Conspiracy to Riot: The Life and Times of One of the Chicago 7 by Lee Weiner

Author:Lee Weiner [Weiner, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, United States, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, 20th Century, History, Political
ISBN: 9781953368225
Google: HLCLzgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 54352440
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2020-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

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To most people, the trial seemed to begin in the expected manner, with the selection of a jury and opening statements by the prosecution and defense attorneys. But they were wrong. The real beginning, and the event that determined the early content and tone of the trial, had happened two weeks earlier at a pretrial hearing where the judge refused to grant a postponement of the trial until Charles Garry had sufficiently recovered from his gallbladder surgery and could be in the courtroom. That decision effectively denied Bobby his own attorney, and it established the primary dynamic of the trial for as long as Bobby was with us in that courtroom.

From the very beginning of the trial, Bobby argued in court—both standing up before the judge and while he was seated at the defendants’ table—that he was being unfairly deprived of his attorney of choice and that he lacked the legal representation that was guaranteed by the Constitution. It started on the second day of the trial. Bobby had spoken with Garry on the phone from jail the night before. He had prepared detailed notes on a yellow pad, and during a morning conference between the defendants and our lawyers, we had all talked about what he intended to do.

Almost as soon as the judge took his seat behind his tall, wooden bench, before anything could really get started in the courtroom, Bobby stood up and went to the lectern from which the lawyers usually spoke. I thought Bobby was pretty clear. If he couldn’t have his lawyer of choice—he didn’t want Kunstler or Weinglass—he instead wanted to defend himself. Then he quietly returned to his seat.

The chief prosecuting attorney stood up and quickly argued against that possibility. The judge went into one of his little hunched-up, patronizing, and sarcastic frenzies that would become all too familiar to us as the trial went on. He ultimately denied Bobby the right to defend himself.

The judge based his refusal—and his assertion that Bobby was represented by Kunstler—on an arcane formality regarding a signed document that allowed Kunstler to briefly see an isolated Bobby in jail after Bobby had first been transported by federal marshals to Chicago from the west coast and had been unreachable by anybody for days. And that would become a continually repeated public clash in the courtroom. Bobby would insist he was without the lawyer of his choice, that he wanted to defend himself and cross-examine witnesses when they mentioned him in their testimony. The judge would then angrily “admonish” Bobby, ordering him to stop interrupting the trial and that he had Kunstler as his attorney. Bobby in turn would denounce the judge as a racist for denying him his constitutional rights. That would send the judge into a barely restrained, teeth-clenched fury. He warned Bobby of contemptuous behavior over and over again, and Bobby simply continued his brave and persistent demands in the face of injustice and threat.

While that struggle dominated much of the early energy

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