On Aug. 29, 1971, San Francisco police Sgt. John V. Young was murdered as part of a terrorist conspiracy by an offshoot of the Black Panthers calling itself the Black Liberation Army. Eight suspects have now been charged in the crime, according to this AP story. Among them is Anthony Bottom alias Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, who is presently the guest of the taxpayers of New York for the murder of Patrolman Joseph A. Piagentini the same year.

Muntaqim was a plaintiff in the Second Circuit case claiming that murderers still in prison had a right to vote, notwithstanding state law, under the Voting Rights Act. CJLF joined a brief in that case, along with the Piagentini family and and the Center for Equal Opportunity. The Second Circuit decided that Muntaqim wasn't a resident of New York at all and dumped his case, leaving the Voting Rights Act issues to the no-longer-joined case of Hayden v. Pataki.

The death penalty is not a possibility in the present case, because the death penalty law in effect in 1971 was thrown out in 1972, and the restoring enactments were not retroactive.

Update: The New York Sun has more in this editorial (hat tip: George Conway).