Boiling Over

By April, spring had sprung, but we only saw it on our way to and from court. Our world was formal, sterile, and mean. And my attitude wasn’t much better. I didn’t want to take any more shit from Perry, who’d dismissed so much of our case and years of work with such ease. Our last witnesses, solely on the issues of damages, were Maywood mayor Leonard Chabala, Fannie Clark, Iberia Hampton, and Renault Robinson, head of the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League. “One more day,” we told the impatient judge.

Mayor Chabala knew Fred in high school when he was part of the Human Relations Council. Chabala testified that Fred had frequently been called upon to calm racial tensions in the high school and had been an especially good communicator. Fred had led the campaign to get a public swimming pool and recreation park for Maywood kids, which was started in his lifetime and was now named the Fred Hampton Pool.

The cross-examination was the expected, “Ever hear Fred say, ‘Kill a few pigs, get some satisfaction …’?” and “Did Fred know and respect the Constitution?”

On redirect, I asked if Fred knew that under the Constitution “Black people have the right not be killed in their beds or murdered by the police?”

Objection sustained.

Next we called Fannie Clark. She was dressed, as always, in a print dress buttoned to the chin and a large flowery hat. She had sat solid as a rock on the front row of the spectator section most of the sixteen months we had been in court.

Fannie testified that her son Mark was one of eleven children from her marriage to Reverend William Clark, who had died in 1967. Mark completed high school through correspondence and worked at Caterpillar and as a barber and helped support his family from his earnings. Mark had worked for the NAACP, including in their hunger program, and helped start the first Breakfast for Children Program in Peoria. Fannie Clark testified her son was “intelligent, energetic, and dedicated.” Mark had found something in his commitment with the Panthers that was missing from the rest of his life. They made him feel pride in himself.

Volini’s only question was whether she disagreed with Mark about the acquisition of guns. She said, “Yes, I did.”

Renault Robinson had been a Chicago police officer for twenty years. Trim and earnest, he spoke loudly and unapologetically. He and Howard Saffold had founded the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League ten years earlier. Its objectives were to improve relations between the black community and the police and to reform the police disciplinary system.

Judge Perry refused to allow Renault to tell the jury how he and Fred had testified at city and state hearings on the issue of police brutality. “The jury is concerned with December 4, not police brutality,” Perry said.

Fred was a “self-starter” and spoke about the “betterment of people,” Renault testified in a quiet tone. “I saw him as a leader of black youth, offering an alternative to gangs and drugs. I was a pallbearer at his funeral.” The defendants did not cross-examine him.

Our last witness was Iberia Hampton. She walked slowly to the witness stand, weary from so many months watching Perry and the defense lawyers trivialize our claims and her son’s life. She paused for a moment, and I wondered if she was thinking, was it even worthwhile trying to describe Fred in the atmosphere of this courtroom?

Iberia testified about Fred growing up in Maywood, where he was well liked and had lots of friends. He’d worked in high school and helped support the family. When she and Francis bought a car for their three children, Fred said they couldn’t afford it and told them to sell it.

In high school Fred became the leader of the suburban NAACP. He was often called upon to quiet racial trouble and once, “when he intervened at the request of the high school principal, he was arrested by the police.”

Iberia testified that Fred wrote her from prison that Deborah was pregnant, and when he got out he said he “wanted me to take care of their child if anything happened.” At that point Iberia stopped and put her handkerchief up to her eyes. I was surprised. I had never seen her lose control of her feelings. She put her handkerchief down. “We have supported the child,” she said, looking at Fred Jr. sitting next to Francis in the front row. She ended simply telling the jury that Fred had wanted to be a lawyer. There was no cross-examination. We rested our case.

The defense called the chemist, Dr. Morton Mason, who testified that even though two months had passed since Fred’s body had been buried in Louisiana, and it had been injected with embalming fluid, which can cause barbiturates to dissolve, he interpreted the February lab tests on Fred’s blood to prove that no substantial amount of barbiturates was ever present. He offered no explanation for the earlier, contrary findings by Dr. Berman that Fred had barbiturates in his blood.

Flint had done his homework and confronted Mason with his own lack of knowledge about the temperature of the body since buried, whether the blood and tissue samples were refrigerated, and the pH of the aqueous solution of the samples—all of which are factors that can dissolve or mask barbiturates. When Flint moved to strike Mason’s unresponsive comments, Coghlan jumped up in pretend indignation.

