Читать книгу The Trial of the Chicago 7: History, Legacy and Trial Transcript - Bruce A. Ragsdale - Страница 32

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No. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found that the district judge was in error for failing to ask potential jurors about their exposure to pretrial publicity. The court of appeals also found that the district judge should have asked potential jurors about their attitudes toward the Vietnam War, the counterculture, and the Chicago police.

The defendants claimed that the “perfunctory” jury selection, completed in one day, did not solicit the information necessary to make reasoned challenges to jurors. Judge Hoffman asked the defense to submit questions for jurors, but he asked jurors only one question from the defense list. The defense submitted many questions about attitudes toward the Vietnam War, student dissent, and hippie culture. The defense also suggested that the judge ask if the potential jurors knew who Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were, if their daughters wore “brassieres all the time,” and if they considered “marihuana habit-forming.” The court of appeals considered some of the defense questions “inappropriate,” but the court also said that public opinion at the time of the trial was so divided over the Vietnam War and the rise of the counterculture that the judge had an obligation to ask jurors about their views. “We do not believe that a prospective juror is so alert to his own prejudices,” that the district court can rely on a general question about the ability to be fair. The defense must be able to ask specific questions about potential prejudices of a juror. The court of appeals decision said that in a case with “widespread publicity about highly dramatic events,” the district judge must ask about the impact of pretrial publicity even if, as in this trial, the defense had not raised the issue during the selection of the jury.

The court of appeals did not accept the defendants’ other argument that the reliance on voter lists for the selection of grand jury members created a biased grand jury. The court found that the reliance on voter lists underrepresented young people, but that the age imbalance was not so pronounced as to produce a biased grand jury.