John Mage, "Leonard Weinglass (193 : 011)"
mrzine.monthlyreview.org
Leonard Weinglass
(1933-2011)
by John Mage
Leonard Weinglass, a leading leftwing lawyer in the United States with an
international perspective, died in the early evening on March 23, 2011. Len,
who died on his 78th birthday, fell ill in late January while in Cuba. In the
first days of February exploratory surgery at Montefiore Hospital discovered
that he had inoperable cancer of the pancreas.
Lenny, a 1958 graduate of Yale Law School, became active in the U.S. left
lawyers' organization, the National Lawyers Guild, in the course of the civil
rights movements of the 1960s. He rose to fame as co-counsel with Bill
Kunstler in the Chicago Seven (originally Chicago Eight) conspiracy trial of
1969-70. The seven defendants -- Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger,
Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner -- were charged with
conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges arising from the mass protests
in Chicago, Illinois at the time of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
The eighth defendant, Bobby Seale, had repeatedly insisted on the trial being
delayed to permit his lawyer, Charles Garry, then recovering from surgery, to
be present. The Judge, the irascible Julius Hoffman, former law partner of
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, had Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom when
he would not cease his protests. Seale was later severed from the case, but
the proceedings -- which lasted from April 1969 to February 1970 -- never
recovered any semblance of justice or dignity. Judge Hoffman made no effort to
disguise his open bias for the prosecution, and took a particular delight in
abusing Len, whose name he claimed not to be able to remember, calling him
Weinstein, Steinglass, Glassberg, etc. At the close of the trial Len was,
along with Bill Kunstler, held in contempt by Judge Hoffman. He always
regarded this as an honor.
In the intervening years, Len represented a continuous sequence of defendants
in political prosecutions in the courts of the United States. A partial list,
current to 1995, is available here.
I have been co-counsel with Lenny, most recently in 2003 in Article 78
proceedings in New York State Supreme Court, Albany County, that set aside a
denial of parole to Kathy Boudin and sent the matter back to the Parole Board
for a rehearing. At the subsequent hearing Kathy was paroled. Lenny was a
meticulous, well-prepared litigator, and with an extraordinary degree of
practical wisdom and foresight. He had been counsel for Kathy in the 1983
proceedings that resulted in her plea and sentence to twenty years to life, for
a politically motivated offense. In the 2003 proceedings we had the
extraordinary experience of relying with decisive effect on the words that
Lenny, twenty years before, had fought relentlessly to have inserted into the
sentencing record.
In his final struggle, Lenny was counsel for Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban
5, who had infiltrated anti-Castro terrorist organizations in Florida. Tried
in a lynch law atmosphere in the Cuban exile stronghold of Miami, their
convictions were guaranteed. In a magnificent piece of legal work, Lenny -- in
practice acting as lead counsel for the Cuban 5 -- was able to convince a
distinguished panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that they
had not received a fair trial in Miami, and indeed could not have received a
fair trial there. In the "war on terror" atmosphere of the Bush
administration, which continues to this day, this was an outstanding
achievement. Not surprisingly, the Justice Department was able to get the full
bench of the 11th Circuit to reverse the panel. But in the eyes of all but the
indoctrinated, the panel's analysis has permanently tainted the convictions of
the Cuban 5. It is decisive that the U.S. authorities were unable to get even
their own judges to uphold the convictions in the normal course. Lenny
continued, to his last breath, to fight to bring the injustice done to the
Cuban 5 to the attention of the decent people of the world.
Len was a defense attorney. He represented clients who did not choose to be in
court, and who faced the near certainty of conviction in political cases in
hopelessly biased courts. Yet, without disguising the political nature of the
cases nor denying the reality of the bias, he worked diligently to pursue every
possibility for successful defense. As appellate counsel, none I ever worked
with surpassed his ability to master every relevant detail of the record below,
however long and intricate. Lenny never pursued the monetary rewards his
skills would easily have made available, were he but to have put politics
aside. His politics were constitutive of his person, and present in every
waking moment. His modest office/living loft, his cabin in the Catskills, were
sufficient for his needs. To the end he cheerfully, and as effectively as was
possible, served those who resisted the all-pervasive injustice of these United
States.
Original Page: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/mage240311.html
Shared from Read It Later
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Sixties-L" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
