Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2000
ISSN
0041-9516
Publisher
University of Colorado
Language
en-US
Abstract
On October 29, 1969, sometime after two o'clock in the afternoon, following yet another heated exchange with defendant Bobby Seale in a courtroom full of spectators, reporters, and armed guards, Judge Julius Jennings Hoffman turned to a marshal and ordered: "Take that defendant into the room in there and deal with him as he should be dealt with in this circumstance."' Judge Hoffman described the aftermath:
In an attempt to maintain order in the courtroom, the Court thereupon ordered the defendant Seale removed from the courtroom at which time he was forcibly restrained by binding and gagging. The defendant Seale was then returned to the courtroom, but continued to shout through the gag. The Court then ordered the marshal to reinforce the gag. The gag was then reinforced and the defendant Seale was returned to the courtroom. Eventually the jury was allowed in the courtroom for the afternoon session.
This spectacle lasted for three full days. Seale continued to shout through his gag, while trying to loosen his chains so as to regain blood circulation. Marshals, at the Judge's order, struggled to tie Seale more tightly to his chair and to increase the efficiency of the gag. One of the anguished defense attorneys denounced the sight as "medieval torture," and protested the fact that the courtroom had been turned into an "armed camp."3 Every hour the situation grew more grotesque and more alarming.
Overnight, the decision to bind and gag came to symbolize all that was wrong with the American justice system. It was widely publicized, served as the subject of endless drawings from the trial, and eventually inspired a scene in Woody Allen's film BANANAS.! Woody Allen, then a budding commentator on American popular culture, was clearly pointing to some similarities between the United States and certain regimes south of the border.
How should a judge exercise discretion under circumstances of extreme stress? How do other members of the professional community, before and after the event, assess that exercise of discretion? How does character interact with law, and how do both interact with context to provide for the particular exercise of judicial discretion? I wish to explore these issues through the lens of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, and in particular, the decision to bind and gag Bobby Seale, chairman of the Black Panther Party, after he had repeatedly defied orders to let William M. Kunstler act as his defense lawyer in order to allow the trial to proceed.
Part I presents the facts and describes the way in which Federal District Court Judge Julius Hoffman exercised judicial discretion. Part II discusses his decision to bind and gag. Part III explores the question of character and examines how members of the professional community, law professors, judges of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and Justices of the Supreme Court reflected on law and character in the context of the exercise of judicial discretion of such magnitude.
Recommended Citation
Pnina Lahav,
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial: Character and Judicial Discretion
,
in
71
University of Colorado Law Review
1327
(2000).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2200
