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Illinois Justice
The Scandal of 1969 and the Rise of John Paul Stevens
By Kenneth A. Manaster The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2001 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-35010-3
CHAPTER 1
A Citizen's Suspicions
The first accusations of wrongdoing were made by the vocal and eccentric leader of a group called the Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts. It was the creation and alter ego of Sherman H. Skolnick, a "self-taught Chicago legal researcher" already well known in Illinois courtrooms. Estimates of the size of his group varied from thirty to much larger numbers. On one occasion in 1969, Skolnick testified under oath that the committee had about nine hundred members "scattered over a geographical area of the Midwest."
In previous years Skolnick had brought many lawsuits in his own name, or in the name of his committee, against a variety of government officials and agencies, although he seldom met with success. Prior to 1969, Skolnick's greatest litigation victory had come in a class action suit he filed claiming that the constitutional "one man–one vote" requirement was violated by the ward boundaries drawn by the Chicago City Council.
Skolnick was thirty-eight years old in mid-1969. He had been paralyzed since suffering polio at age six and was always in a wheelchair when seen in public. He worked out of his family's house in a neighborhood on the southeast side of the city. A later newspaper profile reminisced somewhat affectionately about Skolnick's appearance in 1969: "He wore thick glasses, had buck teeth, dressed forgettably and showed absolutely no respect for authority."
In 1958 Skolnick and his parents sued a brokerage firm they accused of mishandling a stock fund his parents had established with $14,000 in life savings to help meet their son's future needs. That suit was unsuccessful, and Skolnick was bitter about the loss. He initiated a series of lawsuits against various attorneys who allegedly had some role in the stock litigation or its aftermath. In a 1964 ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court, a lower court's dismissal of one of those suits was upheld. Among the members of the court who participated in that decision were Ray Klingbiel and Roy Solfisburg. Skolnick never forgot the court's ruling against him. He also never forgot, and did not forgive, Solfisburg and Klingbiel in particular.
Skolnick became obsessed with rooting out the corruption he perceived to be rampant in Illinois government, especially in the judiciary. As Skolnick later observed, "We sued to get our money back. We went all the way to the state Supreme Court — Solfisburg and Klingbiel were on it then — and lost. I vowed to my parents that I would devote my life to helping others in the courts."
As early as 1966 Skolnick began hearing rumors of conflicts of interest involving the Illinois Supreme Court. In February 1969, according to a subsequent account by Skolnick, an anonymous source suggested to him that he should investigate the stockholders of the Civic Center Bank & Trust Company (CCB) in Chicago. The bank was only a couple of years old and was located on the northeast corner of La Salle and Randolph Streets in immediate proximity to the principal state and local government offices in Chicago's downtown political, legal, and financial district. Skolnick and his associates began to search public records relating to the bank for any hint of judicial misconduct. They discovered, in a list of CCB stockholders in the Cook County Recorder's Office, that two grandchildren of Associate Justice Ray I. Klingbiel of the Illinois Supreme Court owned a hundred shares of CCB stock.
Klingbiel was a Republican who had joined the court in July 1953. He received his law degree from the University of Illinois in 1924, and then practiced in East Moline, with twelve years as city attorney before serving six years as mayor. During those years he was considered something of "a kingpin in the Rock Island County and Downstate political power structure." He then spent eight years as a circuit judge before being elected to the supreme court. He served as chief justice for one year beginning in 1956 and then again from the fall of 1964 to January 1967. In 1969 he was sixty-eight years old.
The Newspapers Start Digging
In the spring of 1969, Skolnick communicated his interest in Klingbiel to two very different newspapers — the New York Times and the Daily Calumet. On a Sunday in early May, a reporter from the Times came to Skolnick's house to discuss an unrelated matter. Skolnick told the reporter his suspicions about Klingbiel and the Civic Center Bank stock, and on the spot the reporter telephoned Klingbiel at home in Moline. Klingbiel told the reporter that he had purchased the CCB stock. After that conversation, the New York Times did not pursue Skolnick's concern about Klingbiel any further.
Skolnick found more sustained interest at the Daily Calumet, a small community newspaper serving an area that included Skolnick's neighborhood. The Daily Calumet was controlled by two young men, James A. Linen IV and Jameson Campaigne, with Linen the principal owner. Skolnick brought his information to Robert Seltzner, the paper's managing editor and an experienced newsman to whom Skolnick often talked. Over the course of a few months, prompted by Skolnick's nagging, Seltzner and a novice reporter prepared a series of articles setting forth Skolnick's research and suspicions. These articles relied heavily on what Skolnick told them and on a variety of documents he showed them. Seltzner also made some telephone calls, including one to Klingbiel later in May, while the court was in session in Springfield. The Daily Calumet became the first newspaper ready to publicize Skolnick's interest in Klingbiel and the Civic Center Bank stock.
