Word: antiriot
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...decision to prosecute was dubious from the start. The Seven were the first to be charged under the 1968 federal antiriot law. Based on the "outside agitator" explanation for ghetto riots, the statute made it a federal crime (punishable by a $10,000 fine, five years' imprisonment, or both) to cross state lines with intent to incite, organize or participate in a riot. The law defined a riot as any public disturbance involving as few as three people and one act of violence endangering any other person or property...
...conspiracy trial in Chicago is far from over, but it has already prompted troublesome questions about U.S. justice. For one, the new federal antiriot statute on which the charges are based may itself be unconstitutional. Last week U.S. District Judge Julius J. Hoffman raised a whole new set of volatile issues. Incensed at Black Panther Bobby Scale, the defiant defendant whom Hoffman had ordered gagged and manacled to his chair, the 74-year-old judge suddenly declared a mistrial for Seale and found him guilty on 16 charges of contempt of court. Without much further ado, Hoffman sentenced Seale...
Already beatified among protesters as "the Chicago Eight," the defendants are the first to be indicted under the antiriot provision of the 1968 civil rights act. The provision was tacked onto the bill by a conservative Senate coalition led by South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. It may, in fact, be unconstitutional. A host of local, state and federal laws already cover acts of incitement to riot. What the antiriot provision defines as criminal is the "intent" to incite to riot. Thus the law prescribes a fine of $10,000 or five years in prison-or both-for anyone...
West Virginia went to the other extreme by enacting what may be the most sweeping antiriot law in the country. The new law, which went into effeet last week, empowers state troopers, sheriffs or mayors to invoke riot-control procedures, bypassing the old requirement that a judge or justice of the peace must declare that a civil disturbance is a riot. Law officers can deem anyone a rioter who fails to obey a lawful order or provide requested assistance. The police are free to deputize onlookers, who will automatically be guiltless if any person present is subsequently killed or wounded...
...crowd of 1,800 down Telegraph Avenue, straight into a clash with about 300 police. The demonstrators hurled rocks; the cops responded with tear gas. County sheriff's deputies, who later claimed that they had been attacked with steel pipes and bricks, opened up with an antiriot weapon new to the area: twelve-gauge shotguns firing low-velocity birdshot. Four youths on a rooftop were sprayed, two wounded seriously. One lost his spleen, a kidney and part of his pancreas and bowels in surgery; the other may lose both eyes. At least another dozen demonstrators and two newsmen suffered...