The Boston Happening

ON THE TWELFTH FLOOR of the Federal District Courthouse Building in Post Office Square the case of United States of America versus Coffin et al. has been under way since May 20. The static white lighting on the yellow concrete walls makes Courtroom No. 3 hard on the eyes. The general disdain of microphones makes it hard on the ears, too. When the government showed its TV films of the defendants in action, reel upon reel, day after day, only about half the spectators were in a position to see them. Yet every morning the lines form early outside the courtroom. When the government suddenly rested its case and the defense took over on May 29, the spectator ranks swelled to double length—some 200 people, of whom only about eighty could be seated, hoping to see Coffin or Spock on the stand. And they were there for other reasons as well. A lot of them seemed to feel that they were on trial, too. Perhaps with cause.

The government had cast its net wide. “Conspiracy” was its charge against William Sloane Coffin Jr., Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, Marcus Raskin and Benjamin Spock, and “conspiracy,” as Judge Francis J. W. Ford reminded the jury on the first day, can mean simply “a breathing together.” These five, then, breathing together, did, according to the indictment charged, “unlawfully, willfully and knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other, and with diverse other persons, some known and others unknown, to commit offenses against the United States . . .”—specifically against Section 12 of the Selective Service Act which declares it a crime to “knowingly counsel, aid or abet another to refuse or evade registration or service in the armed forces,” or to “knowingly hinder or interfere” with the draft. Penalty: up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Everyone could see that these men were not guilty of conspiring in a furtive sense. What they did was done openly—it was indeed, as Dr. Spock’s counsel Leonard B. Boudin had remarked, more by way of denigration than clarification, “the first mass media conspiracy in the country’s history.” And, as if to emphasize the conspiracy’s public and unrestricted character, the government seemed to have gone out of its way to prosecute five men who were utterly unrelated as to age group, occupation, place of residence, degree of notoriety or base of activity, a cross-section, in short, of the East Coast antiwar movement. There were two Jewish radicals and three WASPs, comprising one intellectual from New York and one from a Washington think-tank, a clergyman from Yale, an elder statesman who was also popular with women (which consideration was to launch Boudin on an opening-day attack upon the all-male jury), and a fresh-as-wet-paint college boy, Ferber, founder and hero of New England Resistance.

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Arlene Croce

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ON THE TWELFTH FLOOR of the Federal District Courthouse Building in Post Office Square the case of United States of America versus Coffin et al. has been under way since May 20. The static white lighting on the yellow concrete walls makes Courtroom No. 3 hard on the eyes. The general disdain of microphones makes it hard on the ears, too. When the government showed its TV films of the defendants in action, reel upon reel, day after day, only about half the spectators were in a position to see them. Yet every morning the lines form early outside the courtroom. When the government suddenly rested its case and the defense took over on May 29, the spectator ranks swelled to double length—some 200 people, of whom only about eighty could be seated, hoping to see Coffin or Spock on the stand. And they were there for other reasons as well. A lot of them seemed to feel that they were on trial, too. Perhaps with cause.

The government had cast its net wide. “Conspiracy” was its charge against William Sloane Coffin Jr., Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, Marcus Raskin and Benjamin Spock, and “conspiracy,” as Judge Francis J. W. Ford reminded the jury on the first day, can mean simply “a breathing together.” These five, then, breathing together, did, according to the indictment charged, “unlawfully, willfully and knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other, and with diverse other persons, some known and others unknown, to commit offenses against the United States . . .”—specifically against Section 12 of the Selective Service Act which declares it a crime to “knowingly counsel, aid or abet another to refuse or evade registration or service in the armed forces,” or to “knowingly hinder or interfere” with the draft. Penalty: up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Everyone could see that these men were not guilty of conspiring in a furtive sense. What they did was done openly—it was indeed, as Dr. Spock’s counsel Leonard B. Boudin had remarked, more by way of denigration than clarification, “the first mass media conspiracy in the country’s history.” And, as if to emphasize the conspiracy’s public and unrestricted character, the government seemed to have gone out of its way to prosecute five men who were utterly unrelated as to age group, occupation, place of residence, degree of notoriety or base of activity, a cross-section, in short, of the East Coast antiwar movement. There were two Jewish radicals and three WASPs, comprising one intellectual from New York and one from a Washington think-tank, a clergyman from Yale, an elder statesman who was also popular with women (which consideration was to launch Boudin on an opening-day attack upon the all-male jury), and a fresh-as-wet-paint college boy, Ferber, founder and hero of New England Resistance.