Verdict on a Judge

In the same steel and glass skyscraper where he has worked for the past five years, Federal Judge Otto Kerner sat rigidly before a packed, expectant courtroom, waiting to hear the verdict on himself. As befits a successful and distinguished man, a major general in the National Guard, twice Governor ot Illinois he looked calm and controlled. He searched the faces of the jury--seven men and five women, including housewives and hand laborers--who all avoided his gaze. The foreman said that the jury had reached a verdict, after 16 hours of deliberation, and he handed a sealed envelope to the clerk. Guilty on all counts.

Otto Kerner, 64, was convicted ot bribery conspiracy, income tax evasion, mail fraud and perjury. He could receive a maximum sentence of 83 years in prison and a fine of $93,000. The verdict stemmed from a dubious race-track stock deal in which Kerner, while Governor, netted $140,000 in profits in exchange for helping a track owner obtain a longer season and permission to expand into harness racing. It represented the conviction not just of a politician but of an era.

For generations, Chicagoans have lived in an atmosphere where politics was a poor immigrant's best route to success and wealth, where taking care of one's friends and relatives was a basic rule of government, where Secretary of State Paul ("Shoebox") Powell could boldly declare that "there's only one thing worse than a defeated politician, and that's a broke politician."

Otto Kerner was different--or so it seemed. Once known as "the Mr. Clean of Illinois," a man of suave courtliness, a leader of the Boy Scouts and the Red Cross, he had gone to good schools (Brown, Cambridge, Northwestern Law), and married the daughter of former Mayor Anton Cermak. Kerner's father who had worked himself up from poverty to the federal bench, beamed with pride as he swore in his son as a US attorney. Mayor Richard Daley then recruited Kerner as a blue-ribbon candidate to run for Governor in 1960 against William Stratton, whose administration had been plagued by scandal.

Though many people outside Illinois viewed Kerner as a progressive, energetic Governor, he was in fact mostly good looks. His main accomplishments were getting the Atomic Energy Commission to build a multimillion-dollar atom smasher in western Du Page County and appointing a board to map long-range goals for education in Illinois He nevertheless gained such a reputation that Lyndon Johnson appointed him to head a presidential commission on civil disorders. Among the character witnesses at his trial was retired General William Westmoreland, who described him as a man of "impeccable character."

In his ambition to succeed his father on the federal appellate court, Kerner was obviously willing to make a lot of compromises--so many, indeed, that he lost his moral bearings. He was offended by the chummy back-room politics of ward heelers who put brilliantine in their hair, so he relied on Theodore Isaacs as a go-between with the Daley machine. Isaacs always appeared at his side, managed his election campaigns, and, as Kerner's director of state revenue, helped arrange the race-track stock deal that led to their both being convicted last week. "Kerner's unblemished record was broken by his inability to withstand the enormous pressures of evil that descend upon the person who sits in the Governor's chair," said Daniel Walker, who now sits in the same Governor's office.

Kerner never denied his race-track profits; he denied only that they represented a bribe. "Despite the verdict of the jurors," he said immediately after the trial, "at no time that I have held public office have I taken any advantage I have been in many battles where life itself was at stake. This battle is more important than life itself because it involves my reputation and honor which are dearer than life itself, and I intend to continue this battle."

That battle is spreading beyond Kerner. Cook County Clerk Edward Barrett is currently on trial on charges of taking kickbacks, and more racetrack stock indictments are expected to follow. "The judgment of the court is a tragedy for Judge Kerner and his family " said Illinois Senator Adlai Stevenson III. "It is also another verdict of guilt against our politics."

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