Coghlan: “Now since the time he was licensed in 1973, this being 1977, that means he has spent an awful lot of time in the preparation of this case and darn little in a courtroom, and if you ask me, it shows in the type of questions he asks. He just refuses to sit down and look at a law book of trial technique because it is inconsistent with his political views … and then he throws the load on Your Honor for his stupidity.”

Coghlan went on to accuse Flint, as he had done many times before, of yelling in a high voice and flapping his wrists. It worked. Flint was clearly frustrated.

Taylor [in response]: “I am getting a little sick and tired of Mr. Coghlan getting up here and having open license from this court to insult my integrity, to insult—“

Coghlan [continuing his attack]: “Would the court reporter show that the remarks preceded by the shrieked “what,” and the interruptions of Mr. Taylor were shouted in very high decibels.”

Taylor: “You allow Mr. Coghlan to get up here and say these things and insult me … my tone of voice, my competency.”

Judge Perry: “Bring the jury.”

Coghlan: “Let the record reflect Mr. Taylor is yelling in a loud voice…. What Mr. Taylor may or may not do in the night is of no concern to me.”

Taylor [angrier than ever]: “It is an affront to any decorum in this courtroom to let these attacks go on and to not listen to me. That is all I ask, that you listen to me—not to go to sleep when I make arguments, not to put your dark glasses on.”

Flint had crossed another line.

Judge Perry: “Now, just a minute, you know that is a falsehood.”

Perry was more outraged at being accused of sleeping during our arguments than at the gay-baiting he had allowed in his courtroom. He never reprimanded Coghlan.

Despite the contradictions in their stories, the defense called each of the remaining shooters to deny wrongdoing. We had called Groth and Carmody. They called Joe Gorman, the raider who wielded the Thompson machine gun.

Stocky, with jet-black hair and a chiseled chin, Gorman talked like someone who liked his job and the opportunities it gave him to use force. After he claimed he saw a bullet “rip through the front door,” Gorman admitted firing his machine gun on semiautomatic fire in an arc around Brenda Harris, who was lying wounded on the bed. He also claimed he heard a shot that he was sure came from the north bedroom. He testified that each of the wounded persons—Doc, Verlina, and Blair—rose up like ducks in a shooting gallery, weapons pointing at him, just before he fired at each of them. However, the locations of their wounds were not consistent with them facing him or even being vertical as he had described.

I exposed Gorman’s falsehoods, beginning with his claiming to see the hole rip through the front door. Gorman admitted entering behind Groth, Davis, and Jones, so I sought to place figurines on the model to show how he could not have seen what he claimed while standing behind three other police officers. I also wanted to demonstrate that Brenda’s alleged shots could not have gone by the four large officers in the doorway without striking one of them. The defendants objected to my using the figurines, on the ridiculous rationale that they had not been used on direct examination, but the judge sustained their objection nonetheless.

My cross-examination was gaining momentum when Volini interrupted. This time he told Perry about a demonstration going on twenty-five floors below, which he said was being led by Fred’s brother, Bill Hampton. “Reverse Perry’s Racist Outrage,” “Stop the Cover-up, Jail the Murderer,” and “Coconspirators FBI, Hanrahan, Local Police, and now Perry,” were the slogans Volini reported. He said the demonstrations were being “perpetrated by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.”

I was delighted to see Perry publicly labeled part of the conspiracy, but we could not claim credit for organizing the protest. “Jesse Jackson and Reverend [Charles] Koen are not our clients,” Flint said. “There are several hundred demonstrators, not all are our clients.” Indeed, a large part of the black community that had followed the trial was outraged by Perry’s dismissal of Hanrahan and the FBI.

“I am surprised that you are not out there,” Perry responded to Flint, who defended himself by saying that although he was not participating, he had that right.

What made Perry the angriest were the revelations that led to the demonstration. These were contained in our most recent motion seeking Perry’s recusal. One year into the trial, Sheldon Waxman, the former U.S. attorney who had defended the FBI, called us. He had encountered Perry at a fundraising dinner as the trial started and asked him if he had seen the recent newspaper revelations of the Church Committee, including the FBI’s hit letter to Jeff Fort urging violence against Hampton. Perry indicated that he hadn’t seen them and they probably weren’t relevant to the Hampton case, anyway. Waxman told Perry, “They seemed relevant to me.”

