Nothing but the Truth... and Other Lies

It is January 3, 1973, and 400 registered voters from northern Illinois have been asked to the Everett Dirksen Federal Building, in the middle of Chicago's clangorous, soot-gray Loop, to listen to truths and lies. They are the year's first citizens to be called for jury duty in Federal Court. They live not only in Chicago but in its flat suburban trim and in surrounding small towns that take much of their commerce from the land, and whose people resist any meeting with the rude whines and vulgar geometry of the city. Of the 400 called, the Government knows from experience that half of them have suddenly become the victims of domestic chaos or fresh occupational responsibilities demanding their full and constant energies. Others simply know someone who knows someone. So on January third, those without clout or excuse, 194 good citizens in all, have come to the building's ceremonial courtroom on the 25th floor.

They may serve one of a number of trials scheduled for January. Immediately, the jury of appellate court judge Otto Kerner and his friend, former state revenue director Theodore Isaacs, will be selected. Kerner is the first sitting Federal judge to be brought to trial and his employer, the United States of America, believes he accepted low-priced racing stock while he was governor of Illinois, hid his ownership and provided special favors for the track owner who sold him the stock. It believes his friend, Ted Isaacs, helped him. A couple of days later, former city alderman Fred Hubbard's trial begins. He was arrested in the middle of a poker game in Los Angeles in August 1972, after 15 months as a fugitive, and has been brought back to Chicago to explain where the money from a Federal job program he administered has gone. And four days after Hubbard's case starts, a Chicago policeman will be prosecuted for extortion and for perjury before a grand jury.

• • •

Mies van der Rohe designed the block-square Federal Building, and it's impossible to imagine that it looked newer ten years ago, when files and people began to fill it, than it does today; its glass, black steel and polished tile take weather splendidly, and uniformed guards at each entrance are strong ammonia against treasonous graffiti.

The decor of the ceremonial courtroom is identical to that of others in the Federal Building, but the room is twice as wide as the others and longer; it looks like some new sanctuary, clean of idols. Rows of dark wooden benches fill the back half of the room and stop for two intersecting aisles of tasteful gray-brown carpet that also covers every other bit of floor that isn't jury box or judge's bench. Walnut-brown squares panel walls that run high, to a fluorescent-lit ceiling with a filtering grid of tattersall checks.

At 9:33, Kerner and his lawyers enter the room, and 200 prospective jurors pause from knitting and place folded paperbacks aside to watch this slow processional make its way over the gray-brown carpet, past them, to the defendants' table. Kerner is short and square-faced and walks with quick, precise steps, as if he's marching. He sits in a chair, leans forward, his hands making steeples on the table in front of him. His facial expressions start at the eyes, as wrinkles spread out to begin them. Kerner coughs, then moves his lower jaw up and down without disturbing the rest of his face, like the wooden mouth of a ventriloquist's dummy. Reporters are scribbling first impressions in their notebooks, using words like patrician, impeccably dressed and silver-streaked hair to describe Kerner. A few moments later, Ted Isaacs and his lawyer, Warren Wolfson, make the same walk, anticlimactically. More minutes pass, enough time to let the room feel Kerner and Isaacs and for the mood to grow to take them in, and then the Government lawyers appear, moving down the opposite aisle; you get the feeling that the timing and placement of these entrances had been rehearsed the night before. Besides lawyers, the United States is represented by Internal Revenue Service agents and an accountant. Leading them into the room is James Thompson, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Thompson is 6'6" tall and weighs 230 pounds. He has a picture in his office, on the 15th floor of this building, taken when he weighed 30 pounds less and wore a short brush haircut. He was a young lawyer in the state's attorney general's office then and worked on a committee that rewrote Illinois' criminal laws. The picture shows Thompson in the back row, looking over shoulders, as the code was being signed into law by Governor Otto Kerner.

Thompson and his people arrange themselves around their table and Thompson turns his chair to face the defendants as a back door next to the judge's bench opens for Judge Robert Taylor of Knoxville, Tennessee, who has been hand-picked by Chief Justice Warren Burger to preside through these strange and fragile weeks, while the liberties of a fellow judge will be argued. Judge Taylor is small and bald, and when he settles into his high-backed chair, just his head can be seen above the bench, like a small moon hanging above the horizon. From any distance, his only features are black horn-rimmed glasses, so when he removes them, he effectively erases his face.

The clerk stands up behind a desk below Judge Taylor and says, "Seventy-one C R ten eighty-six." (He is reading the case number, the C R denoting the classification "criminal.") "The United States of America versus Theodore J. Isaacs, et al. Case on trial."

This is Judge Taylor's cue and he begins to summarize the Government's indictment against Kerner and Isaacs. He pauses after he has finished, comfortable with the pace he's created, and turns to Kerner. "Judge Kerner, will you please stand so the people can see you?"

"Yes, sir," says Kerner as he gets quickly to his feet, then turns to the crowded room and finds some brave, primal sensibility that a politician saves for resisting crowds. His eyes meet theirs and don't back away, and his face is brilliant with evangelism.

• • •

On Saturday afternoon, January 6, 1973, Fred Hubbard sits in the living room of his South Side Chicago apartment, talking on the phone. Yesterday, Hubbard appeared before Judge Hubert Will in Federal Court, pleaded guilty to charges of embezzlement and was sentenced to two years in prison and four additional years of probation.

Hubbard was a prominent city alderman and administrator of the Chicago Plan, a Federally sponsored fund to get blacks jobs in the local construction industry. He won election in 1969, running against a machine candidate whose distant sins--a past life as a professional gambler and a narrowly escaped shakedown conviction--rose up to beat him. Hubbard seems to have lived all his life at some societal edge, has been persistently drawn to an elite, or dangerous, fringe. Harlem street kid. University of Chicago graduate. Counselor to black street gangs. Victim of a never-explained shooting. Reform candidate for city council from the black second ward. Political star and director of the Chicago Plan at a salary of $25,000 a year. And then, at the top of his career, the flaunting incongruity: In the spring of 1971, he left Chicago one night with $100,000 that belonged to the Chicago Plan and spent 15 months losing poker and crap games in Las Vegas and later in Southern California. Chicago papers pondered his whereabouts every few months during the time he was gone and the suspicion grew that he was dead. Then he was found late in the summer of 1972 seated at a poker table in a Gardena gambling club by Federal agents looking for a tall black man with his distinguishing elf-shaped ears.

"I'm anxious to come back to Chicago and prove my innocence," he said at his arrest. He was transported to Cook County Jail, where he spent almost four months and during that time--according to newspaper stories printed a few days ago--wrote the first draft of an autobiographical novel. He was released on bond on December 23.

Hubbard's wife, Arnette, sips coffee at their kitchen table. She is an attorney with Hubbard's lawyer and has stayed with her husband since his return from that 15-month disappearance, when Hubbard sometimes kept the company not only of malignant luck but of a woman. Mrs. Hubbard is bubbling and friendly, hiding whatever bleak residue remains of the experience.

"There a paper in here?" she asks, coming into the living room. "I haven't seen a paper for two days."

