Marshall "Eddie" Conway
| Marshall "Eddie" Conway | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 23, 1946 |
| Citizenship | USA |
| Organization | Black Panther Party |
| Criminal charge | Murder |
| Criminal penalty | Life (later changed to time served and probation) |
| Criminal status | Probation, after serving 43 years and 11 months of imprisonment |
Marshall "Eddie" Conway (born April 23, 1946) was the Minister of Defense of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party who in 1971 was convicted of murder of a police officer a year earlier, in a trial with many irregularities. In 2014 he was released on parole, after an appellate court ruled that his jury had been given improper instructions.
In addition to his position in the Black Panther Party, Conway was also employed by the United States Postal Service. He was unaware that some of the founding members of the Baltimore chapter of the Party were actually undercover officers at the Baltimore Police Department who reported daily on his activities at the chapter. At the same time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had also started its own investigation of Conway, recording his whereabouts, contacting his employers at the Post Office and maintaining contact with the Baltimore Police Department.
On the night of April 21, 1970, Baltimore Police Officers Donald Sager and Stanley Sierakowski were shot by three assailants who fired at least eight rounds at the officers during their response to a domestic disturbance call. Officer Sager was killed and Officer Sierakowski was critically wounded. About an hour later, Officers James Welsh and Roger Nolan arrested two men near the scene of the shooting, based on information they received over police radio. The men were Jackie Powell and Jack Ivory Johnson, and two pistols were found near the location where they were hiding. The police determined that these two men, Powell and Ivory Johnson, knew members of the Baltimore Black Panther Party chapter or were affiliated with it.
Immediately after contact with the two men, Officer Nolan briefly chased a black man on foot and tried to make contact with him. The man then fired several shots at Nolan and escaped. Nolan stated that he had previously seen this man on his assigned beat and could recognize him, but he did not know his name. Based on the affiliation of the two suspects with the Black Panther Party, Nolan was shown two photo line-ups of party members. In the first line-up, Nolan claimed that a picture of Conway, taken seven years earlier in 1963, resembled the shooter. In the second line-up, which used a current photograph of Conway, Nolan positively identified Conway as the individual who had shot at him. Welsh also positively identified Conway as the man whom Nolan had chased.
The next day, Conway was arrested while working at the Post Office. Following an investigation where the ballistics of both shootings were determined to match, Conway was charged with both the murder of Officer Sager and the attempted murders of Officers Sierakowski and Nolan. Conway was working during the time of the shooting and his supervisor at the Post Office verified his alibi, but this did not change his conviction. One of the weapons found with Powell and Johnson was also matched through ballistics testing to the murder of Officer Sager.
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