Marshall ‘Eddie’ Conway
Baltimore Black Panther party member who insisted he was wrongfully convicted hosted radio show following his release
Marshall “Eddie” Conway, a Baltimore Black Panther party member who served nearly 44 years in prison for a crime he insisted he did not commit, died of pneumonia complications at the Long Beach, California Veterans Hospital Monday. He was 76 and had lived on Tioga Parkway in Northwest Baltimore.
In the 1960s he became a member of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, an organization infiltrated by the Baltimore City Police Department.
Mr. Conway was convicted in 1971 for the murder of a police officer in a much publicized trial. He was charged with the April 1970 ambush of two city police officers in a patrol car in the 1200 block of Myrtle Ave. in West Baltimore’s Upton neighborhood.
Officer Donald Sager was killed in the shooting and his patrol partner, Officer Stanley Sierakowski was wounded.
A 2014 Sun article looking back at the trial and conviction said, “Conway’s trial for the murder of Sager turned raucous at times, ‘a Roman forum,’ the Judge Charles D. Harris complained.”
In 1971 The Sun reported, “His supporters called out, “Power to the people, free Eddie and jail the pigs” until they were escorted out of the court room.”
Peter Ward, the prosecutor on the case, denied that the trial was political. He insisted it was a homicide case and no more.
“I feel as though ... this prosecutor and this judge has been selected to persecute me [in] an attempt to destroy the Black Panther Party here in Baltimore City,” Mr. Conway said, according to transcripts of the trial.
A jury of 10 Blacks and two whites convicted Mr. Conway of first-degree murder in January 1971. He was convicted alongside Jack Ivory Johnson Jr. and James E. Powell.
In 2014 after an appellate court ruled the jury had been given improper instructions, he was was released on parole.
Upon release, he told a radio station he planed to dedicate the next stage of his life to community service.
“Eddie was a caring person. People think of him as political but he was loving and generous,” said his wife, Dominque Stevenson. “He was a real revolutionary guided by feelings of love.”
“The whole time I have been incarcerated I have always been trying to continue to do the positive work that I joined the Black Panther Party to do. And that was to feed children, to help educate people, to help organize the community, to help build a better community,” Mr. Conway said during an interview with host Marc Steiner on WEAA-FM following his release.
Mr. Conway was released under an arrangement with prosecutors that saw him drop his request for retrial.
“It wasn’t real for me until it actually happened because it seems like I have been up this road so many times in terms of challenging the case,” he said at the time. “It wasn’t until I walked out onto the sidewalk that I finally said, ‘OK, this is real.’”
Born in Baltimore and raised in Cherry Hill and on East Preston Street, he was the son of Cleophas Conway, a municipal worker and Eleanora Pinkney, a homemaker. He attended Lake Clifton High School and dropped out in the 10th grade.
He worked at various jobs — A-rabber, busboy and factory worker among them — to make ends meet and pay for an apartment he shared with a few buddies, a 1995 Sun story said.
He joined the Army and served as a medic in Germany. He considered reenlisting and going to Vietnam.
But he saw a documentary on the life of civil rights leader Malcom X.
“That movie made me pay attention to what was going on in America,” Mr. Conway said in 1995. When he saw pictures of riots in Newark, New Jersey, he said he had an epiphany.
“This was an awakening for me,” he says. “I needed to be back home.”
He returned to Baltimore and took a U.S. Postal Service job. He also joined the Black Panthers, a Black nationalist organization.
Mr. Conway insisted he was working during the time of the shooting. His supervisor confirmed the alibi.
After hearing all the evidence, the jury convicted Mr. Conway. The controversial case attracted attention for decades.
A 2001 Sun article noted that Baltimore City Council members voted to urge a pardon Mr. Conway, calling him a political prisoner innocent of murder.
Officials of the police department countered by saying Mr. Conway was guilty and deserved his sentence.
Police contended the Black Panther party had orchestrated the ambush as an initiation rite for new members.
During his imprisonment, Mr. Conway earned three college degrees, started a literacy program and was called an “exemplary” prisoner.
Mr. Conway’s supporters referred to him one of the country’s longest-held political prisoners. Behind bars, he tried to organize prison unions and helped established a prison library.
Mr. Conway wrote a book on his life, “Marshall Law: The Life & Times of a Baltimore Black Panther.”
Mr. Conway was released from prison on March 4, 2014 after serving 43 years and 11 months.
After his release Mr. Conway was later a producer at The Real News Network. He was the host of a radio show, “Rattling the Bars.” He also read science fiction and fantasy novels and liked to piece together complicated jigsaw puzzles.
“A 3,000 piece puzzle was soothing to him,” his wife said.
Mr. Stanford was among the founders of the People’s Free Medical Clinic, which later became the People’s Community Health Center, located on Greenmount Avenue near Vineyard Lane in Baltimore.
A service will be held at 1 p.m. on Feb. 25 at the Homewood Friends Meeting House, Charles Street near 31st Street.
Survivors include his wife of five years, Dominque Stevenson; two sons, Ronald Conway of Bowling Green, Ohio and DeShonne Massey of Hyattsville; a daughter, Amber Jones of Baltimore; four sisters, Veronica Booth of Baltimore, Marilyn Smith of Eastern Baltimore County, Peggy Smith of North Carolina and Myra Smith of Baltimore; and five grandchildren.