Chicago 7 Trial(英)

handed out flowers, smoked pot, made out, and listened to poetry. About 10:30, a police officer with a bullhorn walked through the park saying, "The park is closing. If you stay in the park, you'll be arrested." Some young people, most of them local "greasers" rather than out-of-town protesters, threw objects at a police car. At 11 P. M., police charged into the people still in the park, teargassing them and hitting them with billy clubs. The clearing of the park continued for hours. Some kids ran around smashing car windows and vandalizing buildings.

　　Police cracked more heads and fired more tear-gas grenades again the next night. They attacked about 3,000 demonstrators gathered in the southeastern corner of Lincoln Park shortly after the 11 P. M. curfew. Testifying later about that night, Robert Pierson, an undercover officer working as Hoffman's bodyguard, said that the Yippie leader announced, "We're going to hold the park. We're going to fuck up the pigs and the Convention." Shortly after midnight, Tom Hayden became the first of the alleged conspirators to be arrested. An officer spotted Hayden letting the air out of the tires of a police car. A half hour later, Rennie Davis (according to a prosecution undercover witness) stood at the barricades in Lincoln Park with a megaphone shouting at people to "fight the pigs."

　　August 27 was another wild day in Chicago. It began with a sunrise service of chants, prayers, and meditation in Lincoln Park, led by Allen Ginsberg. Bobby Seale arrived in Chicago and addressed a crowd of about 2,000 in Lincoln Park. His speech, advocating a violent response to police, was later made the basis for charging him with a violation of the 1968 Anti-Riot Act. Abbie Hoffman, furious with MOBE for its continued advocacy of non-violence, allegedly met with the Blackstone Rangers to persuade them to come to the park with weapons that night. In the Chicago Coliseum, about 4,000 persons gathered to hear David Dellinger, folk singer Phil Ochs, novelist William Burroughs and a variety of other peace movement celebrities. Shortly after

11 P. M., the nightly routine of clubbing and tear-gassing repeated in the park. Some enraged demonstrators smashed windows and streetlights.

　　Convention week violence peaked on Wednesday, August 28. The day began with Abbie Hoffman being arrested while having breakfast and charged with public indecency for having written the word "Fuck" on his forehead. (Hoffman said he did so to discourage the press from photographing him.) In the afternoon, Dellinger, Seale, Davis, and Hayden addressed 10,000 to 15,000 demonstrators at the bandshell in Grant Park, opposite the Convention's headquarters hotel, the Conrad Hilton. Tom Hayden allegedly told the audience: "Make sure that if blood is going to flow, let it flow all over the city. If we're going to be disrupted and violated, let the whole stinking city be disrupted. I'll see you in the streets!" Around 3 P.M., some people in the crowd lowered an American flag from a flagpole and attempted to raise a red flag in its place. When the police moved in to retrieve the American flag, Jerry Rubin yelled "Kill the pigs! Kill the cops!" In another incident, Rennie Davis was clubbed into unconsciousness, taken to a hospital, then covered with a sheet and moved from room to room in a successful effort to foil police who planned to arrest Davis during a search of the hospital. That evening, in the Chicago Amphitheatre, Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey as their candidate for President. Police stopped a nighttime march of about 1,500 people to the Amphitheatre. They attacked demonstrators with tear gas and clubs at numerous street intersections in the area.

　　The clubbing and the tear-gassing finally let up on Thursday, but protest activities continued. Senator Eugene McCarthy and comedian Dick Gregory were among those who addressed a crowd in Grant Park. Police undercover officer Irwin Bock met in the park with John Froines and Lee Weiner. Froines allegedly said that the demonstrators needed more ammunition to use against police. Weiner reportedly then suggested Molotov cocktails, adding that a good tactic might be to pick a target in the Loop and bomb it. Weiner told Bock and others to get the bottles, sand, rags, and gasoline necessary to make the Molotov cocktails.

