The Trial of the Chicago 7: History, Legacy and Trial Transcript - Bruce A. Ragsdale

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successful books, including Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), Woodstock Nation (1969), and Steal This Book (1970). He went into hiding after an arrest for cocaine possession and lived under an assumed identity for nearly six years. Hoffman surrendered himself in 1980, after his successful work as an environmental organizer made his exposure likely. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1980, and he committed suicide in 1989.

      Jerry Rubin (1938-1994)

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      Jerry Rubin Courtesy of Bettman/Corbis.

      Like his fellow Yippie, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin approached the Chicago conspiracy trial as an opportunity to present a critique of American society and to challenge the legitimacy of the U.S. government.

      Rubin was born in Cincinnati and attended Oberlin College before graduating from the University of Cincinnati. He worked for a short time as a sports reporter and then enrolled in graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. He quickly gave up school for political activism and traveled to Cuba. Back in Berkeley, Rubin participated in the Free Speech Movement in 1964. He organized one of the first teach-ins against the Vietnam War. He also developed a reputation for theatrical behavior when, in 1966, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee dressed as an American Revolutionary soldier.

      After an unsuccessful run for mayor of Berkeley, Rubin moved to New York where he merged his political activism with an interest in cultural radicalism. He joined with David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to organize a massive protest against the Vietnam War in October 1967, and it was Rubin who proposed to stage the march in front of the Pentagon. With Abbie Hoffman, Rubin was one of the founders of the Yippie movement, and the two of them moved to Chicago in the spring of 1968 to organize Yippie events and to seek city permits for their gatherings in public parks.

      In the week before the Democratic convention, Rubin appeared at a rally at the Chicago Civic Center, where he nominated as president a pig, named “Pigasus." (The organizers were arrested and the pig placed in the custody of the local humane society.) Rubin and other Yippies drew on their media skills to spread wild rumors of non-existent Yippie plans, including a supposed effort to put LSD in the Chicago water supply and a plot to place Yippies disguised as bellhops in the hotels serving convention delegates.

      The Daley report on the convention demonstrations cited Rubin as one of the “outside agitators" blamed for the violence. While the grand jury investigated possible indictments related to the convention violence, Rubin continued his political theater. When the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1968 held hearings on the convention violence, Rubin showed up “bearded, beaded, barefooted, and bare-chested," as the New York Times described him. At additional HUAC hearings in December, Rubin arrived at the committee room dressed as Santa Claus.

      Rubin was convicted of intent to incite a riot, but the U.S. court of appeals reversed the conviction, and the government declined to retry Rubin on the charge.

      At the close of the trial, Judge Hoffman convicted Rubin on fifteen charges of contempt and sentenced him to more than two years in jail. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the convictions and remanded the contempt charges for retrial before another judge in the district court. The government prosecuted only three of the contempt charges, and Judge Edward Gignoux convicted Rubin on two of the charges and found Rubin not guilty on the third. The convictions were on charges related to a vocal attack on Judge Hoffman following the revocation of bail for David Dellinger and to Rubin’s appearance, along with Abbie Hoffman, in the courtroom in judicial robes, which they flung to the floor.

      Rubin drew media attention again in the 1970s when he withdrew from political activity and started work as an entrepreneur. In the 1980s, he joined Abbie Hoffman on a campus tour dubbed the Yippie versus Yuppie debates. Rubin was killed in a pedestrian accident in Los Angeles in 1994.

      Bobby Seale (1936- )

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      Bobby Seale Courtesy of Bettman/Corbis.

      Bobby Seale was in many ways the unlikeliest of the conspiracy defendants. Seale had met only one other defendant, Jerry Rubin, before their indictment, and some of the defendants did not meet him until they first appeared in the courtroom. Seale had been in Chicago briefly during convention week to give two speeches. Although his case was severed from the others well before the end of the trial, Seale’s confrontations with Judge Hoffman and Hoffman’s order to have Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom remain the most powerful examples of the breakdown of the judicial process during the conspiracy trial.

      At the time of the Democratic National Convention, Seale lived in Oakland, California, and was chairman of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers had not participated in the planning for the Chicago demonstrations, but Seale made an overnight trip to deliver two speeches. Seale spoke to a rally in Lincoln Park and talked of the need for black men to arm themselves in protection against the police, whom he repeatedly referred to as the pigs. In the prosecution’s opening statement at the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Schultz quoted Seale as saying “if they get in our way, we should kill some of those pigs" and talking about “barbecuing that pork."

      The inclusion of Seale in the conspiracy indictment perplexed many people, including the other defendants, but it came at a time of numerous prosecutions of Black Panther Party members in different parts of the country and extensive FBI surveillance of the party members. Shortly before the start of the Chicago conspiracy trial, Seale and other members of the party were indicted in Connecticut on charges of conspiracy to murder a suspected police informant. Because of the indictment, Seale was the only defendant held in jail during the length of his time in the Chicago conspiracy trial.

      Seale originally retained the Black Panthers’ lawyer Charles Garry as his attorney, and Garry appeared at the defendants’ arraignment on April 9. When the trial started in September, Garry was recovering from surgery and could not travel, but Judge Hoffman refused to delay the start of the trial. Seale repeatedly refused to allow William Kunstler to represent him, and in a series of increasingly hostile confrontations with the judge, Seale attempted to cross-examine witnesses and otherwise serve as his own counsel. Many of these confrontations ended with Seale’s litany of “liar, pig, fascist." On October 29, Judge Hoffman ordered that Seale be bound and gagged by the marshals before any court-room appearance. Newspapers across the country and television networks carried the courtroom drawings of the violently restrained Seale. Within a week, the judge relented, but when Seale again tried to represent himself, Judge Hoffman on November 5 ordered a mistrial in the prosecution of Seale. Judge Hoffman also convicted Seale on sixteen charges of contempt and sentenced him to four years in prison. The day before, a group of lawyers from across the country filed suit in the U.S. district court asking for an order stopping the trial until Seale was allowed to represent himself, but Judge Edwin Robson dismissed the suit on November 5.

      The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dismissed four of the contempt convictions of Seale and remanded the other twelve for retrial before another judge in the district court. The government declined to prosecute the contempt charges. The court of appeals did not rule on Seale’s right to a delay in the trial or the right to represent himself, but it found that the trial judge was obligated to investigate Seale’s claims that he was not being represented by an attorney of his choice. If such an inquiry had confirmed Seale’s account of meetings with his lawyer and found that Seale was “free from ulterior motivation," Judge Hoffman would have been in error to force Seale to rely on Kunstler as his lawyer.

      Seale faced trial on the murder conspiracy charges in New Haven,

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