From "Part Two: Seale," pages 62-63

"I demand, demand, demand," Seale said, to be allowed to cross-examine undercover agent Frapolly. Judge Hoffman said, "I know this is just an entire device here…" Several observers have speculated that the government made Judge Hoffman aware of its wiretaps of phone conversations between Garry [lawyer, Seale's councel in San Francisco] and conspiracy staff-member Mickey Leanor, who also consulted with Weinglass.

Judge Hoffman again threatened Seale with what would happen to him if he did not cease his "outbursts." Seale pointed to the portraits of the "slave-owning" founding fathers on the wall behind Judge Hoffman, among whom ironically were those who helped to write the Constitution that he revered and whose protection he was demanding. "What can happen to me more than what George Washington and Benjamin Franklin did to their slaves?" The marshals "struggled" with Seale. Dellinger, pacifist, placed his elbows to his sides and his hands to his face and tried to put himself between the marshals and Seale. Seale was thrown, hard, into his seat. Richard Schultz asked that the record show that Dellinger had "physically interfered" with the marshals.

"I didn’t think I would ever live to sit on a bench or be in a courtroom," Judge Hoffman said, " where George Washington was assailed by a defendant in a criminal case and a judge was criticized for having his portrait on a wall."

"Mr. Seale, you do know what is going to happen to you." Seale continued to argue that he wanted and needed to represent himself. The judge excused the jury, and said to the marshals, "Take that defendant into the room in there and deal with him as he should be dealt with in this circumstance." The defendants did not rise when the court was recessed for the judge’s order to be carried out.

Seale, gagged, was carried by marshals back into the courtroom, handcuffed and bound to a metal chair. The handcuffs scraped and clicked, and people squirmed. "All we want," the judge said to Seale, "is you to be respectful to the court." If Seale would promise to cease his outbursts, the judge said, he could be restored to his original physical condition at the defense table.

Kunstler described the binding and gagging of Seale detail by detail for the record. "You don’t represent me," Seale mumbled through the gag. "Sit down, Kunstler." The judge asked the marshals to make "that contrivance more secure." Seale was taken behind the custody door again, where the gag was strengthened. Everybody waited until Seale was carried back into the courtroom.

When the jury was at last allowed into the courtroom, Mrs. Jean Fritz began weeping and other jurors squirmed hard in their seats at the sight. The brown woman who wore a red wig - she would vote for conviction on all counts during the jury’s deliberation - refused to look at Seale. The other black woman, Mary Butler, who would vote for acquittal, was visibly upset and stole glances at Seale, wincing each time she saw him. Seale noticed the tears going down Mrs. Fritz’s cheeks. He moved his gagged - and - bound head.

The ancient struggle for dominance, justice by strength, might is right, waits in every gesture, every word every action, every disposition of the standing and sitting person in a courtroom. The rules of the court have much of their origin in the need to forestall anybody’s impulse to make might right. Indeed, rules and balances have been pressed upon the strength of the state by such appellants as the barons of England, who were mighty enough to make their Magna Carta stick. The Chicago Conspiracy defendants would be the first to argue that it was the United States government, in the official persons of the judge and federal marshals, who violated the historically hard-won rule of the avoidance of physical conflict in the courtroom. If a party in the courtroom by manner and speech does not accept the rulings, the ancient struggle emerges from under the trappings, whole and shining, as if never buried. Judge Hoffman clearly heard the ancient echo, but impractically comprehended its threat.

People paying a visit to the trial for the first time generally remarked on, and felt the nightmarish emotional involvement of everyone present, which reflected more than a little the tumultuous outrage of the "governor" of the trial. Laughter and nightmares mean guaranteed emotional involvement. So does taking sides in politics, or finding yourself, in spite of yourself, taking sides. During Convention Week itself, the day-to-day confrontations between the police and the demonstrators in the parks and streets compelled people into action with the power of nightmares. People were caught up and gloried in these events, and were caught up in the trial too, and compelled by it, beyond their ability to say yea or nay - caught up in the "scary" test and tease of strength finding itself against strength.

From "Part Five: The Struggle for the Spirit of the Courtroom," pages 202-203

Cross-Examination for the Hell of It (the cross-examination of defendant Abbie Hoffman)

"If the police do not allow you to have liberated zones," Richard Schultz [Assistant U.S. Attorney, no relation to the Author] said, "you will fight for that right. Right?"

"We will fight for our right to assemble."

The prosecution wanted to show that the defendants used "sex and music to lure" young people, particularly the young campaign workers for Senator Eugene McCarthy, to Lincoln Park where they might be injured by police and incited to not. "You use entertainers to attract young people from all over," Schultz said. Abbie Hoffman spoke around the question before he finally said, "Rock musicians are the real leaders of the revolution."

Schultz was out to develop the theme and image of the crime of "doing what you want to in a liberated area." He stated that Abbie Hoffman had said that peeing on the walls of the Pentagon gave "a sense of integration."

Schultz asked about Abbie Hoffman’s "symbolic" act of urinating on the walls of the Pentagon.

"Did I symbolically urinate on the walls of the Pentagon?" There was general laughter.

"Are you done, Mr. Hoffman?"

"I’ll be done when you are."

"You had a good time at the Pentagon, didn’t you, Mr. Hoffman?"

"Yes I did. I’m having a good time now." Abbie Hoffman turned to Judge Hoffman. "I feel that biological necessity right now. Could we take a recess?" The defense’s audience was laughing, and Kay Richards and Jean Fritz were hiding their laughter behind their hands.

From "Part Six: The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation," pages 263-264

Like the Last People on the Face of the Earth

"When I was jury duty," said Shirley Seaholm, "it was the first time I was afraid of our government." She was sitting in the living room of the home of sister juror Jean Fritz, on a green and pleasant street in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. It was now two and a half months after the trial. Now they themselves were going to give testimony that would expose important questions about the trial.

This was the first interview - the first of three given to this writer - that these two jurors had granted to anyone who might publish what they said. For this writer, who had been present in Judge Hoffman’s courtroom from the beginning to the end of the trial, the interview was bringing at long last a sense of reality to the public knowledge of what happened in the Conspiracy jury. I had felt no clarity about the jury since February 18, 1970, when the jurors found Dave Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, and Abbie Hoffman guilty of crossing state lines with the intent to incite people to riot during the 1968 Democratic Convention, but innocent of the conspiracy count to do the same. John Froines and Lee Weiner were found innocent on all counts.

I had been certain that the jury was a hung jury, by the way they laughed, smiled, and expressed themselves throughout the trial. Now I was told that four of the women on the jury believed, and still believed, that the seven defendants were innocent on all counts, and five of the jurors believed, and still believed, that all of the defendants including Froines and Weiner were guilty on all counts. Three jurors were satisfied with the verdicts.

Shirley Seaholm, a payroll and budget control clerk, was a widow with a grown son and daughter. Jean Fritz shared the work of an auto supply store with her husband in Des Plaines. They had four children, the youngest being a lively boy named Dan, ten years of age, who often listened attentively to the interviews. For weeks, the two jurors had refused all interviews with journalists who soon gave up entirely. Mrs. Seaholm’s son went to Columbia College, where I chaired the Writing/English department. Students told me of his stories about impermissible things marshals said to his mother when they brought her home on weekends. I sensed, from Mrs. Seaholm’s voice on the phone, that she wanted to speak but needed time. The jurors’ motivation to give the interviews was stimulated by their children’s eagerness for the story to be told.

On that early spring evening in the living room in the house in Des Plaines, Mrs. Fritz, in her husky compelling voice, agreed with Mrs. Seaholm. "I came to fear our government for the first time."

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