"Under the coffee table here," he says, and pulls out the morning edition. Its headline reads, "Hubbard sentence is two years"; next to it is a large picture of Hubbard at the Federal Building, smiling as he leans into the Probation Office doorway.

"Oh, so striking, so debonair!" laughs his wife.

"Yeah, shit," says Hubbard.

They have a corner apartment on the (continued on page 98)Nothing but the truth...(continued from page 94) sixth story of a high-rise with floor-to-ceiling windows looking north toward downtown and the first strong streets of the Loop, and only when she considers this view does Mrs. Hubbard reveal deeper layers of mood. "I guess I do enjoy it. I really haven't looked out that window for so long, the whole Loop could've burned down and I wouldn't know it."

A white-flocked Christmas tree stands in the corner, drooping from long duty. Torn package wrappings, lidless boxes, discarded cards and ribbons--the pillage of the season--surround its base. One of the Hubbards' children, a small girl wearing glasses, walks through the living room past her father.

Hubbard hangs up the phone, moves forward to the edge of the chair, his long legs angling up like a grasshopper's, and smokes a cigarette. He remembers 15 or 16 embezzled checks, the largest one for $20,000, drawn over the first five months of 1971. "The intention was always to pay it back. But I saw a way to take this Federal money and build it into an independent fund for black politicians in Chicago. It seemed to me the quickest way to do that was to win in Vegas. The only way blacks are gonna help themselves here is through politics and my idea was to get enough money so they wouldn't be dependin' on the white regulars. But I lost real big, and then I drifted on to L.A. By that time, I had no plan. Weather was nice. Big city. No plan.... I just ended up there."

He explains the idea with a calm sincerity, and you realize that to him it is not wildly improbable. He sees, somewhere in the middle of it, a teasing filament of possibility invisible to the rational eye. Hubbard believes if he had won, he would still be an alderman, the most powerful black in Chicago, holding segregated money for blacks' elections. His scheme was simply the latest malarial flight from an even, sensible character, and it's sending him to prison.

"I have always had this desire for power. Raw power. I saw it around me when I got into politics, and frankly, I wanted some for myself. And that," he says, suddenly reaching under the coffee table and pulling a manuscript from a manila envelope, "is what this book I wrote is about.

"This main character," he explains, "wants all the black aldermen to get together. They never have in this town. Blacks now have the biggest bloc in City Hall, but they've never put it together. Well, this guy does, and he realizes the machine is dying." Hubbard pauses and shifts his fix from his fictional political structure to the real one he rode so successfully for a time. "The machine is dyin'. I saw it years ago in the black wards. The Democrats would be winnin' 150 to 10 in some wards and everybody was saying the machine was so powerful, but I could see that they shoulda won the ward 200 to 5. The old ward heelers was just lazy, fat. And that's how I knew, when I ran for alderman, that I was gonna win against the machine's man."

Hubbard stops again and makes the shift back into his book. "Well, that's the situation in Chicago, and that's the situation in this book. This guy, Vonner Jordan I call him, figures a way to unite all the groups I was mentionin': the dope peddlers, the black gangs, the Mob, to achieve his dream for power." He waves the manuscript. "It's just a first draft. I wrote it in three months while I was sittin' in County. It's no more than just an outline, really. All dialog." He shuffles typewritten pages, then closes the envelope and lights a cigarette. "I don't have an agent or nothin'. But I always wanted to write a book and I figured bein' in jail was as good a time as any to do it."

He leans back now and, briefly, lets the dream have him again. "You see, I wanted to do this. I wanted to do what this man Vonner Jordan did.... But I guess I just didn't have enough heart, or maybe lack of heart."

• • •

The public is first allowed inside the Kerner-Isaacs trial at 3:40 p.m. on Monday, January eighth, after the jury has been chosen. But the "public," at this late hour in the first, sluggish days, are the regular Federal Building trial buffs--retired men, mostly--who each day search these halls for melodrama, sloughing in and out of courtrooms as events build, crest and fall away. There are about a dozen of them and they seem to move in teams, spreading out each morning to find the rooms of highest passion, then report to one another when they meet in the corridors.

"There's a great plea for reduced sentence in front of McLaren," one will say, or, "Final argument goin' on in Decker's court. It's a good one."

During lunch hours and recesses, they gather in the halls and sit in new leather chairs grouped near a wall of windows, dressed in layers of dull wool. They elect a president and other officers every year and hold a Christmas party to which some judges come. When they don't talk with one another about trials, they usually complain about the meagerness of pensions and the mazes lurking in Medicare forms. Their real knowledge of law varies enormously ("That guy's a great lawyer," one might say, cupping his ear. "He talks real loud."), but that gives no one of them a more authoritative voice when they sit in the leather chairs, like old men in parks, and argue guilt and innocence.

There is also a lady, named Mary, one of them, treated equally but with no special deference; she walks with a lunging limp and, from the expression on her face, always seems about to break into a witch's cackle. Mary carries a small note pad and pen and takes notes on testimony. She alone has stayed by the door outside the Kerner-Isaacs courtroom since the first morning, watching and waiting, the Mrs. Miller of the trial.

• • •

"The next few weeks we spend together will be among the most important in your lives," says Jim Thompson to the jury as he begins his opening statement, setting a tone of gravity. He warns the members of the jury not to panic if they sense facts and statistics moving too swiftly. "In the end, this is a simple case," he says. "At the heart of the matter, it is a case of bribery and fraud and lies to evade that bribery and fraud." He tells the jury that Marjorie Everett, the largest horse-racing-track owner in Illinois, formed a new corporation in the early Sixties and, already much in debt, could manage only a large, precarious bank loan to finance it. Thompson continues, gesturing with his hands to italicize a word. "Marge Everett's friend and advisor was her late father's close friend, William Miller.... In November 1960, Otto Kerner was elected governor of Illinois. He announced that William Miller had been appointed chairman of the Illinois Racing Board." Thompson tells of Kerner's appointing Ted Isaacs the state's director of revenue, of Kerner's clearing all racing-board selections with Miller, of Miller and Everett's deciding that she should expand her business by running harness races at the tracks and of needing special state legislation to do so. Thompson builds his narrative, until it is ready for the crystallizing drop of information: "In November 1962, Marge Everett sent a memo to Bill Miller, outlining her agreement to set aside 25 shares of C.T.E. stock and 10,000 shares of W.P.T.A. stock for Otto Kerner, five shares of C.T.E. and 2000 shares of W.P.T.A. stock for Ted Isaacs, for the purpose of maintaining good will and retaining friends in the Kerner administration." The bribe. "On November 9, 1962, William Miller, Otto Kerner and Ted Isaacs met in the governor's office.... Miller told Kerner and Isaacs of her offer of stock to them as a token of her esteem for the governor. And Kerner told Miller to convey his thanks to Mrs. Everett." The acceptance of the bribe.

