HOFFMAN, JULIUS JENNINGS

HOFFMAN, JULIUS JENNINGS (1895–1983), U.S. federal district court judge. Hoffman was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Northwestern University, earning a Ph.B. in 1912 and a J.D. in 1915, when he was admitted to the Illinois bar. Hoffman worked as associate and partner at law firms and as a general counsel for the Brunswick Company. In 1947, Hoffman was elected judge of the Superior Court of Cook County. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated him to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. He served in this court until his death in 1983. During his long career as a trial judge, he presided over many important cases, including the suit to compel the desegregation of the public schools of Chicago and the deportation suit against Frank Walus, a Polish American in Chicago, falsely accused of being a Gestapo collaborator known as the "Butcher of Kielce." Hoffman's reputation for wit and urbanity suffered   greatly in the case for which he is best remembered, the Chicago Seven Trial, in which several radicals were accused of conspiring to incite confrontations between the police and approximately 10,000 protestors against the Vietnam War, which occurred during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968. Mayor Richard J. Daley was determined not to allow war protesters to mar his efforts to showcase his city at the time of the convention. Daley's administration banned demonstrators from sleeping in Grant Park, near the site of the convention, and ordered the Chicago Police to enforce a curfew. Each night during the convention the police entered the park and used tear gas on the demonstrators who ignored the curfew. Eventually seven political activists were indicted under the Anti-Riot Act: Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner. All the actors in the courtroom drama insured that the political tensions of the era spilled over into the courtroom, but the "Battle of the Hoffmans" (Julius and Abbie) was the most prominent of these clashes. Abbie promised that the trial was "going to be a combination Scopes trial, revolution in the streets, Woodstock Festival and People's Park, all rolled into one." For his part, Judge Hoffman frequently manifested his distaste for the defendants and their attorneys. Hoffman refused to allow many defense witnesses to testify (singers, artists, and activists). Although the jury acquitted two of the defendants, Judge Hoffman sentenced all seven to five years in prison and a fine of $5,000 each. Judge Hoffman also held all of the seven defendants and both of their attorneys in contempt of court and imposed criminal sanctions for disrespectful behavior, but these sanctions were overturned. On November 21, 1972, all of the conspiracy convictions were also overturned because the court was found to have refused to allow sufficient scrutiny of the bias of potential jurors, committed several procedural errors, and manifested a "deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense." Ironically, Judge Hoffman's judicial demeanor demonstrated the kernel of truth in Abbie Hoffman's view that the terms "legal and illegal" are "political, and often arbitrary, categories." Hoffman continued to preside over cases until his death from natural causes in 1983. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Clavir and J. Spitzer, eds. The Conspiracy Trial (1970); Contempt: Transcript of Contempt Citations, with foreword by Ramsey Clark (1970); J. Epstein, The Great Conspiracy Trial: An Essay on Law, Liberty and the Constitution (1970); J.A. Lukas, The Barnyard Epithet and Other Obscenities: Notes on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial (1970); R. Pierson, Riots Chicago Style (1984); J. Shultz, Motion Will Be Denied: A New Report on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial (1972, 20002). (Edward McGlynn Gaffney, Jr. (2nd ed.)