By Becky Uhuru
The Uhuru 3 and their attorneys announced that they are prepared to take their legal fight to the highest court in the U.S. to stop the government’s escalating attacks on free speech rights, attacks that use the cover of law to assail the First Amendment.
Following the decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the conviction of the Uhuru 3 on a federal “conspiracy” charge, Uhuru 3 Attorney Leonard Goodman filed a petition for rehearing en banc on Wednesday, Aug. 26.
En banc involves a hearing by all the judges of the circuit as opposed to the three-judge panel that ruled against the Uhuru 3 appeal.
Goodman states, “En Banc is the next step, and beyond that, this case will be pursued all the way to the Supreme Court if needed.”
In an unusually quick decision, the court issued a denial of the Uhuru 3 appeal on August 5, 2026, just two weeks after the hearing of oral arguments presented by Attorney Goodman to the 11th Circuit Appeals Court on July 22, 2026 in Atlanta.
If the en banc petition for rehearing is denied, the Uhuru 3 will have 90 days from the date of the 11th Circuit’s final judgement to file a petition for writ of certiorari (aka “cert petition”) with the Supreme Court asking them to review the case. The cert petition is an order instructing a lower court to send up case records for review by a higher court.
Attorney Goodman is the author of the Uhuru 3 appealhttps://handsoffuhuru.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/2025-06-16-AppealOpeningBrief.pdf submitted in June, 2025 and laying out the legal basis and precedents for the courts to overturn the unfounded conviction of the three defendants on the lesser charge of “conspiracy to act as foreign agents of the Russian government without notifying the attorney general’s office while acquitting them of the foundational charge of “serving as Russian agents without registration.”
Attorney Goodman argues that the lower court’s finding that “lawful political speech loses its First Amendment protections when the speaker is alleged to be a Russian agent”, should be reversed.
Goodman cites strong precedents in his appeal petition:
“This appeal questions whether innocent conduct can be criminalized under 18 U.S.C. § 951 even though Supreme Court precedent provides that there must be knowledge of registration requirements where conduct is otherwise innocent. It also questions whether the Supreme Court’s holdings in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. 225 (2019), and Ruan v. United States, 597 U.S. 450 (2022), that mens rea [intent or knowledge of guilt] must be read into all elements to separate innocent from wrongful conduct, have abrogated the Eleventh Circuit case of United States v. Duran, 596 F.3d 1283 (11th Cir. 2010), which found that one need not have knowledge of § 951’s registration requirement. It then questions whether Duran is inconsistent with the Eleventh Circuit case of United States v. Ruan, 56 F.4th 1291 (11th Cir. 2023), which found that a conspiracy requires one to know the fact that makes their conduct illegal…”
In 2023, the Department of Justice brought charges threatening 15 years in prison for then 82-year-old veteran Black liberation fighter Chairman Omali Yeshitela, along with white solidarity supporters Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel. The charges against the three marked the first time laws were used to threaten imprisonment solely for speech.
The charges came nine months after coordinated pre-dawn, military style FBI raids on homes and businesses connected to the Uhuru Movement in two states. A total of seven Uhuru Movement properties were violently raided before sunrise July 29, 2022, including the homes of the Uhuru 3.
In each location scores of AR-15 and M4 carbine-toting FBI, DEA and other agents poured out of government-issued armored vehicles using electronic battering rams to break down doors to the homes.
Brought to trial in September 2024, the Uhuru 3 were acquitted of the foundational charge of failing to register as “secret agents of Russia.”
The three were contradictorily convicted, however, on the secondary false charge of conspiracy to be secret agents of Russia – all because they had expressed opinions opposing the U.S. support for Ukraine along with advocating for reparations to African people and accusing the U.S. of genocide in its treatment of Black people.
The judge in the case ruled no prison time, citing that the defendants’ actions were protected political speech and did not cause physical or financial harm. The 3-year probation sentence was terminated in early 2026.
First Amendment lawyers and analysts see this as a precedent-setting case regarding constitutional protections of everyone’s free speech rights, because it is the first time that a “foreign agent” law was used to prosecute alleged “crimes” consisting exclusively of giving speeches, attending conferences and printing articles.
The Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! Fightback Coalition, launched in response to this attack, has mobilized support around the world. The Uhuru (Swahili for “freedom”) Movement has worked for decades “to end colonialism, the exploitation and oppression of African people in the U.S. and around the world.”
The Uhuru Movement’s success in building dual and contending Black power economic institutions, with projects around the world has drawn the ire of powerful forces intent on maintaining the global status quo of what Chairman Yeshitela has coined the” colonial mode of production”.
The Uhuru Bakery Cafe, the Black Power Vanguard Basketball Court, the Shamba La Uhuru Freedom Farm, the Uhuru House Community Center are a few of the economic institutions of the Uhuru Movement located in North St. Louis.
As Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement has explained, “This appeal is bigger than just getting a conviction overturned. Its aim is to set a landmark precedent in the fight for freedom of speech. As the Chairman has pointed out, when the First Amendment was written in 1791, African people were enslaved. Who else but African people, who never had free speech rights in this country to begin with, would be at the vanguard of the fight for free speech? This is part of what gives the Uhuru 3 fight-back so much significance, including this appeal brief. This will also be another victory…”.
Penny Hess, of the Uhuru 3, and Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC), an organization of white people fighting for reparations to the African community, reminds us that “we must tell the truth about this country, as we know that it can’t be denied that the U.S. and this system was built on the enslavement of African people. It was built on the genocide of the Indigenous people”.
Chairman Yeshitela asserts that the African anti-colonial struggle serves as the vanguard in efforts to keep democratic space open for everyone. “It was not the struggle against fascism that destroyed McCarthyism or kept society open. It was the struggle of Black people such as Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker against colonialism that kept the society open.”