A month later Waxman saw Perry again, and Perry told him, “You were wrong about the material that was in the paper. That stuff wasn’t relevant. They’ll never be able to prove that the FBI killed those fellas.” A self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one. We attached Waxman’s affidavit about his conversation with Perry to our motion for recusal. The affidavit was widely reported in the press. It led to us receiving another phone call. This one was from Reverend Thomas Strieter, who had read about Perry’s conversation with Waxman and had been reminded of a similar conversation he’d had with Perry on May 31, 1976. Strieter had been selected to be the chaplain in a Memorial Day Parade where Perry was the marshal. They rode in the same car. Reverend Strieter told Perry he was from Maywood, and Fred Hampton was one of his constituents. He asked Perry how the trial was going. Perry responded that it was “endless.” Later on, Perry volunteered, “If only the lawyers would stick to what happened on December 4, 1969, they might make a case. But this conspiracy involving the FBI and Hanrahan is impossible. This cannot be true. There is no earthly way to establish that.”

Together, the affidavits of Waxman and Strieter exposed that Perry had decided both before and during the trial that what we were trying to prove against the FBI was in fact “impossible.” One out-of-court admission of prejudgment is worth a hundred in-court biased rulings when it comes to recusing a judge. It’s what you need. We had filed the motion to recuse Perry with the accompanying affidavits, knowing they would infuriate Perry but slightly hopeful that he would be forced to refer the motion, and maybe even the case, to another judge.

We asked Perry for a hearing on the recusal motion. The defendants’ lawyers moved to strike our motion entirely. Perry denied both and said he took the motion “under advisement.”

The next day, Coghlan and Volini fanned the flames of the judge’s wrath further by answering our recusal motion, on the judge’s behalf, accusing us of suborning perjury. They had an affidavit by the driver of the car, who contested Strieter’s version of their conversation. We said we welcomed a hearing on what transpired during the parade.

“Judge, I think the court should really take heed of what is happening here and recognize that the court is no longer a fit and unbiased judge,” I said to Perry.

“The conduct of the plaintiffs constitutes an attempt to tear down the judicial structure of the U.S. District Court … and to tear down the establishment,” Coghlan responded, and Volini pitched in with “Mr. Haas … has turned to attacking the lawyers, and now he has turned on the judge. He is saying such terrible and disgraceful things about you, that a weaker man would have folded by now.” Coghlan added that I was committing acts of “insolent defiance” and compared me to Hitler and Joe McCarthy. Coghlan’s misuse of history was too much to take.

I said he was the one who had borrowed McCarthy’s tactics. I then addressed Perry.

Haas: “What we see now is the outright prejudice of the court affecting every single act that goes on here.”

Perry: “Well, you don’t like anything as far as you are concerned except your way. And you are not going to have your way.”

Haas: “I know. My way is a fair trial, and I’m not going to get it.”

Perry: “You bet your life you are not going to get it.”

Thank you, Judge, for that gracious admission. I had to turn away from the lectern to hide my smile. Coghlan tried to correct the record to show Perry had not intended what he said.

Gloves Davis testified next. He was tall and graceful, almost cat-like in the way he had moved through the front door in the reenactment, and said he shot Mark Clark two times. Davis testified on direct for less than ten minutes, enough to say he saw Brenda Harris fire her shotgun at him, which lit up Mark Clark behind the living room door. He fired and hit Brenda in the leg and turned his carbine toward Mark, who was standing up, and shot him two times. After that, Davis claimed they struggled briefly and Mark fell to the ground dead.

Because the details of Gloves’s previous accounts conflicted with the physical evidence, Volini hadn’t attempted to bring them out. His strategy was to object to my questions, preventing the clarifying of details, meanwhile harassing me and confusing the jury.

Perry aided Volini’s effort by refusing to allow me to have Davis mark his and Brenda’s position on the scale diagram of the apartment, although the defense lawyers had used it while cross-examining the plaintiffs. Perry would not let me mention Davis’s nickname, Gloves, or explain where he got it, although he had admitted at his deposition that he relished the nickname because it “deterred youth.” I argued, but was not allowed, to refer to Davis’s sixty-eight prior complaints for excessive force.

Coghlan jumped in. “On the streets, a person with such limp-wristed arguments would be called ‘sissy.’”

Recently, when I read the transcript, I was pleasantly surprised to see my response: “I just want to say that I guess on Mr. Coghlan’s terms I am a sissy because I don’t like to sit around the courtroom and tell dirty, crude jokes about women, which is what he likes to do after court. If that is what being a man is, I would just as soon be a sissy.” I had learned something from the women’s movement.

