Julius Hoffman
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Julius Hoffman (July 7, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was a Chicago, Illinois attorney and judge best known for his role in the Chicago Seven trial.
Hoffman attended Lewis Institute and Northwestern University before being admitted to the bar in 1915. He worked as an associate and partner of the firm White and Hawxhurst until 1936, when he became general counsel for the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, where he remained until 1944 when he joined the law firm of Markheim, Hoffman, Hungerford & Sollo. In 1947, he was elected judge of the Superior Court of Cook County. When his term expired, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Hoffman to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago.
Over the course of his career as a judge, Hoffman presided over numerous important cases, including a tax evasion case against Tony Accardo, a deportation suit against alleged Nazi war criminal Frank Walus, and several desegregation suits. His most famous case, however, was the Chicago Eight Trial from April 9, 1969 to February 20, 1970. That trial involved charges against protesters arrested during the 1968 Democratic Convention [1].
During the course of the Chicago Eight trial, Hoffman refused to allow defendant Bobby Seale to represent himself after Seale's original attorney became ill, prompting conflicts with Seale that led to Hoffman putting him in jail for contempt. This left the case with only seven defendants - at which point it became known as the Chicago Seven trial. Judge Hoffman became the favorite courtroom target of the Chicago Seven defendants, who frequently would insult the judge to his face. Abbie Hoffman told Hoffman "you are a disgrace to the Jews. You would have served Hitler better." He later added that "your idea of justice is the only obscenity in the room." Both Davis and Rubin told the Judge "this court is bullshit." Hoffman's decisions and attitude towards the defendants and their counsel were thought to be particularly harsh, thus giving Hoffman notoriety as being Machiavellian. He even bound and gagged one of the defendants. As a result of this harshness, the folk artist, John Prine, derided him in his song Illegal Smile.
The other seven were all found by a jury to be not guilty of conspiracy, but five of the defendants were found guilty of inciting a riot, and Judge Hoffman sentenced each of the five to the maximum penalty: five years in prison and a fine of $5,000, plus costs. In addition Judge Hoffman sentenced all eight defendants and both of their lawyers to lengthy jail terms for contempt of court. On May 11, 1972, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated all of the contempt convictions, and on November 21, 1972 reversed all of the substantive convictions on a number of grounds. Among other things, the appeals court found that Judge Hoffman had not sufficiently measured the biases of the jury and that he had exhibited a "deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense".
In 1974, author Joseph Goulden wrote a book called The Benchwarmers, which was an expose of the powerful and often private world of federal judges. Goulden conducted an in-depth investigation of Judge Hoffman and pointed out that he had an abrasive reputation among Chicago lawyers even before his most famous case. Goulden mentioned a survey that had been done among Chicago attorneys who had recently appeared before the judge and 78% had an unfavorable opinion of him. They responded overwhelmingly negatively to the questions "Does he display an impartial attitude?" and "is he courteous to both the prosecution and defense?"
In 1982, the Executive Committee of the U.S. District Court ordered that Hoffman not be assigned any new cases because of his age and complaints that he was acting erratically and abusively from the bench. Nevertheless, Hoffman continued to preside over cases until his death from natural causes.
