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Attorney for the defendants

Leonard Weinglass Courtesy of Bettman/Corbis.

Leonard Weinglass was the younger and less well-known attorney for the defense. Weinglass graduated from George Washington University and the Yale Law School. After service in the Air Force, he practiced law in Newark, N.J., and taught at the Rutgers Law School. He joined the defense for the Chicago case at the request of Tom Hayden, whom he had defended on several minor offenses arising from Hayden’s work with the Students for a Democratic Society. Weinglass took responsibility for the defense of Hayden, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, and John Froines. Weeks before the trial started, Abbie Hoffman invited Weinglass to accompany him to the Woodstock music festival. The defendants later remembered him as the one who “always did his homework and was there with the necessary cases and precedents when they were needed.”

Near the close of the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman convicted Leonard Weinglass of fourteen counts of criminal contempt. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dismissed seven of those counts and remanded the others for retrial before another judge. The government attorneys chose to bring only one of the remaining contempt charges against Weinglass in the retrial, and Judge Edward Gignoux found Weinglass not guilty because the alleged contempt had not obstructed the trial nor had it involved personal insults against Judge Hoffman.

Weinglass later reminisced that he had a “sort of wistful regard” for his experience with Judge Hoffman. “He had a razor-like wit which he would use against you in court. I’d find myself angry and upset but amused at the same time.”

Weinglass continued to represent leftist clients, including members of the Weather Underground, and controversial criminal defendants.