• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 881 0

the Milwaukee area for their defense of Father James Groppi. Groppi, a liberal Catholic priest raised in Milwaukee’s white, middle-class Bay View neighborhood on the city’s South Side, became nationally known during the late 1960s for his vigorous civil rights activism. Campaigning for school desegregation and fair housing practices, he led numerous marches across a viaduct that stood as a symbol of his city’s racial segregation. In 1969 Father Groppi led a sit-in at the Wisconsin state legislature in Madison with a group of about a thousand welfare mothers, protesting proposed welfare cuts. Charged with contempt of the legislature, Groppi retained Coffey, Murray, and Coffey. “Our firm represented him all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,” says former defense attorney John Murray. “We lost in every court we appeared—the state courts, the federal courts, the Federal Court of Appeals. And the U.S. Supreme Court reversed unanimously in our favor. It was big news at the time.”

Murray was the firm’s attorney on duty the night of Carlin’s Summerfest arrest. Around midnight he got a call from his partner, William Coffey. Murray quickly went down to the city jail, where he told Carlin he’d have him out in minutes. In fact, the comedian was held for nearly two hours. “They jacked us around, I recall vividly,” Murray says. The police insisted on running a National Crime Information Center check on the comedian, “which was absurd,” says Murray, “because he was nationally known.” Finally released in the wee hours of the morning, Carlin and Murray regrouped at the posh Pfister Hotel downtown, meeting Brenda and William Coffey and his wife there to discuss how to proceed. The next morning Carlin appeared with his lawyer in the city attorney’s office and was formally charged.

Though his defense team recommended he pay the fine, Carlin chose to fight the charges. Because the case involved a city ordinance, Murray advised Carlin that he could waive his right to appear in court.

Carlin’s case, after being adjourned several times, finally came up for trial in mid-December. The prosecuting attorney was Theophilus “Ted” Crockett, a longtime member of the city attorney’s office. “They threw the chief deputy city attorney at me,” says Murray. “The police were very upset, in particular this Lenz. He wanted to bury [Carlin]—he was very, very angry.” But Murray was familiar with the judge who drew the case, Raymond E. Gieringer, an out-of-town reserve from Adams County. “I felt very good after I knew Judge Gieringer was going to be the trial judge,” says Murray. “Nothing much bothered him. He was pretty world-wise, even though he was from a smaller county in Wisconsin.”

The city called one witness, a Catholic schoolteacher named Donald Bernacchi, who had attended Summerfest that night with four boys. Though he testified that he had been offended by the comic’s language, when asked whether he had seen any disturbances caused by the performance, he admitted that he had not. One of the defense’s two witnesses was a young assistant DA named Tom Schneider, who had been present at Summerfest. He was also the on-duty DA who had declined to charge Carlin criminally the morning after the show. Schneider, says Murray, “was a reasonable DA who saw nothing but trouble with that case.” Had Schneider seen any disturbance that would amount to a disorderly conduct charge? No, he had not. What did he see when Carlin uttered the seven words? “I saw people laughing,” he replied.

Murray argued that the show had been intended for a late-night audience (Carlin had gone on around ten o’clock), and that it had been clearly promoted as an adult-themed performance. He and his colleagues were well-versed in constitutional law, having handled many free-speech cases (including one concerning the first topless establishment in Milwaukee). Carlin’s routine, they felt, was a textbook example of speech protected by the Bill of Rights.

The case was effectively decided when the judge permitted Murray to play the “Seven Words” routine from Carlin’s new album, Class Clown, which