On the Spot in the Spotlight

Courtroom battles that stir nationwide curiosity and passion are few and far between. Two such cases are scheduled to begin early this year -- the trial of Sirhan Sirhan, who is accused of assassinating Senator Robert Kennedy, and that of James Earl Ray, who is accused of murdering Martin Luther King Jr. Whether or not either defendant can get a fair trial will depend largely on the skill and fortitude of two men: Judge Herbert Walker of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, and Judge W. (for Walter) Preston Battle of the Shelby County Criminal Court in Memphis.

Career Capstone. Sirhan's trial opens before Judge Walker this week in an eighth-floor Los Angeles courtroom. Lawyers who have had no professional experience before Walker, 69, are sometimes deceived by his white hair and avuncular manner outside the court. On the bench, says one Los Angeles lawyer who has practiced before him, "Walker is crusty and rough." Nor is he about to ease off now, even though he is planning to retire in July. He looks on Sirhan's trial as the capstone of his career.

It is a career based on a broad variety of experience. After his Vermont printer father died and his mother entered a mental institution, Walker found himself on his own at 14. He served aboard the battleship Kentucky in World War I, later finished his schooling while holding down part-time jobs, one as an oil-field roustabout and another as a hat-check boy in a dance hall. After earning undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Southern California, he worked first for the state, mainly investigating the licensing of stock brokers, and later for the Los Angeles County district attorney. He practiced law on his own for seven years. Then, in 1953, Governor Earl Warren appointed him to the bench.

Deeply religious, Walker is a member of the national executive committee of the Episcopal Church, a denomination that opposes capital punishment as a matter of principle. "I believe in the separation of church and state, and I intend to make my rulings by the law," Walker said in 1967 at a two-week hearing on the death penalty in California. The death penalty, he ruled, does not violate the Constitution.

To accommodate newsmen who do not have seats for the Sirhan trial, Walker has provided for closed-circuit television to bring the action to a room beneath the courtroom. Last week, however, he refused to permit videotapes to be made for possible future broadcasts. He also plans to confine the jury to a hotel during the trial, partly to prevent them from reading news reports that might influence them. "There are two kinds of press, responsible and irresponsible," he has said jocularly, "and I intend to protect the proceedings from both of them."

A Modest Man. Judge Battle, 60, who will preside at the Ray trial, has already learned that the press does not always obey. Long before the trial, which has been continued to March 3, Battle issued an order against any prejudicial statements to the news media by lawyers, witnesses and others involved in the case. Still, Look published two articles by William Bradford Huie, a journalist who has bought exclusive rights to Ray's story and has also interviewed several potential witnesses. Reporting that Ray was hired in Canada to do some smuggling for a man named Raoul, Huie suggests that both men were part of a plot to kill Dr. King.

While he has not yet tried to punish Huie, Battle last autumn cited four other men for contempt because of articles about the trial published in Memphis newspapers. Though he is modest and taciturn, Battle does not intend to be pushed around by the participants in the case--not even by the suave and explosive Percy Foreman of Houston, Ray's lawyer. According to one Memphis attorney, who knows Battle's style: "He can eat you out all of a sudden without your ever knowing it's coming and without changing his expression."

Beating the Bottle. Born into a family that cherishes its Confederate past, Battle graduated from Washington and Lee University and then from Memphis State University Law School. A pal of Political Boss Ed Crump's son, he was appointed assistant district attorney of Memphis in 1934, later became one of the city's top criminal lawyers. Over the years, he had to lick a drinking problem; today he gives talks to Alcoholics Anonymous groups so that others may profit by his example.

Having beaten the bottle and built a lucrative practice, Battle surprised everyone in 1959 by deciding to run for his current judgeship, which pays only $15,000 a year. He frankly admits that he was attracted by a pension equal to 75% of his salary. But Battle has proved to be more than a mere machine politician putting in time on the bench while he waits to retire. He has been a courageous judge. In one highly unpopular decision, he dismissed an indictment against a Memphis theater manager who had been charged with possessing and planning to screen a French film entitled I Spit on Your Grave, which showed nude love-making by interracial couples. Battle found the state's obscenity law unconstitutional because it failed to meet requirements spelled out by the U.S. Supreme Court. "They told me I'd be opening a Pandora's box for children," says Battle about the ruling, "but I have to call 'em as I see 'em."

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