LOS ANGELES — The aging draft resister came early to beat the Memorial Day observance at Los Angeles National Cemetery. He angled through rows of white headstones, treading on immaculately tended grass. He stopped at the grave of the judge who had sentenced him.
He had a message for U.S. District Judge Harry Pregerson that has been in his thoughts since that day in 1970.
As an 22-year-old in 1967, Bob Zaugh had found a purpose in his life more important than school, career or even freedom. It was a recognition of the commonality of all humans that meant he could not support the Vietnam War or the system that sent young men to fight in it.
So on Dec. 4, 1967, the second national draft card turn-in day, he joined other resisters at First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles on West 8th Street in symbolically dropping their cards in a goblet.
At the height of the nation’s struggle of conscience over the Vietnam War, that decision had multiple possible consequences for a young man: ostracism by friends and family, loss of employment opportunities, and lifetime stigma as being unpatriotic or worse — a coward. Not to mention prison time.
When Case 5787, United States of America vs. Robert Paul Zaugh, went on trial on Tuesday, May 26, 1970, Zaugh came prepared to admit to the two charges — refusing to report for a preinduction physical and refusing to report for induction. The maximum sentence was five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Pregerson, though remembered as a liberal judge, was also a Marine who was wounded in the Battle of Okinawa in World War II. He didn’t have a track record of leniency, and had already sent three of Zaugh’s roommates — Richard Profumo, Mike Swartz and Jack Whitten — to prison.
After Assistant U.S. Attorney Arnold Regardie introduced Zaugh’s Selective Service file as evidence, the judge turned to Zaugh, who had waived a jury trial and was representing himself.
“You may proceed, Mr. Zaugh.”
“I will start by saying that on May 29th I did refuse to cooperate at a physical, and that on August 27th I did refuse to submit to induction,” he began.
Zaugh, at Pregerson’s grave in November, began his ritual visits after the judge, by then a senior member of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, died in 2017. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
His defense, he said, would be “that there is really no alternative way for me to act when I am confronted by the U.S. Military Code.”
Zaugh would later obtain a transcript of the hearing from the National Archives.
In his opening statement, he quoted at length from a Selective Service System pamphlet called “Manpower Channeling,” and argued that the very concept of the draft infringed on his and other young men’s inalienable rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence and, in his view, reserved to the citizens by the 9th Amendment.
The prosecutor …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