Thompson tells of the passage of unendorsed checks worth thousands of dollars, of furtive conversations spoken in codes--the covering of trails by men's-club criminals. Then he stops for a moment, as one imagines the back cover of a book coming shut, and says, "The United States of America will request that you return verdicts finding that Otto Kerner and Theodore Isaacs are guilty of the crimes charged in this indictment."

• • •

Paul Connolly rises slowly and walks to the jury box, smiling, to give his opening statement. All of the factors that make up presence have grown to powerful maturity in Connolly and his appearance makes you wonder if, when he was 20 years old and planning to study law at Georgetown and become a very successful trial lawyer, he knew that he would someday have this full white hair and that his face would flush to aesthetic contrast. To influence a courtroom requires the transmission of something finally physical and you can't imagine that Paul Connolly looked nearly so impressive when he was young. The elements of age have worked beneficially for him; it is as if they progressed methodically until they got it right, then quit.

"Ladies and gentlemen," says Connolly, "what you have heard from Mr. Thompson, spoken so eloquently and so partisanly, is not evidence. No opening statement is, and so what I'm about to say is not evidence, either." Connolly then begins to reconstruct the life of Otto Kerner, like a speaker introducing some celebrated guest. "He joined the National Guard as a private in 1934 and worked his way up to the rank of major general. After the war, he practiced law, was appointed U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, became county judge and was elected governor--not once but twice. He chaired the Kerner Commission and was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to sit on the U. S. Court of Appeals, the second highest court in the land.

"And now, these gentlemen representing the Government say he's a liar, a fraud, the recipient of a bribe." Connolly has just introduced a central strategy of his defense: taking the prestige of his client's life, placing it next to the names he's been called and hoping that some immiscible chemistry will occur in the jury's judgment.

"Let me tell you what this case is not about. It is not about bargain stock. Neither stock owned by Otto Kerner was obtained by a bribe.... In 1960, Otto Kerner was visited by a longtime friend, Joseph Knight, who said, 'Governor, there's some race stock available. Would you like to have some?' Kerner said, 'Whose is it?' and Knight said, 'It's mine.'"

Now Connolly's indignation begins to rise, a source of heat to his face. "This indictment is lengthy. It is verbose." He distributes one copy of the indictment to each juror. "It is the most confusing, tortuous set of facts you've ever seen in your life." And he concludes that someone "is trying to get Otto Kerner, for motivations perhaps you'll hear before this trial is over."

After lunch, Warren Wolfson gives his short opening statement for Ted Isaacs. Wolfson is a local lawyer who has worked his way up through the police and state courts and has felt his case load moving to the Federal Courts for the past few years. This is a direction he has neither planned nor especially welcomes. He says, "It's much more difficult to win in Federal Court than in state court. The Federal prosecutor is much more selective. In state courts, they indict just about everyone brought to them. In Federal Court, the cases are thoroughly investigated before they are taken to the grand jury. If they don't think it's enough to convict, they just don't indict."

Wolfson fears the verdict in this case, believing that "It's very difficult for jurors, or even lawyers, to understand what a conspiracy is. All you need is some kind of agreement to do something, you don't even have to violate any law. The Government claims in this case a mail fraud took place and a bribery took place. What possible reason could there be to charge a conspiracy also took place? Well, it's very clear: to bring in otherwise inadmissible evidence to make it easier to convict. The poor guy indicted by a Federal grand jury of a conspiracy charge is on his way to jail."

Wolfson is short, wears suits of cloths that shimmer and has crewcut hair that amplifies the pear shape of his head. As he approaches the jury, he seems perfectly cast for the role he will play in this trial. ("I want this case to be the Kerner case. I want to play the second-fiddle role, to sit by and keep Isaacs out of the limelight as much as possible," he has said.)

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, there is nothing wrong with buying stock at a bargain price and selling it at a profit.... And there is nothing wrong with using someone else's name on your stock certificates. That practice is called using a nominee and it is done every day in the business world." Wolfson finishes with a quick list of promised revelations, like a preview of coming attractions: "You'll see what happens ... you'll hear about that evidence ... you'll learn that this indictment is the work of an overly creative prosecutor."

• • •

In Judge Hubert Will's courtroom, on the 23rd floor of the Federal Building, the trial of Chicago policeman James Ross is getting under way. He is accused of extorting Armanetti's liquor store by threatening its loss of license. The Government says that one night during the third week in March 1970, one of Armanetti's clerks sold liquor to a young customer after seeing his identification. Moments later, Ross walked into the store holding the customer, informed the clerk that he'd made an illegal sale and received $1500 to forget it had happened. The Government believes that Ross planted the underage customer.

Ross denies being in Armanetti's that night. He maintains that he was patrolling in another section of the district and has partners and records to prove it.

The Government's witness on the opening day of the trial is Herbert Beigel, who was a Justice Department attorney before leaving the Justice Department a few months before to enter private practice. Beigel is largely responsible for the recent indictments of Chicago policemen. His investigation began in the Austin district, in which Officer Ross worked, because a reporter for the neighborhood's newspaper told sources about a "$100-a-month club" of police officers--a corrupt group that extorted roughly $100 a month from the area's tavern owners.

Beigel and the U. S. Attorney in this case, Allan Lapidus, converse mechanically about details. From his bench, Judge Will takes an active role in the testimony, interrupting to ask questions in a tough, impatient city voice. He has the extra burden of deciding the verdict in this case, for policeman Ross has just this morning chosen to be tried before a judge, rather than by a jury of peers, some of them perhaps carrying a flourishing cynicism that would not stop to presume a policeman's innocence. ("It used to be that if you put a cop on the stand, the jury automatically believed him," says attorney Lapidus. "Now it's just the reverse. I was talking to a prosecutor at the state's attorney's office the other day and he told me about a case where he called a witness to the stand and when he asked him his occupation and the guy said he was a policeman, the entire jury started snickering.")

Lapidus is a short, dark young man who talks in aggressive bursts. He carries his head tilted back, as if he were watching a movie from the first row, and sights down his nose as he looks straight ahead. Lapidus wears a luxuriant black beard, which makes him a virtual freak in comparison with the other U. S. Attorneys, but he was prepared to shave if this trial were heard by a jury.

Beigel finishes his testimony, ending his role in a case he helped construct.

The next day, eating lunch in a Loop restaurant, Beigel thinks back over his career with the Justice Department. "I remember when the Chicago Police Department announced that it was conducting a parallel investigation, along with the Justice Department, into police corruption. Well, its investigation amounted to putting someone on the tail of the FBI investigators to see who they were investigating." He laughs.

"But that was all right, because, contrary to myth, the FBI is not a good investigating agency. It especially dislikes new investigations, because they're time-consuming. Everybody's statistics-conscious. The FBI will make a deal with (continued on page 150)Nothing but the truth...(continued from page 100) Justice and say, 'OK, we'll investigate corruption, but at the same time, we want you to return indictments,' let's say, 'on the Dyer Act, because we're down in Dyer Act convictions.'

"That's why the FBI has historically been so big on investigating illegal gambling: It gets them great statistics. They can get 30 arrests from one wire tap. You can't get convictions if you're out conducting police-corruption investigations. That gets you 15 indictments in two years. What kind of a statistic is that?"

