Fugitive stalls extradition 38 years after shooting
June 29, 2007
Phil Kadner Daily Southtown columnist
More than 450 miles and 38 years separate Terrence Knox in Orland Park from Joseph Pannell in his Toronto jail cell.
But their lives remain bound by a flashpoint in March 1969, when gun shots rang out on the South Side of Chicago.
It was a "nice day," according to Knox -- a strange way for a man to describe the day he almost died.
In March 1969, Knox was a 21-year-old Chicago police officer. He said he can't remember what the weather was like on that day, but it was a "nice day" because he had written a few tickets and taken his squad car for a wash. For a Chicago cop, that qualifies as nice.
But then Knox received a call to patrol a South Side neighborhood, because Hirsch High School officials were anticipating possible student violence.
Knox was instructed to question anyone wandering the streets who appeared to be of school age.
Near 77th Street and Drexel Avenue, Knox stopped a young black man and asked him why he wasn't in school. The man refused to submit to a search.
Knox headed back to his squad car to radio his police district for a background check. Shots were fired -- as many as 13, according to one report. Three bullets went into the police officer's right arm, one severing an artery.
Only a year out of the police academy at the time, Knox now says, "I guess you could say that I flunked ducking that day." A police officer responding to the scene stuck a finger in the hole in Knox's arm to keep him from bleeding to death.
Pannell, 19, AWOL from the Navy, eventually was arrested and charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery.
But 38 years later, Knox still is waiting for Pannell to come to trial.
In 1971, Pannell skipped bail.
Two years later, FBI investigators contacted Knox and told him they had tracked down the fugitive. Knox went with the FBI agents to make a positive identification. There was no doubt in his mind that Pannell was the man who shot him.
Pannell was arrested for the same crime a second time.
And for a second time, a judge released Pannell on $10,000 bail.
"The judge knew he was a flight risk," Knox said. "I got so excited in the courtroom when he let him go on bail that I almost got cited for contempt of court."
Pannell took off again, this time across the Canadian border.
Knox eventually would leave the police department in 1977 with a partially paralyzed right arm.
But he continued to pursue Pannell.
"I heard he was in Canada working at a library," Knox said. "I tried to get the FBI to issue a fugitive warrant, but they wouldn't do it. I wrote letters to U.S. senators, congressmen, the Justice Department, the State Department -- no one seemed interested."
When Phil Cline became the Chicago police superintendent, Knox said he went to see him.
"I told him the oldest cold case in Chicago probably involved the shooting of a police officer, and he couldn't believe it," Knox said.
"Cline asked the department's cold case investigators to look into it, and that's how they finally tracked Pannell down."
In July 2004, Pannell was arrested for the third time.
He had been working under an assumed name, Gary Freeman, as a researcher in a Toronto reference library for 17 years.
Pannell had married and raised a family.
Knox had married and raised two daughters.
He has worked in the private sector and became a member of a victim rights task force under Mayor Daley.
As a victim himself, Knox thought that with Pannell's arrest, he would finally get his day in court.
But Pannell's case has become something of a cause celebre in Canada.
Pannell claims that he was a member of the Black Panther Party, which was persecuted by Chicago police in the 1960s. Canadian newspaper stories make it clear that Pannell fled the United States because he couldn't possibly have gotten a fair trial in the Windy City.
But questions have been raised as to whether Pannell ever was a member of the Panthers. A reporter who interviewed Panthers during a Chicago reunion couldn't find one who remembered Pannell from those days.
Hundreds of people have signed petitions opposing Pannell's extradition.
A reporter for a Toronto newspaper wrote of having met Pannell as a youth. The reporter recalled Pannell influencing scores of young black people, and said he might have become a college professor if his life had taken a different turn.
During an extradition hearing in 2005, more than 100 Pannell supporters filled a courtroom. Many of them wept as a judge ruled that Pannell should be returned to Chicago for trial.
Knox hailed the decision and expected to finally come face to face once more with his accused assailant.
But Pannell remains in a Canadian jail.
The Canadian minister of justice was scheduled to sign the order of extradition on July 6.
But a Pannell Web site revealed on Monday that the date had been delayed to Sept. 13.
"If he didn't do it, come back to Chicago and face a jury," Knox said. "If he's found not guilty, I'll shake his hand."
Knox, 60, who had heart bypass surgery in 2004, seemed to feel there was a sense of urgency about bringing Pannell to trial soon.
I asked him, "Why?"
"Just say people don't live long, and leave it at that," Knox said.
In one of life's ironies, Knox's congressman now is Bobby Rush (D-Chicago), the former defense minister of the Black Panthers.
Knox said he has asked Rush to pressure Canada for extradition but has not received a reply.
"My country has done very little to help me," Knox said. "But for three years, Canada has kept Pannell from facing justice in the U.S. courts."
Phil Kadner may be reached at
pkadner@dailysouthtown.com
or (708) 633-6787.
