http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/doug_moe/article_eec9a086-184f-11df-b2fa-001cc4c03286.html
Doug Moe
608-252-6446
dmoe@madison.com
February 13, 2010
It says a lot about William Kunstler that his daughters could make a
compelling documentary about his brilliant and controversial legal
career without mentioning his involvement in one of Madison's most
memorable courtroom dramas.
Sisters Sarah and Emily Kunstler had a great many cases to choose
from in assembling "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe," which
played the Sundance Film Festival last year and will be out on DVD in
April. Kunstler involved himself in trials and causes that spark
instant recognition with a single word or phrase Attica, Wounded
Knee, Chicago Seven.
It's a fine film I saw it last week but as I watched I kept
thinking Karl Armstrong and Madison would make an appearance. They
never did, though Kunstler spent two memorable weeks representing
Armstrong here at his sentence-mitigation hearing in the fall of 1973.
In an interview Thursday, Emily Kunstler who co-produced and
directed with her sister, Sarah said she was familiar with her
father's representation of Armstrong, though "only vaguely."
The Kunstler sisters, who are now in their early 30s, weren't born
when Armstrong was captured in Canada and extradited to Madison to
stand trial for his role in the 1970 bombing of the Army Math
Research Center in Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus.
They were in their late teens when their dad died, in 1995, and by
then, of course, they were aware that along with being their father,
William Kunstler was a figure in American life revered by some,
reviled by others.
It was around the 10th anniversary of his death that the sisters
who had made earlier documentaries on the criminal justice system
decided to make a film about their father. Utilizing touching home
movies, archival news footage and original interviews, they trace
Kunstler's journey from suburban lawyer to civil rights advocate and
courtroom gladiator.
Kunstler's first civil rights case was a housing discrimination
lawsuit in his own neighborhood. His breakthrough both in terms of
national press and his own radicalization came during the 1969
trial of the Chicago Eight (later Seven). Kunstler was aghast when
the judge ordered one of the defendants, Bobby Seale, bound and
gagged in the courtroom.
In the fall of 1973, Kunstler was facing contempt of court charges in
Chicago related to that trial, but he wasn't too busy to join the
Armstrong defense, which was led by Mel Greenberg of the Legal Aid
Society in Madison.
The best account of Armstrong's sentencing hearing can be found in
Tom Bates' 1992 book "Rads." Bates was a journalist who was a grad
student in Madison at the time of the bombing, which killed Robert
Fassnacht, a young researcher. Bates died in 1999, at 55, of pancreatic cancer.
The two-week sentence-mitigation hearing for Armstrong was the result
of a plea bargain with prosecutors. In exchange for a guilty plea to
second-degree murder, Armstrong and his attorneys were allowed to put
on witnesses including former Alaska Sen. Ernest Gruening and
activist Daniel Berrigan who defended the anti-Vietnam war movement
and attacked the war.
Bates wrote that Kunstler whom Judge William Sachtjen allowed to
appear although Kunstler didn't have a Wisconsin license "gave one
of the most impassioned summations of his career."
Kunstler quoted Thomas Jefferson on slavery: "I tremble for my
country when I consider that God is just."
"Judge," Kunstler told Sachtjen, "you have to tremble for your country today."
Bates wrote that "the raw emotion of Kunstler's final appeal had
shaken" Sachtjen. Still, the judge sentenced Armstrong to 23 years in
Waupun State Prison. He served seven.
On Friday I asked David Maraniss, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author,
who covered the hearing as a young reporter, if he had any memories
of Kunstler.
"Impressionistic memories," David replied. "His wild hair, his deep
voice, his utter confidence."
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