Beigel is enjoying it now, as old, dormant anecdotes, guaranteed to shock and dazzle, spring up from his memory. "The reason small extortion is so prevalent is because a cop who asks for $50 at the time of arrest is really saving the tavern owner money. Because if he refuses and an arrest takes place, it'll cost him more to get acquitted in court. His lawyer might say to him, 'It'll cost you $5000 to have me represent you,' and the owner says, 'Why so much?' 'Because I've got a cop to pay,' says the lawyer. In fact, a cop's standard extortion pitch to an owner is, 'You'd better pay me now, 'cause it'll cost you more at the station.'"

Beigel sips coffee and smiles. "All this used to bother me a lot," he admits, "but not anymore. Now I'm just good for great stories at cocktail parties." He takes a long sip and sits back, and when he speaks again, there's a sudden soft charity in his voice. "You know, cops do so many great things. But they can't seem to resist being on the take. They come to expect it as part of the job. Take Ross. He's got an amazing record for bravery, has all sorts of awards. There's no question but that he would run into a burning building to save a child.... But he's also on the take."

• • •

On the afternoon of January ninth, following Warren Wolfson's ten-minute opening statement, the first witness in the Kerner-Isaacs trial is summoned to the stand.

"The Government calls Marjorie Everett," announces Sam Skinner, Thompson's chief assistant on this case, who, as head of the U. S. Attorney's Special Investigations Division, has devoted more than a year to it. He has been exclusively responsible for the preparation of Marjorie Everett, making extended trips to her Scottsdale home, discussing her facts and solving some mysteries of chronology, working beside her large pool, refusing Arizona indolence.

While working on the case, Skinner would often compare Mrs. Everett's version of the truth with William Miller's, who was being questioned by Thompson, and when inconsistencies stayed stubbornly between them, Skinner and Thompson would jokingly remind each other who was assigned to whom. "Well, obviously, your witness is lying," Thompson would say to Skinner.

"Oh, no. My witness is telling the truth. Your witness is the one who's lying."

The wide double doors at the back of the courtroom open and Everett walks through. Spectators on both sides of the aisle turn in their seats, like wedding guests watching a bride. She is tall, has short brown hair and a lined, mannish face. After being sworn in, she drinks water from a paper cup as Skinner prepares to question her. "Please state your full name, spelling the last name for the court reporters." Everett replies in a voice that wishes to stay in her throat and she is instantly asked by Skinner to speak louder.

Working through his list of questions, Skinner guides Everett smoothly and she remembers a contribution of $45,000 to Kerner's first campaign for governor. "Fifteen thousand dollars from Washington Park, sir, $15,000 from Arlington Park and, I believe, sir, either $10,000 or $15,000 on behalf of Balmoral Park, sir." These three groups were the racing associations that rented Everett's tracks.

"Why did you agree to make the stock available to Otto Kerner and Theodore Isaacs?" asks Skinner.

"Frankly, sir, I knew that I could be wiped out overnight, sir. We didn't have a term loan at the bank. It was callable at any point. And when Mr. Miller asked that the stock be made available to Governor Kerner and his aide, I didn't feel that I could cross him."

Judge Taylor recesses until 9:30 a.m.

• • •

On the third day of his trial, Officer Ross moves to the witness stand. His wife watches with her sister from the first row. Aside from his white shirt, he is dressed in black--black suit, black tie, black socks and shoes. He is six feet tall, weighs 200 pounds and is balding, altogether a "distinctive-looking man," in prosecutor Lapidus' opinion, one that eyewitnesses would remember indelibly. Ross is 46 years old and has been a policeman for the past 25 of them.

His attorney, Frank Whalen, introduces Defense Exhibit 13, Ross's pocket diary, which shows his partners and assignments. In it, Ross has written that he worked with Officer Paull from six p.m. until 2:30 a.m. on March 18.

"How do you dress for your work?"

"Casual clothes. A shirt and pants."

"Do you wear a topcoat?"

"No, it's a cotton jacket. Kinda tan or khaki. I didn't like it too much when I first got it, my wife bought it for me." (A prosecution witness remembered Ross's stuffing $1500 into a long, dark trench coat.)

Whalen finishes with the necessary question: "Have you ever received any illegal money while you've served on the police force?"

"No."

U. S. Attorney Lapidus studies Ross's diary, thumbing it for lies.

"What months have you recorded partners for?" he asks.

Ross takes the diary. "March ... May ... there were a lot of one-man cars during the other months, so I didn't have a partner."

"In fact," says Lapidus, "you only recorded partners on every day for the month of March, isn't that right?"

"Because in other months, I was in one-man cars."

Lapidus moves to another area. "Have you ever investigated sale of liquor to a minor?"

Ross pauses. "Yes, I have."

"Have you ever used the telephone in Armanetti's?"

"No, sir."

"When you testified before a grand jury, you said you had."

"Well ... I ... possibly have."

After lunch, both sides give closing arguments. When they've finished, Judge Will begins to deduce his verdict and you can sense his mind working through the clashing accounts, like a BB clicking down through a labyrinth.

"I share the concern you express for eyewitness identification, Mr. Whalen. So I try to look at other evidence.... Now, someone who said he was a police officer entered Armanetti's that night and received $1500. It is difficult for me to believe that that man was not a police officer. If he was a police officer using Ross's name ... I find that hard to believe.... There is no more than one officer who was assigned to the Fifteenth District at this time named Ross, that has been established. And I think the identifications are at best corroborative, although you can't rely exclusively on them. So, considering all that, I am satisfied, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was James Ross who entered Armanetti's liquor store that night." The judge looks down at the defense table: "Mr. Ross, will you stand?"

"Yes, sir," says Ross and springs to his feet behind his lawyer.

"Officer James Ross, the court finds you guilty as charged in the indictment." Will pauses momentarily to sort out his reasoning. "That is, both counts, because the second follows the first. If, in fact, he was the man, then he committed perjury in saying that he wasn't."

Ross takes these words without physical reaction. His wife, unable to breathe the air of imminent verdict in the courtroom, stands outside, having peered through the glass in the door to see her sister begin to cry while the judge was making up his mind. Ross is a stone at attention, while his lawyer and the judge start to discuss legal matters.

"I will set the case for disposition on the twenty-first," says Judge Will.

"OK. Now, your Honor, I'd like to make a motion for a new trial, merely for the record."

There is inconsiderate movement in the room. Reporters leave to write the story. The regular spectators, having gathered for a verdict, now shuffle away from the tedium.

"I guess," says Judge Will, "that I should also deny your motion for a new trial, to scrub up the record."

• • •

A few nights before she appeared in court, the Government gave Marjorie Everett a dress rehearsal, placing her in the witness box to let her feel the cold surfaces of the room and respond to questions in a setting other than the grounds of her Scottsdale home. Lawyers working on the case, including Thompson, examined her, and so did another U. S. Attorney with no knowledge of this trial, in the hope that he might see new weaknesses. ("We went back and forth before she hit the stand on whether Connolly would be gentle or harsh with her," says Thompson, "and I think we finally decided he would be gentle, simply because she had no direct personal contact or relationship with Kerner. And we figured that so long as Connolly had that plus going for him, he wouldn't alienate her.")

