<Begin Segment 19>

PI: I went back to Washington. I stopped in, I forget whether it was that day or soon after, at the federal probation office to be interviewed, a pre-sentencing report from the federal probation officer. And in fact, we had a very pleasant conversation. I explained to him why I was doing this. He seemed quite sympathetic. And when we went, when I went back a month later for the sentencing, the federal prosecutor, the assistant U.S. attorney, presented the pre-sentencing report to the judge and recommended that I be placed on probation. And of course, my lawyer said the same thing. And Judge Peck looked down and said, "Well, I've read the pre-sentence report. And I'm going to sentence the defendant to five years in prison on the first count," -- which was violating the, refusing to show up for my physical exam -- "and five years on the second count," failing to report for induction. Nobody that I knew of had ever been convicted of both of those offenses. I mean, failing to show up for your physical is a Mickey Mouse offense. And so I was sentenced to ten years in prison. At that point -- and this was totally unexpected -- at that point, the assistant U.S. attorney, and I just remembered his name, Arnold Morelli, very nice guy, stood up, and he said, "Your Honor, may I approach the bench?" And the judge said, "Yes." And he went up there, and they had this whispered conversation for several minutes. And at the end of it, the judge says, "Well, I've listened to the U.S. attorney and I've decided to change the sentence. I'm going to sentence you to three years on the first count, three years on the second count to be served concurrently." Well, that's a victory of sorts, but three years in prison was something I had not expected, because I had anticipated being placed on probation. I had a job. I had no other criminal record except for a few sit-in arrests. And I wasn't any danger to the country, I thought. And the judge felt that I was a danger in setting an example of refusing to serve in the military at a time -- this was in 1965 -- when the war was becoming, was blowing up. And we were sending hundreds of thousands of troops to Vietnam. So in a sense, I should have expected what happened.

Now, the U.S. attorney in Cincinnati told... no, I have things wrong. I have to back up. My lawyer decided that we would appeal to the United States Court of Appeals, appeal my conviction on the ground that I'd raised, of the consti-, the First Amendment, the religious test. And so I had some time before that appeal was heard and decided, so I went back to Washington to my job with the autoworkers. And I decided that it may take a year or so, but I wanted to go back and finish my degree at Antioch. So I left the union, and they said, "You can come back any time." But I left the union, went back to Antioch and finished my last year. While I was there, my appeal was argued in Cincinnati before three judges on the court of appeals. I remember going down for that. And one of the judges was obviously extremely hostile to me, a very elderly judge. One of them, you couldn't tell which side, he just sat and listened. And the third judge was obviously very sympathetic to me, asking very critical questions of the U.S. attorney. I later discovered that this judge had -- whose name I forget right now -- had worked for the Autoworkers Union years before. Although I don't know if he knew I did at the time. And his nomination to the federal court of appeals had been very controversial, because as a young man he'd belonged to the Socialist Party. And I had been very active, while I lived and worked in Washington, in the Socialist Party. So when the decision came down, it was a vote of two to one against me. Now, at that point, we had another choice to make, appeal to the Supreme Court. The problem was, I didn't have any money. My lawyer was not free. I already had a bill of $2,000 or so. And the chance of winning in the Supreme Court seemed to us to be very slim. So I decided that I would serve my sentence.

Now, after I graduated from Antioch in, I think, May or June of 1966, waiting for this opinion from the appeals court, I decided to go back to New Hampshire where my family lived, my mother was living there, and go to graduate school at least until the case was decided. So I entered the University of New Hampshire, in graduate school in sociology. I actually spent only about three months there. My case was decided in December of 1966. I remember getting a call from my lawyer, "You've lost. Do you still, what do you want to do?" And I said, "Well, we can't go to the Supreme Court. I'm ready to go." And he said, "Well, I have some good news. The U.S. marshal in Cincinnati who's a friend of mine, says that you don't have to report for prison until after Christmas." He said, "You can report any time up to the end of the year." This is about the middle of December. So I had two or three weeks free. And I decided -- this is wintertime in New Hampshire -- that I would go to California. I had never been to California, and one of my sisters lived there in Santa Barbara, and I would visit them. And I got out there, and it was, I had a wonderful time. It was warm and sunny, and sort of preparing myself for this experience. And I had actually before I went to prison talked to a number of people who had been in prison, mostly as draft resisters -- what the experience was like, what to expect. And nothing can fully prepare you for being in prison, but at least I had some sense of it.

AI: What was that sense? What were you...?

PI: Well, what I was basically told was, "You have some choices to make. You could cooperate and do your time, and get along and things will probably be okay, or you can resist and get in trouble and wind up in solitary confinement. It won't get you out any sooner, probably later. And you can make either choice." I decided to cooperate.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.