Attica prosecutor Malcolm Bell’s life was shaped by the 1971 prison uprising

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Lawyer Malcolm Bell was tasked with the prosecution of state police and others who may have committed crimes, including murder, during the violent and deadly retaking of Attica prison on Sept. 13, 1971.

In all, 43 people — 32 inmates and 11 prison employees — died at Attica, the nation's deadliest prison uprising.

It was a seminal experience in his life, and the fascinating, difficult era is reflected in ways he approached his new book, "Roses in the Night."

The book from Fresh Look Press is fiction, yet steeped in fact from his own life experiences helping refugees fleeing from Guatemala during the country's civil war. Risking prosecution, Bell harbored undocumented refugees who had their entire villages destroyed by the country's armies and relatives slaughtered.

"Roses in the Night" focuses on sisters, one who tries to save her village and another raped and tortured by U.S.-backed intelligence officers in El Salvador. The characters are modeled after individuals Bell met in the Sanctuary Movement, which helped refugees escaping Central America.

Guatemala and western New York are far apart, but another tragic historic touchstone has undergirded Bell's work, and very life, since the 1970s: the Attica uprising.

The Attica prosecution Bell, now 93, said the Attica uprising rerouted the direction of his life.

He became more distrustful of government — Bell has contended that his prosecution of police at Attica was purposefully undermined — and government claims. Attica again comes to the fore: Some officials at first said that incarcerated men killed hostages during the police seizure of the prison when instead they were killed by police gunfire.

There is a nexus between the movement to help Guatemalan refugees, and the civil war that prompted their flight, and the Attica uprising, Bell said in a telephone interview from his Vermont home. The government, whether the CIA support with Guatemala's armies or New York officials approving the assault on Attica, destroyed lives. And, the government typically absolves itself.

Oftentimes, Bell said, the public is complicit, accepting spoon-fed government rationales.

"You’ve got this thing that was true with Attica and was true with the Sanctuary Movement," he said. "Most people are aggressively ignorant. They don't want to know about the stuff that might cause them to have to do something."

Bell's earlier book, "The Turkey Shoot," detailed his work on Attica and the roadblocks he encountered. Since its initial release in 1985, and subsequent updates with new information, more details have been unearthed that support Bell's beliefs that New York officials did not want police prosecuted.

For instance Heather Thompson's Pulitzer-winning "Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy" relied in part on records from a grand jury investigating police that had never been publicly released. Thompson obtained those records and her book bolsters Bell's claims.

Bell now spends much time caring for his wife, Nancy, who has dementia. Through the decades of marriage, Bell said, she has been a rock of support, backing him at times, such as when sheltering refugees, when he risked his own prosecution.

"Very few women, I think, would have put up with what I did in the Sanctuary Movement. A lot of women might have said, 'Don't break the law; you might go to jail.' "

Bell has always longed to write, he said, and "The Turkey Shoot" was his first venture into publishing. He still plans more, he said.

Annual Attica ceremony This year, as every recent year, there will be a Sept. 13 ceremony at the Attica prison honoring the prison employees killed during the uprising and retaking. Elsewhere in the state, there are often events remembering the incarcerated men who were killed.

The public ceremony at the Attica Correctional Facility will begin at 4:30 p.m. It is organized by the Forgotten Victims of Attica, an organization of prison workers who were at the riot and the families of those who were killed at the uprising or have died in the years since.

Bell cannot attend this year; he has numerous times in the past. He has been welcomed by Forgotten Victims, considered a whistleblowing hero by many in its ranks.

One day in the future he hopes to return, he said. In the meantime, he will continue to write.

— Gary Craig is a veteran reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle who has extensively covered the aftermath of the Attica uprising. He is the co-author of "The Prison Guard's Daughter: My Journey Through the Ashes of Attica," the memoir of Deanne Quinn Miller. Miller's father, a corrections officer at Attica was fatally beaten by inmates during the uprising. She is a founding member of Forgotten Victims of Attica.

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Attica prosecutor Malcolm Bell’s life was shaped by the 1971 prison uprising

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