As for the cross-examination of Davis, I had a lot to work with. Davis, like Gorman and Groth, had previously placed Brenda in the southeast corner of the living room when she fired. Davis also had testified, “I know very definitely none of the officers fired through that [the living room] door,” which I easily disproved by pointing to the entry hole in the panel Groth’s bullet had made coming from the outside. Davis also was certain the door was open at ninety degrees during Groth’s shooting, again conflicting with the proof that the door was only slightly ajar when Groth shot through it. Zimmers disproved all of Davis’s descriptions of Panther firing.

But Davis’s biggest contradiction came from his statement that he “never moved out of the living room.” One of his .30-caliber bullets made the superficial wound in Fred’s chest. Its angle indicated it may have been fired from the south bedroom door. Several of the plaintiffs placed Gloves at the rear of the apartment, and Davis had told Larry Kennon, a black attorney, on the morning of the raid that he’d seen Fred lying in his bed. Larry was a founder and leader of the all-black Cook County Bar Association. He was also a friend and reported Gloves’s statement to us.

Moreover, Davis’s quick movements in shooting the people in the living room, firing toward the bed where the floor plan showed Fred slept and then proceeding to the rear, supported our position that the defendants’ objective from the outset was to murder Fred Hampton. Our stance was also buttressed by Davis’s absurd claim that Fred Hampton’s being in the apartment “never entered my mind.”

George Jones was the other black cop besides Davis who fired. He was soft-spoken and neatly dressed. The defense wanted to end their case with a favorable impression. Although Jones denied firing in the entrance foyer, the physical evidence indicated he had. Whether it was accidental or the signal to attack, Jones likely fired the opening shot as he and the other raiders were poised to strike. During a recess in Jones’s testimony, I went into Perry’s antechamber to return a transcript. I spotted juror Norgle, looking as unfriendly as ever. In the courtroom, I asked Perry why she was there. Trial judges are not allowed to communicate with jurors without notice to the parties. Perry looked embarrassed. He said he was speaking to Norgle about a friend of hers, a graduating law student who had come into his chambers looking for a job. He had never told us about this. It gave Perry the opportunity to ingratiate himself with this juror by helping her friend.

Coghlan quickly realized his best ally may have compromised himself. He urged Perry to order that none of the lawyers communicate with the young man for “fear of contacting Norgle.” Before we could demand a hearing, Perry entered Coghlan’s protective order, and we never learned what Perry said to Norgle’s friend in chambers.

Jones’s direct examination, like the other defendants, was quite short. He attempted to explain the timing of the early morning raid, saying 8:00 P.M. was dangerous in that “highly volatile area,” even though he knew the occupants would not be present at that time.

Jones testified he saw Brenda fire a shotgun and fired his weapon, a shotgun, into the north bedroom. That was it. When I asked Jones if he had been told it was a Panther apartment, he answered, “It may have been discussed, but I have no memory of it.” He just couldn’t recall why these fourteen men armed themselves with a machine gun, shotguns, a carbine, and numerous handguns to serve this warrant. “Could it have been a raid on a seventy-eight-year-old woman’s apartment for an unregistered weapon?” I asked. Before he could “not recall,” his lawyers objected.

The next day, May 19, Jones’s memory was no better. I was already frustrated with his refusal to recall specifics, when Volini had the audacity to argue, “They shouldn’t be allowed to pin him down when he does not recall the exact sequence of events.”

“He doesn’t recall any sequences,” I responded angrily. It is the understood objective of the cross-examiner to “pin down” evasive hostile witnesses—exactly what Volini had the temerity to ask Perry to prevent. Perry just smiled and refused to allow us to impeach Jones with the details in his police report.

On May 27 the defense rested, and we began our rebuttal. Flint called our chemist, Dr. Eleanor Berman, to the stand to rebut the defendants’ expert’s testimony that Fred’s blood contained no barbiturates. She systematically analyzed the tests run by the FBI chemist, Mason, and concluded there were several intervening factors that would account for Mason not discovering the barbiturates.

Perry disallowed Dr. Berman’s most convincing testimony—that the FBI’s tests had isolated a substance that upon further testing may have proved to be barbiturates—because the defendants claimed we had not given them notice.

When Dr. Berman stepped down, and after seventeen months, both sides rested.