Julius Hoffman
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Julius Hoffman (July 7, 1895–July 1, 1983) was a Chicago, Illinois native attorney and judge best known for his role in the Chicago Eight trial.
Hoffman attended Lewis Institute and Northwestern University before being admitted to the bar in 1915. He worked as an associate and partner of the firm White and Hawxhurst until 1936, when he became general counsel for the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, where he remained until 1944 when he joined the law firm of Markheim, Hoffman, Hungerford and Sollo. In 1947, he was elected judge of the Superior Court of Cook County. When his term expired, Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Hoffman to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago.
Over the course of his career as a judge, Hoffman presided over numerous important cases, including a tax evasion case against Tony Accardo, a deportation suit against alleged Nazi war criminal Frank Walus and desgregation suits. His most famous case, however, was the Chicago Eight (or "Chicago Seven") Trial from April 9, 1969 to February 20, 1970. Although the jury voted seven to five to acquit two of the defendants, Judge Hoffman sentenced all seven of them to five years in prison and a fine of $5,000 each. On May 11, 1972, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed all of the contempt convictions, and on November 21, 1972, reversed all of the jury convictions, because the court had not sufficiently measured the biases of the jury and because of Judge Hoffman's "deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense".
In 1982, the Executive Committee of the U.S. District Court ordered that Hoffman not be assigned any new cases because of his age and complaints that he was acting erratically and abusively from the bench. Nevertheless, Hoffman continued to preside over cases until his death from natural causes.