Trials: Contempt in Chicago

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Kadish agree that the very least Hoffman could have done was to turn over the citations to another judge, who would not have been so vulnerable to charges of bias. Or Hoffman could have allowed Seale a lawyer, provided for formal arraignment, trial by jury and other normal criminal safeguards.

Despite Hoffman's disapproval, Seale claims that there was good reason for his courtroom outbursts; the judge, he said, had denied him proper representation at the conspiracy trial. Two weeks before the trial, Seale asked for a delay because his own lawyer, Charles Garry of San Francisco, was about to have gall-bladder surgery. The judge denied the delay on the ground that the defendants had enough other lawyers to represent them. Indeed, in Garry's absence, William Kunstler filed a notice of appearance that enabled him to act as counsel for Seale. Garry says that he advised Seale to insist upon acting as his own lawyer. In fact, the trial was under way before Seale expressly disavowed Kunstler as his attorney and Kunstler announced that he did not represent him.

As chief counsel for the Panthers, Garry, who is white, had represented Scale previously. "If Hoffman knew anything about the Panthers," says Professor Harry Kalvin Jr. of the University of Chicago Law School, "he would have understood that Garry is the only lawyer that Scale trusts, and therefore that his request for a postponement was not just a stunt to delay the trial." In Garry's absence, adds Professor Abraham Goldstein of Yale Law School, Hoffman should have allowed Scale to act as his own counsel and to personally cross-examine witnesses.

Rules of the Game. At week's end an attorney dispatched by Garry filed a notice of appeal on the contempt charges. Denying a request for bail, Hoffman asserted that the defendant "seeks to destroy the American judicial system." If nothing else, Scale's collision with the judge illustrates a key weakness in U.S. legal process. "This shows that the fragile legal system functions only if everyone is willing to some extent to play the game by the rules," says Professor Yale Kamisar of the University of Michigan Law School. Believing that the game was unjust, Scale refused to play by the rules. And the able but adamant Hoffman has been unable to teach him any respect for the referee.