On August 21, 1971, five persons broke into the U.S. Post Office Building located at 121 Ellicott Street in Buffalo, New York, and attempted to steal U.S. Army military intelligence records and to destroy Selective Service System draft records. They were apprehended in the building and subsequently prosecuted for the offenses of burglary, theft of government property, and conspiracy to steal army records and destroy draft records. The case was identified as The Buffalo Five case. It was prosecuted in the United States Courthouse in Buffalo.
On April 27, 1972, the five defendants were convicted, after a jury trial, for the three charged offenses. The presiding judge was the late Hon. John T. Curtin. The court-appointed legal advisor to the five pro se defendants was the late Hon. Vincent E. Doyle, Jr. As the prosecutor in this trial, I acknowledged that the motives of the defendants in committing the charged offenses were honorable, in that our involvement in the Vietnam war was wrong and lives were unnecessarily lost in that war.
However, I also noted that the violent protest of that war made by these defendants was not justified or lawful. While peaceful protest is permitted, violent action in furtherance of a protest is never authorized under our democratic form of government.
