Movie Story:
The film begins with the United States' mandatory military conscription for the Vietnam War, with increasing numbers of conscripts each month and increasing casualties, and the Chicago protests, which were largely a protest, turned into a riot. When the government was not changed, the investigation by the Attorney General's Criminal Division concluded that the riots caused by the Chicago Police Department, and everyone did not conspire with each other, decided not to prosecute. A year after the change of government, the new Attorney General decided to bring it up to show his prestige because of the humiliation of the previous one when he took office. So it was specially ordered to designate the key figures of the protest a conspiracy to incite violence across state lines and punished with up to 10 years in prison.
From the very beginning of the trial, the injustice and irony of this political trial were revealed. During the trial, the judge kept throwing one contempt of court charge after another at the defendants. In the process of endless court trials, the judges continued to show racism and tendencies. Time and again, pleas to deny from Justice Department attorneys, and again and again for defendants to deny.
It was said that the trial of 7 people turned out to be 8 people, and one black person was pulled in purely because it was a black person. Black people kept telling the judge that they did not have a lawyer present and applied to postpone the hearing, but they were interrupted and ignored by the judge time and time again. When the black man was rejected by the judge as his lawyer, he was emotional and expressed in court that his friend was deliberately murdered. . The black man was removed from the trial, which did not belong to him, due to the request of the Justice Department lawyer, and the judge also said "you are not free sir and i doubt you ever be". The judge proposed to isolate the jury, the defendant refused, the judge interrupted and said that if you objected a little less, the isolation time would be shorter (strictly closed your mouth, not allowed to express objection, expressed a meaning: you silently accepted Enough). When the defendants found out that Judges No. 6 and No. 11 were directed at them, the next day they found out that No. 6 and No. 11 had been replaced because they had received threatening letters from the Black Panther Party. When the defendant found out that the current Attorney General made such a move maybe just to retaliate against the former Attorney General, the former Attorney General was willing to resist appearing in court and expressed his own investigation results at the jury departure trial, and the result was arrested. The judge declared that he could not be a witness and would not inform the jury. Basically, everyone is just waiting for the outcome of the sentence.
During the trial, through the constant call of witnesses (mostly undercover police officers, "Is it possible that there were seven demonstrators in Chicago last summer leading 10,000 undercover police officers to protest." :D), the situation at that time slowly It was shown: when they gathered in the square, Hayden let the tire inflation of the policemen who followed them, everyone took the team to the police station to release Hayden, but the police lined up to suppress him, some of them stayed to release Hayden, and others Returning to the park, it was found that the road was completely mad by the police, and the crowd's emotions became more and more intense. The leader wanted everyone to calm down, but I don't know who shouted "Take that hill", and the riot happened. In the evening, everyone was giving a speech. One of the children was climbing the flagpole but was forced to take it down by the police. Lenny was interfering in organizing the police, but was suddenly beaten on the head by the police, and the whole parade was activated again. Everyone is working hard to go in the direction of the media at the venue. 11 people found their way without police guards and were surrounded by police as they approached. The police began beating 11 people as soon as they removed their name tags and badges.
It is difficult to say who caused the riot and who should be sentenced. As a result of the trial, Hayden read out the 4,752 American soldiers who died in Vietnam within months of the trial in a brief exposition. All five were convicted of inciting riots for five years. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial, with federal prosecutors refusing to reiterate the case.
Thoughts:
It was really heartbreaking to see. The 7 people sitting there were completely weak, and could only sit there silently and listen to the judge's rude attitude to reject them again and again. From the beginning they were a political tool that was put there. They are just tools for political shaming revenge. Government officials have been warned in advance that there will be demonstrations, whether the government agrees or not, but the government remains indifferent and can only think of suppressing it with violence. The funny thing is that there are so many undercover police officers.
In this room where the judge is the supreme authority, their voices cannot be heard. Their fault was expressing their voices too strongly. 7 of them plus 9 lawyers, strong in the face of an invisible power. From the beginning to the outside, the judge was not put in a fair position. The trial for several months has been a performance by the judge and the Ministry of Justice, and the reputation of "trial trial" has been added, but in fact, whoever decides the outcome already knows it. Seeing the judges unsympathetically throwing down the charges of contempt of court, I couldn't help but wonder how to resist absolute authority in this room, who can supervise absolute authority? Despite the media, how far can sound go untransmitted? Although groups of reporters sat on the scene, their coverage was limited. Under the circumstances, what was the probability that people would see what was going on and do something to find justice for them?
The loudest voice in the whole film is "the whole world is watching". We all know that high profile cases like this are generally done with justice. The trial at the time was an exception, but it did not detract from the ongoing perpetual focus on the case. Isn't this from 60 years of watching to our current watching? Because the whole world was watching at that time, so we can now know the warriors who fought and understand the history of injustice.
The whole film likes this kind of flashback. Through multiple people to restore the scene at that time, I feel that every scene is the truth, but where did it go wrong? The 2-hour movie is very compact, scene after scene, without any background sound to create a tense atmosphere, all the sounds of the scene show the tension at that time. There are only human voices in the trial. Your words and my words hit people's hearts with the most direct language and dark tones. The only downside is that at the beginning of the film, for someone like me with no background knowledge, it was a bit fast and didn’t quite understand it, but it’s good to see the trial start.
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