The Daily Calumet, however, did not break the story. Linen and Campaigne earlier had retained as corporate counsel the large Chicago firm of Kirkland, Ellis, Hodson, Chaffetz & Masters. Don H. Reuben, a Kirkland partner then forty years old, was the leading libel expert in the state. He represented both the Chicago Tribune and its sister paper, Chicago Today. He also represented the Tribune's radio and television stations, numerous other broadcasting clients, and other major publishers, including Time, Inc. Many people at that time viewed Reuben as the single most influential attorney in Illinois, though consumer activist Ralph Nader described Reuben more critically: "No lawyer in any other city is as powerful or feared as Don Reuben is in Chicago." Reuben was friendly with all the members of the Illinois Supreme Court, having argued before them many times.
In late May, Linen submitted Seltzner's articles to Reuben's firm. After reviewing what the Daily Calumet was planning to publish, Reuben emphatically advised Linen not to do so. Reuben's view was that the paper would create "very big exposure" to liability for defamation if it printed Skolnick's suspicions about Klingbiel. Reuben pointed out that charges coming from Skolnick at this stage lacked the legal protection that attaches to statements made in connection with judicial proceedings.
Furthermore, even under the relatively recent New York Times v. Sullivan constitutional requirement — that a public official must prove actual malice in order to win a libel case — Reuben believed the newspaper would be in great jeopardy. He told Linen to imagine Skolnick, the source for this story, on the witness stand for two hours, and then to try to imagine a successful defense argument that the newspaper had not acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Reuben bolstered his legal opinion with dire warnings about the probable loss of the Daily Calumet's liability insurance, and of the Kirkland firm's representation, if the articles were published. Linen's partner, Jameson Campaigne, found Reuben's advice "brutal and threatening" and tried hard to persuade Linen to disregard it, but Linen refused and the Daily Calumet did not publish the accusation against Klingbiel — at least not first.
Although it may seem odd that newspapers as dissimilar as the New York Times and the Daily Calumet were the first to consider Skolnick's suspicions, there is an explanation. During the previous years of his litigious crusade against Illinois courts, Skolnick's credibility with the major Chicago newspapers had declined considerably. There was thus a better chance he would be listened to by a reporter from out-of-town, where he was not well known. Paradoxically, he probably also felt comfortable approaching the small South Side newspaper where he was well known, well enough for the editor to realize that sometimes he might actually be on to something. As Seltzner of the Daily Calumet later recalled, "Nobody else would talk to him."
Skolnick Lights the Fire
Undaunted by the initial lack of publication, Skolnick did not give up. He was in Springfield on Wednesday, June 4, to testify before a state legislative committee investigating organized crime. During his testimony, he included his customary broad array of allegations about corruption in government. He also distributed a diverse batch of written materials, including a "fact sheet" that listed some of the stockholders of the Civic Center Bank. One stockholder entry on the fact sheet mentioned Klingbiel:
Illinois Supreme Court Justice Ray I. Klingbiel (while he was stockholder he exonerated Theodore J. Isaacs, Secretary and General Counsel of Civic Center Bank, who was being prosecuted for state contract fraud — see, People vs. Isaacs, Illinois Supreme Court decision written by Justice Klingbiel).
With this parenthetical notation on the list of stockholders, Skolnick lit a match to the dry kindling of Klingbiel's stock ownership: he suggested that Klingbiel owned the stock at the same time that the Illinois Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by Klingbiel, upheld the dismissal of criminal charges against Theodore J. Isaacs.
Isaacs and Kerner
In 1964 Isaacs, an influential Chicago lawyer and a key political ally of Otto Kerner, was indicted in Springfield for conflict-of-interest violations allegedly committed while he served as Director of the Illinois Department of Revenue as an appointee of Governor Kerner. Beginning in 1965, Isaacs became actively involved in the organization of the Civic Center Bank.
Isaacs was Kerner's "right-hand man." One Chicago newspaper summarized the many links between Isaacs and Kerner:
A native Chicagoan, Isaacs opened his law practice in 1934. When World War II erupted, he joined the army and spent five years in the European and Pacific theaters. Afterward, he joined the 33d Illinois National Guard. Kerner was a major general attached to that unit; Isaacs held the rank of lieutenant colonel. Isaacs managed Kerner's successful 1954 campaign for county judge. In return, Kerner named Isaacs attorney for the Chicago Election Commission — an agency under his jurisdiction.