Near the end of his cross-examination of Everett, Connolly questions her about lobbying activity in behalf of a senate bill, then asks: "Did you ever intend to bribe Otto Kerner?"

"When I made the stock available to Mr. Kerner," she says, "I have tried to testify to the court the tremendous pressures ... the point of no return ... the problem I had and the impossibility I felt in turning down Mr. William S. Miller as chairman."

Connolly is now finished and it's Warren Wolfson's turn. He begins aggressively, filling every Everett hesitation with sarcasm, and after the smooth, courteous hours of Connolly's cross-examination, Wolfson seems something of a Hun.

At the afternoon recess, Connolly hurries to Wolfson.

"Hey, look," he says, "don't be so rough on Marge. I worked with her for two days. You're ruining everything."

"All right," says Wolfson, "I'll take it easy."

Afterward, in his office, Wolfson says, "I'm sorry I moderated my cross-examination at all. I was trained to go for the jugular when you have an adverse witness. Juries are television trained, they're Perry Mason oriented, and while I can't make a witness confess to the crime during cross, if I can make him bleed a little, I think the jury's going to be happy about it. If you spend your time making love during cross-examination, the way Connolly did, I think it supports the Government's case."

• • •

A tiny black man, walking with brisk purpose down a hallway in the Federal Building, stops at one of the courtrooms and peeks through the glass in its door for activity inside. He wears a blue suit, precisely fitting his small body, a lighter blue shirt, and he moves and looks as if he were permanently pressed from head to toe. He is seen in the building almost daily, knows its halls and people, and one assumes at first that he's an employee of the Government--some judge's clerk or Congressman's assistant.

But he always carries his briefcase, suggesting that he has no office here in which to put it down, and often uses a public telephone. Indeed, he surely carries dollars of dimes in his blue-pants pockets. The man's name is Antonio M. Gassaway and he is not a Federal employee but a lawyer, and a lot of his dimes are spent for conversations with the U. S. Federal Defender's office on the 17th floor, a program that provides lawyers for those who need but can't afford one. Many of these people find themselves represented by Gassaway, to whom Government lawyers most often refer by a nickname.

"We call him 'Plead Away' Tony Gassaway," says an Assistant U. S. Attorney, "because of the way he usually works. He'll call the Federal Defender's office and if he gets the name of a client, he'll meet with him, and us, and suggest that the person plead guilty. Then he picks up his fee. Plead Away Tony Gassaway."

Comparatively, his clients do not fare badly, however, for something defiantly human happens when Tony Gassaway receives a case, something that works to warm the rules. "There's an understanding among Government lawyers," says the U. S. Attorney, "that since Tony is such a gentleman and has been around for such a long time, he's treated extremely well. So the sentences he gets for his clients are usually lighter than those given to clients represented by big-name lawyers who fight conviction all the way. He's such a nice man."

Gassaway moves toward an elevator, tidy and at home in the nearly empty building. It is 1:30 and the courts are lunching. "I'm fine, yes. I'm very fine," he says to a passer-by who stops to ask how he's doing. "You know, I've been very lucky," he says, adjusting his hearing aid, speaking out of the side of his mouth. "Almost all my practice is in Federal Court. My associates handle the state cases. Over the years, you build up a practice--you understand my point?--so I don't have to practice in the state courts. I remember the old Federal Building. I tried a lot of cases there. It was right next door, you know. Judge Campbell, he's still here, he was on the bench in the old building. I remember I had a trial before him in '42 or '43." Gassaway stops to look at his watch. "I've got to be going. I have to see Mr. Fahner, he's a Government Attorney, at two o'clock for a 2.04 meeting. That's what they call it when the Government goes over its evidence with you and shows you what it plans to prove. It's a vote-fraud case. Fahner is the Government's main lawyer in vote-fraud cases." Gassaway is asked if he has decided what plea to recommend to his client.

"Oh, you never know how these things are gonna go. No, sir, you just never know. We'll just have to wait and see." He smiles. "It's hard to say right now, you understand my point?"

• • •

On Wednesday, January 17, the waiting line for the Kerner-Isaacs trial has returned. There was none during the past few days, when sessions were dull devotions to documentary evidence. But today, people are squeezed along the benches to see William S. Miller in court.

At 11:39, Miller is called and walks down the aisle. His physique makes him appear absolutely square and he leans forward as he walks. He looks like Colonel Sanders with no goatee. Jim Thompson smiles at Miller as he walks by. He will be the first Government witness questioned by Thompson, and the two of them have been preparing for months for the conversation they're about to have, working nights ever since the trial began.

Before Miller and Thompson came to the relationship that now exists between them, there were months of moves made slowly, patient explorations into knowledge that hid, until they began to communicate at that level of respect and affection found uniquely by shrewd men.

("He's a rogue," says Thompson, "but a lovable rogue.... His 'flipping,' as we call the turning of evidence by a defendant, was an extraordinarily complex thing. You must remember that he was a defendant in this case. I had indicted him, brought some ruination into his life. He had no real reason to like me or trust me. In fact, he denounced me. Well, you just can't take a man like that on Monday and on Tuesday turn him into your best buddy. It sure doesn't happen to a man who's as complex as Miller. Hell, I took 12 or 15 trips out to Crete, Illinois, and spent hours on end with the man. And the first ten trips were mostly get-acquainted trips. You sit down and talk with him for five hours. You have to sift through all his bullshit, drink with the guy. He has an amazing capacity for Scotch, which he'll drink any time, anyplace. I'm no mean drinker myself, but there's no way I could stay up with him, so I'd drink Scotch and water for the first hour of the interview. At first we had another one of our lawyers go down to interview him, but he's a teetotaler and a Mormon, and Miller didn't get along with him, so we pulled him off.

"We had to win his wife over, too. Mrs. Miller did not like us. She'd believed all the lies Bill had been feeding her over 25 years about the bad things the Government does, so she had no time for us. Then, one day, I got tired of interviewing Miller and so I left him with the IRS guy, Stufflebeam, and walked upstairs, where the family was all gathered around the kitchen table. Mrs. Miller was presiding and there were all kinds of grandchildren and other kids around. So I sat down and bounced babies on my knees and talked law with grandson Butch for an hour and a half, and really enjoyed myself, and slowly, after that, Mrs. Miller began to like us.")

Thompson now places Miller inside this case, with the people and events necessary to the Government's theory. "Directing your attention to late October, early November 1962, did you have a conversation with Mrs. Everett regarding stock?"

"Yes."

"What was said?"

"Mrs. Everett said, 'I've had a recent conference with Ted Isaacs and I've agreed to set aside 25 shares of C.T.E. stock for Governor Kerner and five shares for Mr. Isaacs. And I've also agreed to reserve 10,000 shares of W.P.T.A. stock for Governor Kerner and 2000 for Mr. Isaacs.'"

