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During the more than two months the defense took to present
its case, each of the defendants spoke at length, often with moving
eloquence. In an unusual arrangement three young lawyers aided the activists
who chose either to act as their own lawyers or to have “co-counsel,”
in which defendants could both speak for themselves and have an attorney
speak for them. Far from pleading innocent to the charges, they proudly
proclaimed their guilt. “I ripped up those files with my hands,”
declared the Rev. Peter D. Fordi, adding, “They were the instruments
of destruction.” After three and a half months, the case went to
the jury. Judge Fisher’s charge broke new legal ground. Despite
the fact that the defendants admitted plotting the action before the
informer appeared, Judge Fisher informed the jury they could acquit
if they felt government participation in setting up the crime had gone
to “intolerable” lengths that were “offensive to the
basic
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ECC Media, LLC |
In the early-morning hours of Sunday, August 22, 1971, FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General John Mitchell announced that FBI
agents had arrested 20 antiwar activists in and near a draft board office
in Camden, New Jersey. Five days later, Mitchell made public the indictment
of these individuals and included eight others who were linked to the
break-in. The major charges against the group were conspiracy to remove
and destroy files from the draft board, FBI office, and the Army Intelligence
office; destruction of government property and interfering with the
Selective Service system. If convicted, some of the indicted faced up
to 47 years in federal prison. The men and women arrested that summer
of ’71 in Camden called themselves “America’s conscience.”
The government called them the Camden 28.
Surprisingly,
included among the Camden 28 were four Catholic priests and one Lutheran
minister. All but one of the remaining 23 were Catholic laypeople. All
were part of a nonviolent antiwar movement the government and the media
referred to as the “Catholic Left.” One of the most dramatic
tactics utilized by this movement was breaking into Selective Service
offices across the country to remove and destroy government draft records
that identified young men available for military service. The activists
claimed that their civil disobedience was meant to call attention to
their belief that killing – even in war – was morally indefensible.
They targeted the draft for the simple fact that it was the clearest
symbol of that immorality because it compelled citizens to kill. Between
1967 and 1971, members of the “Catholic Left” claimed responsibility
for over 30 draft board raids and the destruction of close to a million
Selective Service documents. By 1971, the “Catholic Left”
had become one of the most inventive forces of the antiwar movement.
The surprise
arrest and unorthodox trial of the Camden 28 is a story of friendship
and betrayal played out against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent
periods in recent American history. 
The
Camden activists asked the jury to “nullify the laws” against
breaking and entering and to acquit them as a means of saying that the
country had had enough of the “illegal and immoral” war in
Vietnam. They also asked the jury to acquit on the grounds that the
raid would not have taken place without the help of a self-admitted
FBI informer and provocateur. The defendants emphasized that they had
given up their plan, for lack of a practical means, until the informer-provocateur
had resurrected it and provided them with the encouragement and tools
to carry it out.
standards of decency
and shocking to the universal sense of justice.” However, he added
that although it was in their power, it would not be proper to decide
the verdict on the issue of the war, and that "protest is not an
acceptable legal defense, as sincerely motivated as I think they were."
After three days of deliberations, a jury of seven women and five men
returned a verdict of not guilty on all charges against the antiwar
activists. According to The New York Times, at that moment, “the
defendants . . . and 200 supporters . . . burst into cheers, wept, hugged
one another and sang a chorus of Amazing Grace.” The acquittals
represented the first complete legal victory for the antiwar movement
in five years of such draft board actions.