Two more political campaigns followed: Kerner's reelection as county judge in 1958 and his election to governor in 1960. Isaacs was in there pitching all the way. On December 29, 1960, Kerner announced he was naming campaign manager Isaacs to head the revenue department. News articles noted that Isaacs had "a closer association with Kerner than any other appointee" though he was an unknown quantity as a public administrator.
While Kerner was governor, Isaacs was "the dominant behind-the-scenes personality in the administration," and the relationship between the two men was "deep and trusting." Isaacs later was described as "a man who lives in shadows," and certainly for much of his life he operated in the large shadow of Otto Kerner, then one of the most distinguished public figures in Illinois.
A graduate of Brown University, Kerner obtained his law degree from Northwestern University in 1934. His father, Otto Kerner Sr., was a political ally of Democratic Mayor Anton J. Cermak, whose support led to the elder Kerner's appointment to the federal court of appeals in Chicago. Cermak's daughter became the wife of Otto Kerner Jr.
Following Kerner's World War II duty, he served from 1947 to 1954 as U.S. Attorney in Chicago and then for six years as a Cook County judge. In 1960 he was slated for the governorship by the Democratic Party. He later was described as "a central-casting candidate," "the state's first ready-made television candidate," with "bright eyes, well-chiseled features and resonant voice suited perfectly" for that medium.
With Isaacs as his campaign manager, Kerner defeated the incumbent by over half a million votes. In 1964 Governor Kerner was reelected, defeating Charles H. Percy. Once again Kerner called on Ted Isaacs to manage his campaign.
On July 27, 1967, Kerner was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson as the chairman of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. At that time Kerner was not a nationally renowned figure. In March 1968 the commission produced its landmark report, warning of continued racial polarization in American society. By this time, both the "Kerner Commission" and its chairman had become much better known and widely respected.
A few weeks before the report was released, Kerner announced that he would not run for a third term as governor. Speculation arose that President Johnson would name Kerner to another important position, perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court. In May Kerner resigned as governor to become a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, the same federal court on which his father had sat. Kerner joined the court of appeals on May 20, 1968. As of that date, there was every reason to believe that his already distinguished career of public service — as soldier, state judge, governor, and namesake of the Kerner Report — would now be extended as a federal judge at the court of appeals level, or even higher.
CHAPTER 2
Alarm Bells in the Newsrooms
Among the members of the press receiving Skolnick's fact sheet on June 4 — suggesting the damning link between Klingbiel's stock and Isaacs's criminal case — were two who became very interested. Ed Pound was a twenty-five-year-old investigative reporter from the Evening Telegraph in Alton, a town of about thirty-nine thousand people located across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. The other reporter, Charles Nicodemus, at thirty-seven, was the political editor and an investigative reporter for the Chicago Daily News, one of the four major daily newspapers in the city then. Nicodemus already knew Skolnick and had a cautiously favorable impression of him.
Nicodemus had not attended the hearing where Skolnick testified that day. Later in the afternoon, however, Skolnick went to the Press Room in the Capitol and told Nicodemus he had a story the reporter ought to be interested in, especially since the New York Times had failed to follow through on it. Skolnick summarized the prosecution of Isaacs and Klingbiel's authorship of the supreme court decision dismissing the case. Skolnick showed Nicodemus the fact sheet and claimed he had examined the CCB stock lists on his own initiative, knowing that Isaacs was a key organizer of the Civic Center Bank and that Kerner also was a stockholder. Nicodemus agreed to follow up on Skolnick's information.
Ed Pound of the Alton paper had listened to Skolnick's testimony, and Pound's "interest was drawn by the brashness and scatter-gun charges made by the self-styled reformer who told the state senators, without batting an eye, that some Chicago judges were crooked." Pound felt that Skolnick was the type of person a reporter never should write off: "an aggravating gadfly who, in his persistent digging, sometimes hits paydirt." While Skolnick and Nicodemus were talking, Pound was leisurely reading Skolnick's written materials, including the fact sheet. When Pound saw the notation about Klingbiel, "newsroom alarm bells were sounding inside him" and he went into action:
Pound popped out of his chair and went in search of Skolnick. He found him talking to a newsman. Pound pried the Chicagoan free and asked him to enlarge on the Klingbiel bank stock affair. Skolnick told the Telegraph reporter that records in the Cook County Recorder of Deeds in Chicago would show that on September 5, 1968, some 100 shares of Civic Center Bank stock were transferred to two of Justice Klingbiel's grandchildren in care of the justice.
"But," Pound told Skolnick, "this does not prove, as you state in your fact sheet, that Klingbiel was a stockholder when he wrote the Isaacs opinion in 1967." "We believe," Skolnick told Pound, "that Klingbiel got the stock at the time of the Isaacs decision. We think by checking, it can be proved."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Illinois Justice by Kenneth A. Manaster. Copyright © 2001 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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