"What did you say to her?"

"I said, 'Marge, have you discussed this subject with your attorney, Senator Lynch?' She said, 'No.' I said, 'You should.'"

And now Miller narrates the day of November 9, 1962, and his meeting with Kerner in the executive office in Springfield, where he says he hoped to find the governor's willing weaknesses. Miller recalls his words to Kerner and Isaacs, first discussing matters unconnected to his purpose, spreading a vital, disguising coat over the conversation.

"I said to the governor that the publicity regarding a lawsuit filed by Mrs. Everett was not as bad as it seemed. Then I told him about an individual named Roth, who was going around stating that he was influential with the administration and that his statements were detrimental to the Illinois Racing Board and to Governor Kerner ... and I told Governor Kerner that Mrs. Everett, in her desire to be kind, had set aside stock for he and Mr. Isaacs. He replied, 'That's very kind of Marge.'"

Thompson has heard Miller forget certain lines, although his most important ones have reached the jury. ("Miller left out some things he told us he said to Kerner. He left out any mention of a problem Marge was having with the health department. That was an intriguing one, too. When he told me about it, I thought to myself, 'OK, so big deal,' but then when he said that the governor replied, 'Marge will have to obey the law like everybody else,' I thought, 'fantastic!' The whole conversation was a setup. Miller gave the governor all this bullshit about Everett's concern because Otto Kerner is not the kind of guy you just slide money across the table to. But here, how perfect! You salt the governor of the state with some bullshit about a health-department violation. The governor says, 'Marge will have to obey the law,' and everybody's satisfied. Isaacs has heard it, Miller has heard it, Kerner has said it. Obviously, nothing you say after that about a stock offer is going to have anything to do with a bribe, because Kerner has already established his position--that Mrs. Everett has to obey the law. So, when I figured that out, I thought to myself, 'Well son of a bitch, he was devilishly clever.'")

Thompson now asks Miller, fiercely rigid in the witness box, "What was your intent in offering this stock to Otto Kerner and Theodore Isaacs?"

Miller waits and thinks, for all the months of knowing this question would finally be asked have cooled it not at all. "To cause them to ... continue to look fondly on Mrs. Everett and her enterprises."

"Following this conversation, did you tell Marge Everett about it?"

"I did."

"What was her reaction?"

"She was very pleased."

• • •

In a small hearing room in another wing of the Federal Building, separated from the courtrooms by a central hallway that bisects those floors devoted to law, the Justice Department is preparing to close case 69CR180, The United States of America versus David Dellinger, et al., or, more familiarly, the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial. It has been more than three years since those sad and brutal proceedings filled one of these same courtrooms and now the Government, after an appellate court reversed the decision, has decided to leave the case alone. The original defendants, and lawyers William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, still face contempt-of-court charges at some distant time, but there is no energy left for a new trial, so lawyers for the United States are present to formally dismiss the charges.

There are just a few spectators' benches, a single lawyers' table, scattered chairs and a judge's bench in the room, but they are identical to those in the large courtrooms and this small paneled den hasn't space for them. so it feels haphazardly jammed with someone's oversized furniture.

Chief Judge Edwin Robson enters and you can hear his robes swishing furiously with his smallest movement.

"Good morning, your Honor, Gary Starkman for the Government," says an attorney approaching the bench.

Robson looks around the room before replying. "You haven't heard from any of them?"

"No, your Honor, we haven't. We sent a communication airmail special on Monday."

"This past Monday?"

"Yes."

"Well, they should have received it in plenty of time."

"Yes," says Starkman. "Your Honor, the Government would ask the court to enter an order of dismissal with prejudice."

Neither Robson nor the Government refers to the defendants as anything other than "they" or "them," and their absence at the Government's surrender seems a last mocking yawn.

"All right," says Robson. A dismissal with prejudice is entered and the Chicago conspiracy case is legally over.

Downstairs in their offices, several Government lawyers are reminiscing about the conspiracy trial. "We came up with a number of theories as to why the whole thing became a travesty, why the karma was so bad," laughs one of them. "First, there was the 'too many people in one room under five feet, eight' theory. Then there was the 'too many German Jews in one room' theory. And those two were merged into the 'too many German Jews under five feet, eight' theory."

At the same time the conspiracy dismissal is in progress, a case titled The United States of America versus T. W. Allan, et al. begins. It is a check-forgery trial, the Government having finally assembled a series of strong charges against an individual it's hoped to meet in court for a long time. Ironically, it won't. T. W. Allan has violated bond and fled, so his deeds are here without him.

The court is completely empty of spectators, not even one old man to watch and doze in the back. And sitting quietly in his chair, his Magoolike globe of a head bobbing above the bench, Judge Julius J. Hoffman presides.

• • •

On the afternoon of Thursday the 18th, Paul Connolly begins to cross-examine William Miller. After minutes of opening politeness and easy conversation, Connolly begins to read from Miller's long statement of innocence given to the Government at the time he was indicted, and then takes up his answers to a list of questions the Justice Department gave him as litmus of his worth before granting immunity. Connolly sees discrepancies in Miller's various versions of facts, spoken and written over past months, and when he asks Miller whether or not he said these things, Miller changes on the stand, withdrawing into a full black sulk, and replies to each question:

"I can't remember."

Connolly is delighted by the mood he has found in Miller and irritates it further, asking more and more questions about his previous statements.

"I can't remember.... I can't remember."

Thompson stares straight ahead, looking at the table. ("My darkest hour in the entire case was when Miller said he didn't remember, 47 times in a row. The impression on the jury was just horrible. I thought he was going to be destroyed as a witness. I said to myself, 'God, here goes the whole case.'")

Then, Miller emerges from amnesia, answers a question and, after a time, Connolly says, "I want you to know, Mr. Miller, I have nothing personally against you."

Miller accepts the line. "Why, I have nothing but affection for you, Mr. Connolly," and his humor stays through the day.

The following morning, Connolly continues his questioning and as the session lengthens, again gets tough, keeps Miller's wit from getting out and introduces the basis of his defense. He believes that Miller tried to gain control of Everett's empire by persuading her to offer stocks, then exchange them for others in order to get the shares away from Everett and circulating rootlessly, making them easier for him to finally possess.

As Connolly nears his climactic question, he wanders to a place as far from Miller as the room allows. Standing by the back double doors, he looks down the aisle at his witness. "Didn't you," he shouts, "try to get shares of stock so you could control Balmoral Jockey Club?"

Miller seems to wait for the words to travel their distance. "I don't know why you have to be so dramatic about it," he says and the few reflexive snickers from the crowd ruin it for Connolly, leaving him looking foolish back there, far from where he should be.

Connolly walks forward to Miller and tries once more. He asks whether Miller would agree that "the side effect of your noble transaction, to get Kerner and Isaacs out of race-track stock for the good of the sport, was to give you control of Balmoral?"

Miller's ill humor returns. "I won't grant you even that."

