Leonard Weinglass.

• Author: Ervin, Mike
• Position: Activist attorney - Interview

Attorney Leonard Weinglass stumbled onto fame when he found himself side-by-side with William Kunstler representing defendants in the Chicago Eight trial in 1969. Today, at age sixty-two, he is still fighting against long odds in the court system. His biggest challenge these days is as counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the black journalist who is on death row in Pennsylvania, convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer. Ever since Abu-Jamal received a stay of execution following national protests last summer, Weinglass has been petitioning the courts for a retrial based on new evidence.

Prosecution witnesses have changed their stories. A doctor's report, which the jury never saw, claims that the bullet removed from the police officer's brain does not match the caliber of the alleged murder weapon. Judge Albert Sabo, the original trial judge who grudgingly granted the stay, turned the first petition down flat. Sabo is the embodiment of a hanging judge. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he has delivered more than twice the death sentences of any other judge in the nation. Weinglass has appealed Sabo's decision denying a retrial.

Weinglass devotes most of his conscious hours to his work. His cases take him all over the world. Usually, however, he lives and works alone in his Manhattan office ("I commute across a small living space") and describes his daily life as "boringly consistent - not martyrdom and not excessive." His demanding schedule ended his last intimate relationship more than twenty years ago. His past clients have included Jane Fonda, Amy Carter, and Angela Davis.

In contrast to Kunstler's growling, emphatic style, Weinglass has the tone and approach of a quietly passionate reasoner, gentle and persuasive.

Q: How did you become involved with the Chicago Eight?

Weinglass: I was a lawyer in Newark in the 1960s. I had a little brownstone in the ghetto. Tom Hayden came to Newark with the Students for a Democratic Society. I defended him on a number of minor offenses. When he was indicted in Chicago he asked me to come defend him. It was the first time I'd done a case outside of Newark. The number of lawyers got whittled down to Bill and myself I was assigned to represent Tom, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, and John Froines. Tom said to me, "This case is going to change your life." I said to Tom, "Don't be ridiculous." But the case did change my life. My relationship with Tom changed my life. I appreciate how patient he was developing me into more of a political understanding of my work. He helped me understand that it wasn't just an issue of defending the poor and the powerless. I had to become part of a larger movement that sought to change the system. That was something I had resisted. I felt that I was going to work on one case at a time. Tom convinced me that the only way to be effective was to address the underlying causes that generate these cases.

Q: What memories of the case still stir emotions in you?

Weinglass: The fact that the U.S. government could fashion a case and seek to put away people because of their political dissent was really a major eye-opener for me. I had read and heard of such things, but I had never been directly involved in such an event.

This case was a legal atrocity. That was the word used by the former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. There had been a grand jury sitting since the end of the Democratic Convention in August. They sat into January and they didn't return any indictments. The evidence that was produced, I'm told by Ramsey Clark, indicated that indictments were inappropriate...