"So your brother's bound and gagged
And they've chained him to a chair
Won't you please come to Chicago
Just to sing
In a land that's known as Freedom
How can such a thing be fair..."
~ Graham Nash -
(1919 -1995)
The
Life and Times of William Moses Kunstler ( excerpt )
Interview by Dennis Bernstein & Julie Light October, 1995 - Z
Magazine
Why don't we start going through some of
these amazing cases that you were a part of. Let's talk about the
Well, the trial
went on for six months. The government had assembled a typical platoon of new
left figures. They had people from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),
they had the yippies, Jerry and Abbie; they had old line radical pacifists like
Dave Dellinger, and then they had a black man, Bobby Seale, then chair of the
Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and Bobby was not permitted to have his
own lawyer, Charles Garry. The judge would not delay the trial two weeks so
Charlie could recover from a gall bladder operation. So Bobby would get up in
front of the jury every time cross examination came and say "I have no
lawyer and they'd wouldn't delay the trial, I must do this myself, I'll cross
examine this witness." Then the judge would say "No, Mr. Kunstler is
your lawyer, I appointed him," and Bobby would say "No, he's not my
lawyer, Charles Garry's my lawyer." Finally in October the trial started,
if my memory is correct, 25 years ago on the 23rd of September. October 30 the
judge lost his cool and told the