Doing Awfully Well with Judge Hoffman
Henning, Joel F.
Doing Awfully Well with Judge Hoffman by JOEL F. HENNING "The law will never make men free; it is men who have to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when...
...In the Hoy trial, Assistant U.S...
...Many of them took the stand in behalf of Mr...
...Dellinger was fined $5,000...
...The "system" came down on Dellinger heavily...
...Sitting here this morning and seeing the wide range of people who have come forward to speak for me has been an ample reward for any good I have attempted to accomplish in this city...
...And the fact is that I am not prepared to do that...
...Before passing sentence on him, Judge Hoffman said, "I regret to say, and I mean this with all my heart, that this is not a cause for probation or merely a fine...
...I place myself in your hands...
...Even though my actions were unintentional, I determined to change my plea...
...Robert Stuart List, retired publisher of Chicago's American (now Chicago Today...
...Bail upon sentencing...
...You destroyed me and everybody else...
...Hoy: "Every problem has its compensations...
...He has been given a relatively comfortable room without bars in the Federal prison at Sandstone, Minnesota...
...Dellinger: "You want us to be like good Germans supporting the evils of our decade and then when we refused to be good Germans and came to Chicago and demonstrated, despite the threats and intimidations of the establishment, now you want us to be like good Jews, going quietly and politely to the concentration camps while you and this Court suppress freedom and the truth...
...That cost Dellinger six months, the longest single sentence in his package of contempt citations...
...I place myself in your hands," Hoy told the court...
...The Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Dellinger (and his co-defendants) released on bail pending appeal...
...the Reverend James Francis Maguire, chancellor of Loyola University...
...I have no personal shame...
...If Mr...
...Much of his debt arose out of his business loans, some of which became the subject of the fraud case...
...to participate in massive demonstrations...
...The only acts involving conduct other than speech were alleged against defendants John Froines and Lee Weiner, both of whom were acquitted by the jury...
...Hoy was fined $1,000...
...The Chicago press has reported that Hoy is not serving his prison term in a jail cell...
...District Court Judge Julius J. Hoffman said to one of the defendants, "Fellows as smart as you could do awfully well under this system...
...For three-and-a-half weeks, I sat in this court listening to the prosecution case...
...Hoy also has served on numerous civic groups and as a lay trustee of Loyola University...
...Four...
...Under Federal law, bail pending appeal is granted as a matter of right unless the defendant is known to be a danger to the community...
...The rather different approaches of "the system" to the conspiracy case and the Hoy case are most startling when the crimes charged, the punishments (Copyright © 1970, by Joel F. Henning) imposed, the question of bail, and the last words of the defendants are compared...
...People are going to speak up/" The Chicago conspiracy trial was an attempt by the system to inflict wounds on some of its enemies and to deter others...
...Those at the trials who remember the enthusiasm with which U.S...
...Put me in jail now, for God's sake, and get me out of this place...
...DeMinger's income has never amounted to much...
...Charles P. Livermore, deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Development and Planning...
...During the trial Dellinger once addressed Judge Hoffman as "Mr...
...Tall, gray-haired, and possessing a movie-star handsomeness, Mr...
...But he placed twelve dollars in the church collection plate each Sunday...
...Last words of the accused...
...He received another five months for characterizing the court proceedings as "bullshit...
...They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it...
...Those two words seemed to Judge Hoffman to be the criminal equivalent of nearly $1,000,000 of bank fraud by Hoy...
...In the past few years he has had a hard time paying legal defense costs in addition to supporting his family...
...Dellinger's daughters were in hysterics...
...five years is the maximum...
...In the conspiracy trial the indictment against all eight defendants was on two counts, one for conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite riot and the other for actually crossing state lines with such intent...
...Evidence was offered that he fraudulently reported his financial liabilities at $524,000 when he really owed $3,393,000...
...Two...
...As Abbie Hoffman retorted to his namesake's suggestion: "We don't want a place in the regiment, Julie...
...The Hoy case suggests that the system has not yet decided to stand firm on white collar crimes...
...Hoy was sentenced to two years in prison...
...One...
...People are going to speak up...
...They were middle-aged, very successful men and there were tears in their eyes...
...the evidence indicated that he chose to defraud out-of-town banks of more than half the total boodle...
...In addition to the five-year sentence following conviction, JOEL F. HENNING, a lawyer, is a fellow and director of program of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs in Chicago...
...Later he became president of the Sherman House and Ambassador hotels in Chicago...
...Henry David Thoreau Tn the course of the Chicago con-spiracy trial, U.S...
...One for each Apostle as a gesture to salvation...
...It has been an ample reward for the character that was fostered at my mother's knee...
...Other debts were the result of Hoy's consistent pattern of high living that included such things as rent of about $700 a month for his apartment, dinners at $65 each, $10.40 for a visit to his barbershop, and the cost of entertaining the U.S...
...In his bankruptcy proceeding of a few years ago, he listed personal debts of $8,517,703 and assets of $500,000...
...I appreciate the skill, the patience, and the courtesy you have shown me . . ." Hoy delivered his remarks leaning on the lectern, much as Dellinger's attorney, Kunstler, was forbidden to do by Judge Hoffman...
...The punishments...
...I realized at the end of it that there were far-reaching effects and that there were areas where my guilt was determined...
...Navy's aero-acrobatic team, the Blue Angels...
...Attorney Robert J. Breakstone told the court, "It is true that there has been a belief that if a man worked in his church and taught Sunday School, his punishment should be a slap on the wrist...
