Trials: An Electric Circus

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No Address. Threats also punctuated the trial. "There will be blood all over this courtroom!" yelled someone in the audience. All who entered the courtroom were carefully searched, and detectives who testified refused to divulge their home addresses. Even the judge refused to reveal where he lived, telling a reporter: "You have seen what happened in the courtroom."

Though the jury has not yet been selected, the Panther trial already gives every indication of turning into a spectacle like the conspiracy trial of the Chicago Seven. The Panthers seek the overthrow of the system represented by the court and see their trial as political persecution by that system; apparently they intend to dramatize its "corruptness" by making a mockery of it. Yet these tactics are self-defeating. They only expose the Panthers to additional punishment for contempt of court and they may deprive them of sympathy that has been building up because of the unusually large bail in which they have been held (TIME, Feb. 9). Disruptions may be proper Panther ideology, but they are poor and dangerous tactics, both in a courtroom and in the larger scene of the national consciousness.