon confessed to Officer Longmire that he was the assassin.


At a break in the trial, I encountered one of the twenty-three daughters of Dr. Bey (there are also twenty sons). She told me she remembered seeing my books sold at the Bakery. She suspected the Bakery was infiltrated at time time Broussard arrived. She wants to write a book. I told her she ought to do so, her brother (Bey IV) as well. She said he has been writing but they come into his cell and take away or destroy his writings. I told her to tell him to writing them as a letter and send them to his mother.


The trial resumed with Mackey's lawyer interrogating Broussasrd. It was a mission impossible, a continuation of the psycholinguistic crisis between the socalled Master's tongue and the tongue of the oppressed. Mackey's lawyer could understand little of what Broussad was saying and visa versa. Broussard continued his yes/no answers. Yes, I killed Chauncey Bailey, no I didn't kill him, only on order from Bey IV. I wanted to win Brownie points. That's why I killed Robertson as well, to win Brownie points.


The trial ended for the day. In the hall, journalist Bob Butler, the brother from the Chauncey Bailey Project, introduced himself to me, saying he has been following my writings on Chancey although he didn't agree with me. I replied, "My Mother told me to use the mind God gave Me!

So you don't have to agree with me, brother!"

--Marvin X

Prime Minister of Poetry,

First Poet's Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists


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