Cost of Counseling

Pediatrician Benjamin Spock, who is more concerned these days with pacifists than pacifiers, seemed openly to seek arrest in hopes that he could eventually test his crusade against the Viet Nam war before the Supreme Court. Last week at Boston's Federal District Court, he moved closer to that goal. An all-male jury pronounced Spock, 65, guilty of conspiring to counsel and abet young men in evading the draft. Also found guilty: Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr., 44, Harvard Graduate Student Michael Ferber, 23, and Writer Mitchell Goodman, 44. The fifth member of "the Boston Five," Marcus Raskin, 34, a former White House disarmament aide, was acquitted.

The trial, which gained notoriety from Spock's presence, had dragged on for 19 days, and would probably have lasted longer had not 85-year-old Judge Francis J. W. Ford pushed the pace by regularly growling, "That's irrelevant." The plethora of evidence gathered by the prosecution included literature and statements, as well as a film of a draft-card burning attended by some of the defendants. The defense sought to counter the conspiracy charge by claiming that the five were acting as individuals (the jury agreed in Raskin's case), and that their approach was a form of free speech.

Coffin greeted the sentence with a droll "I think they have confused the lightning bugs with the lightning." Of the guilty four, draft-age Ferber stands to lose least from the verdict. While appealing the case, he is a free man; had he been let off, he would have faced immediate induction. Presumably, Ferber would have refused to serve, and thereby become liable for prosecution under the Selective Service Act.

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