...Neither Dellinger nor Hoy seemed to be a high risk under this rule...
...Hoy's good character, including Lester Crown, president of Material Service Division of General Dynamics Corporation...
...Irv Kupcinet, columnist and television talk show moderator, and top executives of Chicago and Los Angeles banks...
...Judge Hoffman sentenced him on thirty-two counts of contempt of court adding up to twenty-nine months and sixteen days—nearly a half year longer than the sentence he imposed on Hoy...
...He is a founder and member of the board of governors of the Chicago Council of Lawyers...
...Hoy was somewhat sparing of Chicago banks...
...The actions of Hoy's friends were described by Tom Fitzpatrick in the Chicago Sun-Times: "As one they surged toward him...
...was a publicized social figure in Chicago...
...by the time he was twenty-five he had become vice president...
...One by one, they shook his hand or patted his shoulder...
...You want us to stay in our place like black people were supposed to stay in their place . . . like poor people were supposed to stay in their place, like people without formal education are supposed to stay in their place, like women are supposed to stay in their place . . . like children are supposed to stay in their place, like lawyers—for whom I thank—I thank you—are supposed to stay in their places...
...The indictment alleged, in part, that "the defendants . . . would organize and attend various meetings, would publish and cause to be published articles, and would make and cause long distance telephone calls for the purpose of encouraging persons to come to Chicago...
...Hoy might have had a creditable past but he is a man who stole in seven-figure columns...
...The windup of the case found the system gently admonishing one of its own with a slap on the wrist...
...This array of Mr...
...Eight and a half million dollars in personal debts is a figure so awesome that it evokes a picture of Hoy buying strings of racehorses and a yacht or two...
...Dellinger was sentenced to five years in prison, the maximum in his case...
...In the Hoy trial the indictment was in sixteen counts for defrauding banks of more than two million dollars...
...Dellinger understood this and spoke against it...
...While Hoy was engaged in his fraudulent transactions, he was earning $87,000 a year in salary alone as vice president of the Material Service Division of General Dynamics Corporation...
...Awfully well," like Patrick Hoy—in Judge Hoffman's own words, "an attractive man...
...People will no longer be quiet...
...I have many regrets...
...In eight months, Hoy will be eligible for parole...
...Hoy was, until his trouble, doing "awfully well under this system...
...During the period of these expenditures—which provide some idea of how a man "doing awfully well under the system" lives—Hoy paid his creditors nothing...
...It is a travesty on justice and if you had any sense at all you would know that that record that you read condemns you and not us . . . And it will be one of thousands and thousands of rallying points for a new generation of Americans who will not put up with tyranny, will not put up with a facade of democracy without the reality . . . People no longer will be quiet...
...But immediately after imposing sentence upon Dellinger for contempt of court, Judge Hoffman denied bail and ordered him literally dragged from the courtroom directly to jail...
...In this regard it should be noted that Mr...
...According to The Wall Street Journal, "He began his career in business when he was sixteen with a Minneapolis milling firm...
...But from the record it does not appear that he went quite that far in his indulgences...
...What is executive fraud after all...
...Conspiracy defendant David Del-linger and fraud defendant Hoy are both in their mid-fifties...
...The crimes...
...I did so because I felt more comfortable in the sophistication of this court, in its being able to take all things into account...
...It is nothing compared to Dellinger's tactless insistence on justice in Chicago and Vietnam...
...The Government believes in the theory of deterrents, and it is time to stand firm on white-collar crimes...
...Hoy's affluent friends inspired Judge Hoffman to take note of the fact that he himself knew several of the prominent persons who appeared in the courtroom...
...One woman wept out of control...
...His lawyer, William Kunstler, in tears, fell to his knees and said, "My life has come to nothing, I am not anything anymore...
...Having changed his plea to guilty, Hoy did not appeal...
...Judge Hoffman allowed Hoy to post $1,000 cash and proceed immediately upon sentencing to visit with his ninety-seven-year-old mother in Minneapolis for a few days...
...White collar crime is, to borrow Rap Brown's famous phrase, as American as cherry pie, or price-fixing, or stealing paper clips...
...The meaning of his remark becomes clear upon comparing aspects of the conspiracy case that grew out of the riots in Chicago at the time of the 1968 Democratic Convention, with the later bank fraud trial of Patrick Hoy before the same judge...
...Hoy had not changed his plea from innocent to guilty on one count in exchange for having the Government drop the other fifteen counts, he could have been sentenced to a maximum of eighty-five years in prison...
...When he showed up to begin his sentence, it was in style, in a chauffeur-driven limousine...
...Hoy as well...
...Three...
...To be fair, it must be noted that there were tears shed in Judge Hoffman's courtroom upon the sentencing of Mr...
...Attorney Thomas Foran and his assistant Richard Schultz supported Judge Hoffman's instant incarceration of the conspiracy defendants were interested to note that Hoy's visit to Minneapolis was not objected to by the Government prosecutors...
...I am an old man and I am just speaking feebly and not too well, but I reflect the spirit that will echo [at this point Judge Hoffman ordered the marshals to "take him out"] throughout the world...
...Fellows as smart as you could do awfully well under this system," the Chicago judge told the conspiracy defendants...
...The indictment alleged that he "devised . . . a scheme and artifice to defraud" a total of five banks—scattered from Los Angeles to Indianapolis—of $2,067,500 in loans made to him and his business enterprises...
Vol. 35 • April 1971 • No. 4