　　The Trial

　　Until enactment of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, rioting and incitement to riot was a strictly local law enforcement issue. Congress, however, felt compelled to respond to the ever-increasing numbers of anti-war protests around the country. The new law made it a federal crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot. Even after passage of the law, Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the Justice Department were reluctant to enforce the new provisions. Clark viewed what had happened in Chicago as primarily a police riot. The Attorney General expressed more interest in prosecuting police officers for brutality than in prosecuting demonstrators for rioting.

　　The Justice Department's lack of interest in prosecuting protest leaders outraged Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Daley convinced a close friend and federal judge, William Campbell, to summon a grand jury to consider possible violations of the anti-riot law. On March 20, 1969, the jury returned indictments against eight demonstrators, balanced exactly by indictments against eight police officers. The eight indicted demonstrators included Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. By the time the grand jury returned its indictments, the Nixon Administration had begun. The new attorney general, John Mitchell, exhibited none of his predecessor's reluctance about prosecuting demonstrators. Mitchell gave the green light to prosecute.

　　On September 24, 1969, thirteen months after the riots that shocked America, the trial of the so-called "Chicago Eight" began in the oak-panelled, twenty-third-floor courtroom of Judge Julius Hoffman. The 300 membe

rs of the panel of potential jurors were overwhelmingly white, middle-class and middle-aged. They reminded author and trial observer J. Anthony Lukas of "the Rolling Meadows Bowling League lost on their way to the lanes." Defense attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass submitted to Judge Hoffman a list of fifty-four proposed questions for potential jurors. They believed that the questions might aid them in their use of juror challenges by revealing cultural biases. Among the questions the defense attorneys wanted to ask jurors were: "Do you know who Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix are?", "Would you let your son or daughter marry a Yippie?", and "If your children are female, do they wear brassieres all the time?" Judge Hoffman rejected all but one of the proposed questions, asking the jurors only "Are you, or do you have any close friends or relatives who are employed by any law enforcement agencies?" (Later, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals would cite the judge's refusal to allow inquiry into the potential cultural biases of jurors as a ground for reversing all convictions.) Three hours after voir dire began, a jury of two white men and ten women, two black and eight white, was seated. It was clearly not a good jury for the defense. (After the trial, one female juror commented that the defendants "should be convicted for their appearance, their language and their lifestyle." Edward Kratzke, the jury foreman, also was angered by the defendants' courtroom behavior: "These defendants wouldn't even stand up when the judge walked in; when there is no more respect we might as well give up the United States." A third juror expressed the view that the demonstrators "should have been shot down by the police.")

　　The defense and prosecution tables stood in dramatic contrast. At the defense table, defendants relaxed in blue jeans and sweatshirts, often with their feet up on chairs or the table itself. Hoffman and Rubin favored attire that included headbands, buttons, beads, and colorful shirts. The defendants passed trial hours munching jelly beans, cracking jokes, offering editorial comments, making faces, reading newspapers, and sleeping. The area around the defense table was littered with clothing, candy wrappers, and even (on one day) a package of marijuana. The prosecution table, behind which sat silver-haired District Attorney Thomas Foran and his young assistant Richard Schultz in their business suits, was, on the other hand, a picture of neatness and efficiency. The prosecution table was clear of all but carefully arranged notes, a file of index cards, and a pencil.

　　There was division in the defense ranks concerning trial strategy. Some of the defendants, such as Tom Hayden, wanted to play the trial straight: to concentrate on winning jurors by diligently pursuing weaknesses in the prosecution's case and by observing a degree of courtroom decorum. Others, such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, saw the trial as an opportunity to appeal to young people around the country. They wanted to turn the trial into entertaining theater that would receive maximum attention in the press. To that end, the Yippies would spice up the days of the trial by, for example, wearing judicial robes, bringing into the courtroom a birthday cake, blowing kisses to the jury, baring their chests, or placing the flag of the National Liberation Front on the defense table.

　　In his trial account The Barnyard Epithet an Other Obscenities, J. Anthony Lukas divides the Chicago Conspiracy Trial into five "phases." The first period, which Lukas calls "The Jelly Bean Phase," lasted from September 24 to October 13. It was a relatively uneventful stage, in which the defendants took a "gently mocking" stance toward the trial. The second period

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