Word: coffined
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Coffin, Michael K. Ferber 2G, and two other men pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy at their arraignment Monday in Boston's Federal District Court...
...Martin Marty of the University of Chicago Divinity School, smilingly classifies them as the church's "leading editorial, ministerial, theological and professional Cosa Nostra." Thus as long as the war is unresolved, clerical protest will doubtless continue. Next week, for example, when Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. is arraigned on a charge of conspiring to counsel young men to evade the draft, antiwar clergymen will conduct protest services at which they plan to collect draft cards, and dare the Government to arrest them also...
Last week conspiracy was again in the news-as Dr. Benjamin Spock, Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin and three others stood indicted for conspiring to violate the Selective Service Act. The charges had been brought after weeks of preparation by Attorney General Ramsey Clark's Justice Department. It all apparently pleased one of the codefendants, however. Said Harvard Graduate Student Michael Ferber: "This is the best thing that ever happened to us." But despite the bravado, he may find conspiracy a tough charge to beat...
...that any one of them may have done in furtherance of the conspiracy. This is particularly valuable in organized-crime cases. When Lucky Luciano was convicted for compulsory prostitution in the '30s, for instance, he was guilty in part because of conspiracy. In a case like the Spock-Coffin indictment, the Government also does not need to prove an endless list of isolated charges. Instead, says Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, "it would like to paint the picture of a widespread agreement, and that may be a realistic portrayal of the situation...
Finding time running out the government now seeks a dramatic confrontation to prove that even famous people involved in draft resistance are not immune from prosecution. The fundamental purpose of this attack is not to put Spock, Coffin, et al away, to make martyrs of them, but to intimidate into inaction those thousands of others whose daily activities now give life to the movement, those without whom Spock and Coffin, for all their courage, would be isolated and ineffective. A week ago no one could have predicted the outcome. Today it is clear that the government has failed. Moreover people...