The Michigan Avenue melee which Schultz witnessed first-hand would later be called a "police riot" by an investigating commission. "And my daughter yells out, 'Aw daddy, let him sing!'" "I stood up and I said I object to the witness singing," he remembered. Schultz recalled trying to stop that on one occasion, as his ten-year-old daughter was sitting in the gallery. Witnesses like Alan Ginsberg recited poetry from the stand. When ordered to remove them, they were wearing Chicago Police uniforms underneath. On one occasion, defendants Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin appeared in court wearing judicial robes.
#CHICAGO SEVEN TRIAL#
The trial was filled with continuing mayhem. Seale was eventually severed from the case, leaving the remaining defendants who would be known to history as the Chicago 7. "A black man was bound and gagged in a federal courtroom! It was horrible, and I'm telling you, it was carefully orchestrated!" "We were all in shock-the whole world was in shock," he says today. He said he firmly believes Kunstler and the defense team knew of the appellate ruling, and pushed the judge into the infamous move. "We couldn't proceed with the trial, the trial ground to a halt, Seale was just screaming he was going to cross examine," he recalled. While Judge Julius Hoffman has faced decades of withering criticism for his decision to bind and gag Seale, Schultz argued the appellate court decision left him no option to bar him from the courtroom. And a few weeks before, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in a case that an unruly defendant could not be removed from a courtroom. Chief defense attorney William Kunstler repeatedly insisted to the judge he was withdrawing as Seale's attorney. That said, Schultz argued there is a back story that has never been told. "He's bound and gagged for two days," Schultz recalled, shaking his head.
What followed was an episode which many observers have called a low point in federal jurisprudence in Chicago. "And many of them morphed right into the well of the courtroom, right in front of the jury and the judge, people slugging it out, kicking and rolling on the ground-it was wild!"Ī low point came as defendant Bobby Seale loudly protested his treatment, demanding a new lawyer. "It would explode in a mini riot!" he said. The former prosecutor said the melees frequently began with spectators who loudly, and often profanely protested the proceedings. "I would stand back and watch that-in the courtroom!" "Remember the old western movies, where everyone would just be punching everyone else out and throwing them over the bar?" Schultz asked. Suburban Mom With ALS Aims to Raise Awareness For Other Younger Patients But that paled in comparison with what was transpiring inside. From the beginning of the trial, the streets in front of the Dirksen Federal Building were often filled with protesters and police. The eight defendants, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, John Froines, and Lee Weiner, faced a variety of charges chief among them, conspiracy and inciting to riot. "They were encouraging, to say the least, violence during the trial." "A week before the trial started, they announced they were going to bring to the trial, the riots they brought to the convention," he said.
Attorney Thomas Foran headed up the team which prosecuted the alleged instigators of the mayhem, known before the trial as the "Chicago 8." Schultz has a unique perspective of those events. "The protesters were chanting, 'The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching,'" he said. "Demonstrators were being beaten on the heads, cops were being hit with boards with nails sticking out."Īnd echoing down Michigan Avenue, came the chant which would become synonymous with the event.
"It was violent, it was wild," he recalled. Attorney's office, he was at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balbo, watching a riot stemming from the Democratic National Convention. Richard Schultz remembers exactly where he was on the evening of Aug.
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