• • •

On the morning of January 24, eight days after he first appeared, Miller is excused as a witness in the Kerner-Isaacs trial. He walks uncertainly from the stand, as if he's sat in that chair through nights and recesses for all eight days and is walking for the first time in a week. He waits for his lawyer to get their coats, then leaves the courtroom.

• • •

Otto Kerner has remained so motionless in his chair through five weeks that you begin to wonder if he is really hearing all the unkind mentions of his name. Only occasionally he has shaken his head with a sad smile, as certain witnesses have placed him in rooms he's denied ever visiting, quoted statements and orders at odds with his innocence. So there is that same surprise as seeing what you thought was a store-window mannequin move, when, late in the afternoon on Thursday, February eighth, he comes alive, pushes back from the table and walks quickly, concentrating on his feet, to be sworn in.

Connolly leads him through a discussion of his past as a politician in Illinois. Kerner tells of campaigning before he was ten for his father, of his own early victories and of the people he met who went with him to each new office. Toward the end of the day, Connolly asks him about his election as governor of Illinois in 1960. "Were there charges of vote fraud made at the time of that election?"

"Yes," says Kerner. "There were great charges made of vote fraud in that election and they have been repeated. Those same charges have been repeated by the present President from time to time since that election."

Listening and making notes for cross-examination, Jim Thompson begins to perceive in Kerner the first sign of a hostility that has been kept beneath his dignity and is now escaping, like a slow, hissing leak. He watches for more, sees Kerner turn to the jury when the questioning has paused for a moment and make small asides about Republican-controlled legislatures. Thompson is thrilled by what he senses, believes he can use it when the right time comes and thinks, most of all, that Kerner is losing this jury.

At the end of the session, Thompson walks from the courtroom with the other Government lawyers and they stand in the hallway, waiting for an elevator to take them to the 15th floor. They step on as a group and as the doors close, Thompson turns to his assistant, Sam Skinner, and says with a smile, "We've got his ass now."

• • •

Kerner finishes his direct testimony on Monday, the 12th, and prosecutor Thompson begins by asking him about a response he gave near the end of it. "Judge Kerner, going back to your 1960 campaign, I believe you said this morning that you actually knew very little about the financing and how money was raised, and who gave what; is that correct?"

"That is correct," says Kerner.

Thompson continues, "Of all the people who gave you money for the 1960 campaign, about what percent of the time did you know the amount of the gift?"

"I was rarely told the amount of cash." Kerner thinks again and modifies his answer. "I wouldn't say rarely. I was never told the amount of the gift. The committee would indicate to me that so-and-so was in and made a generous contribution and asked would I write a letter of thank-you."

Thompson finds this puzzling. "I take it, then, that Mr. Isaacs, your campaign manager, never told you that Marge Everett had donated $45,000 to the campaign?"

Kerner shows his irritation and seems to expand in size as he organizes his words into a stiff, clipped row. "I will tell you when he first told me, Mr. Thompson. It was a day or two after you filed your pleading and I asked Ted, I said, 'Is that true?' He said, 'Yes, it is.' That is the first time, Mr. Thompson, I knew of that amount!"

At the noon recess, Thompson moves to the center of the room and meets Ted Isaacs, this thin little man who has not said one word aloud in open court during the entire trial, and smiles down at him. "You were one helluva lousy campaign manager, Teddy," says Thompson.

Isaacs looks up. "What do you mean?"

"All that campaign money coming in and you never told your boss who his best contributors were!"

Isaacs smiles. "Don't rub it in."

• • •

Kerner's final day of testimony lasts until early afternoon and after he has stepped down, his lawyer stands and says to Judge Taylor, "The defendant Kerner rests."

Theodore Isaacs offers no defense of his own, his lawyer feeling that he's already read everything important into the record and that his client would stammer and mumble into the carpet if placed on the stand. Wolfson also fears that since Isaacs had been indicted in the past, "the Government is probably laying for Ted." And so, without calling a witness, Warren Wolfson reads some final facts to the jury that have been agreed upon by both sides and says, "The defendant Isaacs rests."

• • •

Standing near the jury, neat and above nervousness, Paul Connolly is ready to give his closing argument. His wife and teenage daughter have flown in from Washington to hear him. They sit in the first row with others hoping for innocence--Kerner's two children, a close Kerner family friend, Connolly's secretary--and it seems as if Connolly is about to address a large auditorium on some high theme instead of asking 12 people not to send a man to prison.

The spectators are chatting excitedly with the anticipation of a real event. The one woman among the regular court buffs has given herself a snarled permanent for the occasion.

At ten o'clock, Connolly starts to talk about the importance of the case. "This is the most momentous point in my life," he tells the jury. He continues the tone all morning, never allowing the jury to forget who it is they're judging, sounding privileged to defend Otto Kerner.

Late in the day, Connolly begins to focus on the motives for this injustice and mentions the political dreams of the district attorney, suggesting that winning this conviction would look fine on his résumé, Listeners familiar with Connolly's style after seven weeks sense that he's about to build, and the words he's speaking are on time. "If you convict Otto Kerner of one count in this indictment," he challenges, "you've destroyed him. You might as well convict him of all of them." But he seems unable to find real outrage and he is flat at the finish. "Weigh the life of Otto Kerner when you are in that jury room against the hard-charging, vigorous imagination of an ambitious prosecutor.... So when you come back through that door with your verdict"--he wheels around and points to it, his index finger two feet long, then turns back and aims the finger at Kerner, who sits stiff with dignity--"I want you to look Otto Kerner in the eyes." Connolly rotates another quarter circle toward the first row of spectators. "I want you to look his children, sitting here, in the eyes"--now he shouts, his face so red it looks lit from inside--"and say, 'Welcome back to a free society, Otto Kerner!' Jim Thompson has failed miserably to prove the charges of this case!"

He slams his palm on the wooden railing in front of the box and a puff of dust rises from it. The room is still as Connolly walks to his seat, not so much because of any stunning eloquence as from the startling effect of someone's behaving so rambunctiously in it. Judge Taylor speaks too quickly, before the silence can end on its own. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Do not discuss this case among yourselves. What you've just heard is not evidence and you should not consider it as evidence...."

The jury is excused and court is adjourned until ten o'clock tomorrow morning. Connolly's wife hugs and kisses him, and his daughter, near tears, waits for her turn. Connolly looks down at them, talking softly.

On the other side of the room, five reporters are trying to construct accurate quotes for their news stories. Each has written, as fast as he could, Connolly's closing remarks, and now they are pooling their notes, hoping that among the five of them they've got it all. "'The hard-charging ambition of a vigorous prosecutor'?" says one.

"No. He said, 'the vigorous imagination of an ambitious hard-charging prosecutor!'"

"'Vigorous, hard-charging prosecutor'?"

"I've got 'hard-charging, ambition, vigorous prosecutor.' That's all I've got."

"OK, here's what he said: 'the hard-charging ambition of an imaginative ... vigorous'?"

