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      Judge Julius J. Hoffman Courtesy of Bettman/Corbis.

      Judge Julius Hoffman earned as much notoriety for his management of the Chicago conspiracy case as the defendants did for their disruptive behavior. Hoffman was born in Chicago and received his law degree from Northwestern University. He entered private practice in Chicago in 1915 and served as general counsel of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company (later the Brunswick Corporation) from 1936-1944. Hoffman was elected judge of the Cook County Superior Court in 1947 and was nominated in 1953 by President Eisenhower to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. By the time of the Chicago conspiracy trial, Hoffman was known for his efficient courtroom. Hoffman was randomly assigned to the case after Chief Judge William Campbell recused himself because of his exposure to the evidence presented to the grand jury investigation over which he presided.

      As the trial progressed, Hoffman was unrelenting in his opposition to the defense and in his support for the government attorneys. He rejected the defense motion requesting six months for the preparation of pretrial motions, and he accepted the prosecutions’ recommendation of one month; he ordered the arrest of attorneys who assisted in the pre-trial proceedings but who withdrew before the start of the trial; he refused to incorporate all but one of the questions submitted by the defense for prospective jurors; he disregarded Bobby Seale’s repeated complaints that he was not being represented by an attorney of his own choice; he rejected crucial evidence of the defendants’ intent, and he barred witnesses, like Ramsey Clark, who were prepared to testify to the defendants’ intent to abide by the law; he failed to reveal to the defense his communications with the jury as it deliberated; and he delayed issuing any contempt citations until completion of the trial. Many of Judge Hoffman’s individual rulings were well within the authority of a district judge, but the cumulative impact, combined with his undisguised disdain for the defendants and their attorneys, set him up for an unusually personal censure from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. That court, in an opinion written by Judge Thomas Fairchild and reversing the criminal convictions, found that “the district judge’s deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense is evident in the record from the very beginning.” Judge Hoffman’s order that Seale be bound and gagged brought even greater condemnation from the press and Judge Edward Gignoux, who described the incident as an “appalling spectacle.”

      Judge Hoffman was not without supporters. On the day after he convicted Bobby Seale of contempt, Judge Hoffman entered the dining room of a private club for his daily lunch and received a standing ovation from the other guests. When the defendants appealed their contempt convictions, Judge Hoffman’s colleagues on the district court tried to submit a brief in support of his authority to issue the criminal contempt convictions. During the course of the trial, Judge Hoffman received hundreds of supportive letters from the public. The defendants themselves had mixed feelings about Judge Hoffman, despite their angry, profanity-laden confrontations with him in court, and some later acknowledged that he often made them laugh.

      After the close of the trial, Judge Hoffman left for his home in Florida, but he was soon invited by President Nixon to attend the national prayer breakfast at the White House, and the Gridiron Club honored Hoffman at its annual dinner in Washington. He assumed a reduced caseload in 1972, and served on the court until his death. In an interview in 1982, Judge Hoffman said “I did nothing in that trial I am not proud of, I presided with dignity. When I felt I had to be firm, I was firm.”

      William Joseph Campbell (1905-1988)

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       Chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

      Judge William J. Campbell Courtesy of the Seventh Circuit Library.

      On September 9, 1968, three days after the Daley administration released its report blaming the violence at the Democratic National Convention on outside agitators, Chief Judge William Campbell of the Northern District of Illinois convened a grand jury to investigate the demonstrators’ possible violation of the federal anti-riot law and the police’s possible infringement of civil rights. During the convention, Campbell had refused to restrain the police from interfering with reporters. Following release of the Walker Report that attributed much of the violence to the police, Campbell publicly questioned the motivation for release of the report before it was presented to the grand jury, and he suggested that the grand jury might investigate whether the release of the report was an attempt to influence the same grand jury’s investigation of the convention violence. After the grand jury indicted eight demonstrators and eight policemen, the court’s random assignment procedure originally selected Campbell as the judge for the trial of the eight defendants, but Campbell recused himself because of his detailed knowledge of the evidence presented to the grand jury. As chief judge of the court during the conspiracy trial, Campbell had authority over the rules regulating media access, and he prohibited cameras and sound equipment from public areas of the courthouse.

      Campbell was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Campbell was born in Chicago and received his law degree from Loyola University. He served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois for two years before his appointment to the district court. Campbell assumed a reduced caseload in March 1970, but he continued to serve as a senior judge until his death.

      Edward T. Gignoux (1916-1988)

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