Witness for the Defense

TRIALS Witness for the Defense Counsel: What is your name, sir?

Witness: Richard Joseph Daley.

Counsel: What is your occupation?

Witness: I am mayor of Chicago.

Thus began the two hours of Daley's testimony last week at the trial of seven radicals accused of conspiring to foment riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention. From the defendants' point of view, the mayor's appearance might as well have ended where it began.

The defense had summoned Daley as a witness in hopes of strengthening its argument that the authorities, not the radical leaders, had caused the violence. To put Daley on a verbal rack, however, required a ruling from U.S. District Judge Julius Hoffman that the mayor was a hostile witness. That label would have allowed Defense Attorney William Kunstler to lodge leading or accusatory questions. Without it, Kunstler was restricted to more general interrogation, because Daley was technically a witness for the defense.

Chicago Hospitality. Obviously well briefed on this legal point, Daley kept his TNT temper hidden. At times he glowered. During a recess. Defendant Abbie Hoffman said to Daley: "Why don't we just settle it right here and now? What is it with all these lawyers, anyway?" The mayor merely laughed. Though he stared stolidly past Kunstler during much of the questioning, Daley replied courteously when he had the chance to answer at all --which was rare. Prosecutor Thomas Foran repeatedly objected to Kunstler's questions, and Judge Hoffman sustained Foran's position 70 times. When Kunstler made a motion to have Daley declared hostile, the judge replied: "The mayor has been a most friendly witness." He denied the motion.

One of the few substantive questions permitted was whether Daley had given Deputy Mayor David Stahl directions about issuing parade permits to the Youth International Party (the Yippies). Said Daley: "I gave Mr. Stahl the same instructions I gave any other department head--certainly to meet with them, to try to cooperate with them, and do everything they could to make sure that they would be given every courtesy and hospitality."

After 15 weeks, the trial of the Chicago Seven has lost much of its dramatic tension. One of the three obstreperous spectators carried from the courtroom last week bit a bailiff's hand, but for the most part even the antic outbursts have deflated. Some time in the next couple of months the jurors will have to sort through the tedium and the hijinks to confront one crucial question: whether they believe the prosecution testimony of undercover agents who swore that there had indeed been a conspiracy to incite riots. The verdict will depend far more on that than on any witnesses for the defense, real or technical.

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