Word: contempts
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Incredible Statement. Chief Defense Attorney William Kunstler, reduced to tears of resentment and frustration, pleaded with the judge: "Take me next. Let me be next." Kunstler got four years and 13 days for contempt; his associate, Leonard Weinglass, was sentenced to 20 months and five days. Hoffman told them: "Crime, if it is on the rise, is due in large part to the fact that waiting in the wings are lawyers who are willing to go beyond professional responsibility, professional rights, professional duties, in their defense of a criminal." That statement, like others from Hoffman, seemed incredible; American judicial tradition...
Hoffman then sentenced each of the five convicted under the antiriot law to maximum jail terms of five years and imposed on each a $5,000 fine, half the allowable maximum. The jail terms are to run concurrently with the contempt sentences, so that none will have to serve more than five years in all-even if appeals fail and no paroles are granted. But Hoffman added an unusual zinger. The five will have to pay portions of the costs of their own prosecution.* The total costs could run as high as $50,000. They will stay in jail, said...
...Rulings. Few lawyers would agree with his conclusion. But even Administration officials who favored the prosecution privately confess to dismay at Judge Hoffman's performance as trial judge. They feel that he was too old and too insensitive for the task, and that his Draconian rulings and severe contempt sentences obscured the charges against the defendants. However, Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst put a cheerful face on the outcome. "We think it's a good result," he said. "We felt the evidence justified conviction on the conspiracy charge, but that's what juries are for." Kleindienst added...
...contrast, Hoffman upset lawyers by his punitive use of summary contempt, the instant enforcer that empowers a judge to maintain order by acting as prosecutor, chief witness, judge, jury and sentencer. The power goes back to the days when judges were representatives of the King and had the authority to enforce respect for the monarch's "divine right." Decorum can work in a defendant's favor by preventing unruly behavior that might prejudice the jury against him. Yet Hoffman, in meting out more than 17 years' worth of contempt sentences, apparently tried to get around a Supreme...
...steps of city hall. If the occasion requires, Alinsky's forces will not refrain from spreading rumors about an antagonist or indulging in something that comes very close to blackmail. "Our organizers," he says, "look for the wrong reasons to get the right things done." He has only contempt for liberals who appeal to the altruism of their opponents: "A liberal is the kind of guy who walks out of a room when the argument turns into a fight...