• • •

Jim Thompson's final argument is brief in comparison with Connolly's day of rhetoric, and he ends it by speaking to the charge that has lomed above his case since the first day. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Throughout this trial, you've heard suggestions that the case against Otto Kerner is the product of my own ambitions. Well, last night I visited a friend of mine, a judge in this building, who is, I think, wise beyond his years, and I said to him, 'Connolly says I'm out to get Otto Kerner because I'm ambitious.' The judge said to me, 'Ambitious prosecutors don't indict judges. That's too risky. They go for easy cases, so they can pile up a 95 percent conviction rate. In a political city like Chicago, ambitious prosecutors just try to get along.'"

• • •

At 10:19 Monday morning, after 16 hours of deliberation, foreman William Michael knocks on the jury-room door and a Federal marshal opens it and steps inside. "We've got a verdict," says Michael.

"OK," says the marshal. "Just relax. It'll take an hour or so to get everybody here." He leaves and hastens to his phone.

In his office, ten floors below the jury room, Thompson and his assistants have been waiting and discussing the testimony, having no real distance from it yet, relying on the deepest impressions of the moment for perspective. Thompson asks, "Who did you think our most beneficial witness was?" He listens silently to the answers and replies, "I think it was Otto Kerner." Each prosecutor has prophesied the verdict and there is a consensus that they will win some but not all the counts. Thompson, however, has predicted a decision of guilty on all counts and feels now, on Monday, that the Government has surely convicted Kerner and Isaacs of something, for, in his experience, the longer a jury takes to decide, the better its decision for the Government: he began to feel good after Saturday passed without event.

His phone rings and the marshal tells him that 16 hours has been time enough.

Warren Wolfson is at home on the Near North Side, just ten minutes from the Federal Building. He has wakened with the rolling pain that a long nervousness puts in stomachs and takes the phone call in his underwear. He tells the marshal he'll need 45 minutes. "Honey," he calls upstairs to his wife. "Let's go. We've got a verdict." He then calls Isaacs at his office in the Loop and tells him to meet them in the courtroom.

There are few lights on in the building today, the hallways in a weekend darkness. It is George Washington's birthday and the offices are closed. Not only are the workers gone but the legion of legal buffs, with no trials to watch, are also home and will miss, after all their faithful weeks, the end of the show.

Ted Isaacs arrives, wearing a sports jacket for the first time in the trial. He paces the hall, keeping a nervous little laugh going, and now his lawyer comes and together they enter the courtroom. Isaacs goes immediately to his chair and Wolfson leans over to talk to his wife. "Our colleagues are on their way," he says. No sooner does he say it than they enter--Kerner, Connolly and his young associates, Tom Patton and Jim Hubbard. Kerner, too, takes his chair quickly, breathing heavily, and a paleness shows through his health-club tan. No one at the table looks healthy. Patton says to Wolfson, "Have a nice weekend?" then laughs and adds, "Silly question, huh?" Patton has been losing his breakfast for a week and Connolly's secretary has given him a Valium for the past few nights.

The room is still without anyone from the Government, just reporters and defendants and their lawyers gathered together. Kerner has assumed his familiar position, as if someone had told him to pose for a brochure and pretend he's signing historic legislation. You have to look carefully to see his suit jacket moving in and out faster than on other days. He wipes dried white specks from the corner of his mouth and talks in rumbles to Isaacs.

The sketch artists work maniacally, their felt-tip pens shrieking on the paper. "I haven't been this nervous since I drew Bobby Seale bound and gagged," says one of them.

At last the prosecution walks in, at 11:25, having waited downstairs for an hour, as the marshal suggested when he called. Sam Skinner looks around the room, talking disrespectfully loud. "Hi, Verna," he says to an artist. "Hi, Fitz, how ya doing?" Harsh cheer in his high voice. Thompson moves to his place, sits and stares ahead at the judge's bench.

The jury door opens, but no, it's a marshal wheeling in the cart of evidence, dozens of boxes and folders; they look rumpled and thumbed through, a sign that, indeed, the jury has decided.

And now the jury is here, following the evidence like mourners after a casket, looking at the floor as they file past the tables. They are shown special courtesy today: Everyone in the room stands for their entrance. Not only lawyers and defendants, as has been the practice, but reporters and everybody else. Both sets of lawyers strain to make eye contact with any juror, Thompson almost bending down to look up into their faces, but none of them will raise his head. At the press table, Bill Mooney from the Daily News watches the cortege and scribbles on his note pad. He pokes another reporter and shows him that he has written, "Dead."

Procedure takes over to get above the tension. Jury foreman handing verdicts to clerk. Clerk opening first envelope. Clerk reading, "We, the jury, find the defendant Theodore Isaacs guilty as charged in the indictment." Absurd pause to open second envelope. Kerner breathing through it. Can it possibly be different? "We, the jury, find the defendant Otto Kerner guilty as charged in the indictment." He's said it again and Connolly reaches for Kerner's arm and places his hand, gently, on it.

Judge Taylor is rude to the pervading shock, whisking it away with ritual. "Is that your verdict, Mr. Foreman?"

"Yes, it is."

Now Judge Taylor polls the jury--"Is that your verdict? Is that your verdict? Is that your verdict?"--12 times, then he raises his hand in some archaic gestute and says, "So say you one, so say you all." Immediately, postverdict motions are attended to, leaving Kerner and Isaacs comatose in their seats. Connolly shakes Thompson's hand. Thompson thanks the judge. The judge protests that he doesn't want to be thanked. Skinner wants to know when the sentencing will be. And after 15 minutes, the Kerner-Isaacs trial is through. One of Kerner's lawyers motions to the first row, where Kerner's children and friends are sitting, and they move out of the courtroom through the same door the jury entered, quickly and efficiently, as if they've drilled this exit just in case. In a moment they are gone, door closed, and they ride the judges' private elevator to Kerner's chambers. Kerner will remain there, with Connolly, until four o'clock, and tonight take his family to their home in Wisconsin, away from Chicago for a few days.

Isaacs is suddenly by himself in the courtroom. His lawyer is surrounded by reporters and Isaacs moves dazedly about. Newspaper columnists stare into his face and walk closely behind him, taking mental notes of any words and expressions for their impressionistic reportage of how it is to be alone with a guilty verdict. Isaacs is smiling hard and someone does ask him, "How do you feel?"

Isaacs chuckles without moving his face and says, "I'd have to write a book about it." He continues moving aimlessly around the room and when he stops for a moment, an instant cluster forms around him. Finally, it occurs to him that he can leave and he looks for his lawyer, who's telling reporters the jury could not possibly have considered all the evidence in the short time it deliberated, then gets his coat and walks down the hallway.

A TV reporter yells, "You leaving now, Ted?" and catches up with him. Together, they take the elevator down.

In the lobby, cameras begin to close in on him, clicking furiously, and he has to let them while he stops and signs out at the front desk. On the sheet, he enters, in a clear, firm hand: Name: "T. J. Isaacs"; Floor visited: "2500"; Time out: "12:35." There is no space on the form to write Purpose of visit. Now Isaacs moves quickly away from photographers, out onto the sidewalk, and sprints for his law office on Washington Street.