Hell in the Factory

The angry black man stalked through the Detroit factory with murder in his head, an M-l carbine in his hands. While other workers cringed, James Johnson Jr., 35, killed Foreman Hugh Jones with one shot, then pumped four more bullets into his victim's body. When another foreman tried to disarm him, Johnson killed him too. Then Johnson went after a worker, Joseph Kowalski, whose job was a particularly good one, and murdered him. Finally persuaded to surrender, Johnson threw his rifle against a wall and quietly waited for the police.

Detroit was shocked by those nightmarish murders at an axle plant last July. But Defense Attorneys Justin Ravitz and Kenneth Cockrel reasoned that the tragedy had an equally nightmarish cause: a hell in the factory. Foreman Jones got Johnson suspended from his job one hour before the killings. The defense lawyer argued that the suspension, Johnson's general instability and inhumane working conditions--particularly for black men--had driven Johnson to murder while temporarily insane.

Site-Seeing. Those contentions were presented to a jury that included two auto workers and three auto workers' wives. The testimony was grim. According to witnesses, safety conditions in the plant were so bad that last year they prompted a wildcat strike. The floors were full of grease from leaky machines; overhead conveyors had no screens to catch falling parts. The aisles were so narrow and cluttered that forklift trucks and workers often could not squeeze by one another; one such truck recently crashed because of faulty brakes, toppling its load and killing the driver. For blacks, there was the added impact of racism. The jury heard of Negroes being called "boy," of whites advancing rapidly to foreman, while one black foreman said it had taken him 18 years to get the white shirt that all foremen wear. One white worker, who said he was a friend of all three slain men, emotionally pleaded to the court: "You ought to go out to that plant and watch those men and see what it's like."

Judge Robert Colombo took the advice. With jury, lawyers and defendant in tow, he toured the murder site. It had been freshly painted, and some workers said they had been cleaning up nonstop since the shootings. But it was clear that little had really changed. Workers stopped to watch as the judge, Johnson and the others walked by. Their gazes reflected little anger and much sympathy; there were muffled cries of "Hey, Brother Johnson . . . Right on, Brother Johnson."

White-Shirt Targets. Back in the courtroom, a defense psychiatrist said that Mississippi-born Johnson had been haunted by thoughts of death since the age of four. A sharecropper's son who grew up in the deepest poverty, Johnson had developed a persecution complex early in life, and though he was fearful of the plant (he lost a fingertip in a conveyor belt in 1969), he saw the $150-a-week job as the most important thing in his life.

He had pressed for upgrading, but after a production foul-up caused by another man, at least one foreman had threatened to get Johnson fired. Later, when Johnson returned from a vacation, his time card was missing and he was informed by letter that he had been dismissed for taking time off improperly. It was a personnel goof, but Johnson saw a conspiracy building. On the fatal day, he was ordered to unload the ovens, a job generally conceded to be the worst in the plant. He refused and was suspended. An hour later he was back in the plant, ready, in the words of one worker, "to shoot at everyone wearing a white shirt."

"It's Up To Us." The prosecutor hardly helped his case by talking of "black boys" and asking one of Johnson's cousins whether she had ever slept with him. After some of the questioning, Judge Colombo wrote on his note pad, "I cannot believe my ears." A villain to many liberals for having once sentenced a marijuana defendant to 9 1/2 years, Judge Colombo was nonetheless scrupulously fair to the defense. "I used to work on the line in an auto plant during the summers," he recalls. "That's a lot of what persuaded me to go to law school. I hated the men who wore white shirts and always knew how to do your job better than you."

For all that, the jury of eight blacks and four whites argued so heatedly for four hours that they could often be clearly heard through the jury room's "soundproof" walls. "You weren't born in Mississippi. I was. You don't know what you're talking about," shouted one juror. "I've worked in a factory all my life, and I didn't kill anybody," said another. A third voice: "Did you see that cement room in the plant? Working there would have driven anyone crazy." A fourth: "The man needs help. You know he won't get it in prison. It's up to us to help him."

In a verdict that many Detroiters applauded, the jury unanimously found Johnson not guilty by reason of insanity. As a result, he was committed to a mental hospital last week. Meanwhile at the axle plant, fights and general unrest have mounted ever since the murders. The foremen no longer wear white shirts.

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