In 1972, Jeffrey Blair appeared as a defendant in Judge Pence’s courtroom, charged for destroying his Selective Service draft card. This is the first time I’ve heard from a party to litigation in his courtroom, let along a criminal defendant. Though convicted (a conviction overturned on appeal), his comments reflect a positive assessment of the judge:
I first met Federal Judge Pence on June 12, 1972 when U.S. Marshals brought me to court from Halawa Jail for my arraignment (U.S. v. Richard Jeffrey Blair, Criminal No. 72-13,032). Judge Pence was kind enough to wave my $2,000 bail and allow Jim Blanchfield to help me represent myself. Jim was one of Brook Hart’s partners. (Brook was Pence’s first law clark.) We all continued to meet intermittantly in Courtroom 2 through July 2, 1973 when I was sentenced for the destruction of my two draft cards (registration and notice of classification). This may sound strange, but I actually enjoyed my time in his courtroom.
Pence was tough. An Advertiser article (Punishment Necessary, Judge Says) two months before my sentencing carried his photo with the caption: “punishment is the key”. He always listened, however, to both sides of the argument before deciding … even when Blanchfield motioned the court to appoint (and pay) me as an investigator in another selective sevice case. (Judge King had summarily dismissed the same motion when it was pointed out that I, myself, had been convicted of a selective service violation).
Pence always made sure that defendants received due process under the law, something that we can no longer take for granted in this “Golden Age” of President Trump. After returning from vacation, he reversed visiting Judge Solomon’s order to send Lester Uyeda immediately to prison for two years, releasing Lester on his own recognizance pending appeal, an appeal which Lester won.
These stories and my experience in Pence’s court have been published and posted online ( www.agu.ac.jp/~vicks62/jeffreyb/resist2.html ) in a journal article (Aichi Gakuin University) entitled Recollections of a Grunt in America’s Draft Resistance Movement (Part 2: The legal defense). For those who may be interested, the full transcripts of the hearings and my trial are also available in the Special Collections section of Hamilton Library (University of Hawaii-Manoa).