As "Time Magazine" wrote at the time, "During a ten-week trial, Marin County prosecutors argued that Bingham's flight was proof of his guilt. Defense attorneys contended that prison guards had slipped Jackson the gun, hoping that the incendiary black militant would be killed. Bingham, they said, fled to save his life. 'To understand this case,' declared Bingham's lawyer M. Gerald Schwartzbach, 'you have to understand 1971 . . . We're talking about a time when students were murdered at Kent State and Jackson State.'" A Marin County, California jury eventually acquitted him of murder and conspiracy charges at trial in 1986.