ABSTRACT
As the decade of the 1960s wore on, contentions over civil rights, criminal justice, free speech, church and state, privacy, and other issues tackled by the Warren Court were increasingly overshadowed by the US involvement in Vietnam. The defendants were frightened, angry, and exhausted as the ordeal of the trial approached its end and the terror and mystery of their inevitable imprisonment rose up before them. Though Abbie Hoffman had said that the bright ceiling lights made the courtroom a "neon oven," the atmosphere in these final days was gloomy. Abbie Hoffman was then found guilty of twenty-four counts of contempt, but he was sentenced to only eight months and six days. For saying that he could not respect the law when "it is a tyranny," and for adding that he no longer used his last name, he was sentenced to four months.
