Читать книгу History of the Trial of the Chicago 7 - Bruce A. Ragsdale - Страница 47

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John Froines Courtesy of Bettman/Corbis.

At the time of the trial, John Froines was an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon. Froines graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1963 and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale University in 1966. Froines had known Tom Hayden since they had trained together as community activists. Like his codefendant Weiner, Froines had served as a marshal for the National Mobilization Committee in Chicago, but Froines and Weiner were the only defendants not related to the leadership of a national organization.

During the defense strategy sessions for the trial, Froines was usually allied with Hayden in support of a clear political focus. Froines traveled with Hayden and Leonard Weinglass to the northern Virginia home of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark to ask him to testify for the defense.

The jury found Froines not guilty of all charges in the indictment, but near the close of the trial Judge Hoffman convicted Froines on ten counts of criminal contempt and sentenced him to six and a half months in jail. The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the convictions and remanded them for retrial before a different judge in the district court. After the government presented its case in the retrial, the judge acquitted Froines of all remaining contempt charges.

In the spring of 1971, Froines was arrested and again indicted on charges of violating the Anti-Riot Act following his involvement in the Mayday Tribe effort to shut down the federal government in protest of the war in Vietnam. The government dropped the charge. Froines worked for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Carter administration. He later became a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles and, as of 2008, he serves as director of the UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.