The Mayor of Castro Street (50 page)

Harry Britt was just over forty years old. He spent the Saturday between the press conference and his formal swearing-in wandering around the familiar haunts of Castro Street, watching the hot young guys guzzle beer and shoot pool. He viewed this scene with a certain nostalgia now. He knew it was his last weekend to be an anonymous Castro clone. He had come to the Castro because of the murder of his first hero, Martin Luther King, and now he was leaving it because of the killing of his second, Harvey Milk. That afternoon he went downtown to buy something he hadn't needed in years—a suit.

Harry's inaugural speech at the board was emblematic of his first months in office. “Decisions about gay people must be made by gay people,” he said. “Decisions that affect women must be made by women. The decisions that affect human beings must be made by women because they are free from the macho mentality.” Even Harry's close friends glanced at each other nervously when Britt fumbled over the last sentence. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

*   *   *

Modern lawyering requires careful use of the press,
Dan White's lawyer, Doug Schmidt, later told a barrister's convention. The press speculation surrounding Dan White's preliminary hearing—just one week after Harry Britt was sworn in—certainly represented a masterful stroke of media manipulation, perhaps, some observers later guessed, the move that won Schmidt the trial. The list of prospective witnesses Schmidt presented at the hearing read like a Who's Who of city government. A judge, congressmen, current and former supervisors, and even State Senator John Briggs were among the forty politicians Schmidt indicated he might call during his client's trial. The list mystified most of the people named on it. A number of former supervisors complained that they had never served on the board with White; some had never even met him. One miffed judge filed a motion to squash any subpoena of herself, pointing out she had met White only once and could offer no information about either the crime or criminal.

For his part, Schmidt would only say he was basing his defense on a “broad spectrum of social, political, and ethical issues,” arguing against the judge's motion by vaguely insisting he would present a unique defense, unlike anything seen in courtrooms before. The “broad spectrum” quote caught the reporters' fancy and after a number of well-timed leaks, the story of Dan White's possible defense emerged. White's case obviously would not question whether the former policeman had actually fired the bullets that killed George and Harvey. That point was obvious. White might instead plea that he had killed the pair in a heat of passion bred because, one newspaper report speculated, a “profound change had occurred in the political climate at City Hall and that this had offended White's sense of values.” The “broad spectrum of social, political, and ethical issues,” therefore, could include everything from excesses at Gay Freedom Day Parades to the seamier sides of some of the major city politicians' sex lives to such issues as the tremendous clout Peoples Temple wielded in city government. Confronted with this snake pit of San Francisco politics, the theory went, Dan White's traditional all-American values were so offended that in a moment of moral outrage, he killed the two politicians.

Lawyers debated whether such a broad argument with all its particulars would even be admissable in court. But many also noted that a major figure in any snake pit scenario would be the man prosecuting White, District Attorney Joe Freitas. A top lieutenant of the Reverend Jim Jones had literally lived in the D.A.'s offices when he was an assistant D.A. for Freitas, and the ambitious district attorney owed his election in no small part to aid from the temple. Some attorneys reportedly advised Freitas to hand the case over to a special prosecutor or to the state attorney general's office. He had known both Milk and Moscone and could rightly say that his office would be biased in its prosecution. But Freitas pressed ahead with his plans for prosecution, despite the snake pit speculation. He charged White with two counts of first-degree murder, invoking for the first time the clause in John Briggs's new capital punishment law that called for the gas chamber for any person who assassinated a public official in an attempt to prevent him from fulfilling his official duties.

*   *   *

“Look it's easier to grab fruits,”
the policeman explained to the bystander who asked why five police officers had yanked two men about to walk into a gay bar, dragged them to the street, and started pummeling them with their nightsticks. When another gay man protested the beatings, an officer tartly informed him, “Shut up, faggot, or I'll knock you out.” The two beaten men were arrested for “blocking an entrance.”

*   *   *

“Let's get the dykes,” shouted the ten men as they ran toward the doorway of Peg's Place, a lesbian bar, in another incident.

“Call the police,” shouted the bouncer to the bartender.

“We
are
the police,” one of the drunken men shouted. “We can go anywhere we damn well please.”

A melee broke out between the men and the women patrons who rushed to the bar employees' defense, beating the intruders with pool cues.

The police lieutenant who came soon afterward shook his head when told of the behavior of the men, two of whom were off-duty cops. He knew one of the attackers, the lieutenant said, and he was “a good guy.” He had a hard time believing the policeman would do such a thing. The lieutenant then checked the bar's various licenses and inquired if the bartender wasn't really drunk.

The Peg's Place brawl hit the front pages with gay complaints that the fracas was only part of a concerted increase in police intimidation of gays. Feinstein said nothing for two weeks and then released a statement calling for stern prosecution of the policemen involved. The response satisfied no one. The POA criticized her for taking the gays' side while gay leaders were miffed at the two weeks it took to get a response.

Homosexual rancor grew further when, at a meeting with gay leaders, Feinstein refused to promise to appoint a gay police commissioner. George Moscone had pledged such an appointment before his term was out and Feinstein's reneging on that promise seemed further proof that the climate for gays had turned considerably colder under Feinstein. A
Ladies Homes Journal
interview with the mayor set off more controversy when she worried about how gays' flouting of community standards might “set up a backlash” in the city. “The right of an individual to live as he or she chooses can become offensive,” Feinstein said. “The gay community is going to have to face this. It's fine for us to live here respecting each other's lifestyles, but it doesn't mean imposing them on others.” As far as gays were concerned, Dan White and his police friends were the parties guilty of imposing their lifestyles on others—and the mayor's continued fretting about gay sexuality tendered further proof of her own prudery, many gays thought. Around the Castro, posters soon appeared depicting Feinstein in sadomasochistic leather drag, cracking a cat-o'-nine-tails, under the caption, “The Ayatollah Feinstein.”

Supervisor Britt could do little to counter the growing disatisfaction. He never rallied from the initial burst of criticism over his strange inaugural remarks. He was intimidated by the charges of sexism lesbians leveled against him after the Kronenberg affair. He had none of Harvey's skill at dealing with reporters, insulting them and even hanging up on them if he didn't like the direction he thought the interview was taking. In public appearances, Britt was a frumpy dresser. His contact lenses made him blink uncontrollably when put under television lights. People frequently called him Harvey instead of Harry, a habit which infuriated Britt and delighted his critics who insisted that the novice politician suffered in comparison to the late Milk.

“The change began with the assassinations of Moscone and Milk. The pair were put out of the way to destroy what they stood for and to dismantle what they had achieved,” editorialized the
Bay Area Reporter,
echoing the fears that many gays were voicing at the increased gay problems. “The evidence is coming in day after day: Violence against gays is on the rise. Police harassment (both covert and overt) is on the rise.… At this writing, the Dan White plan seems to be succeeding, for once again, gays are targets and victims.”

Such an assessment left Police Chief Gain in a curious position. During his three years as chief, relations between police and gays had evolved into the most cordial between any police agency and gay community in the United States. The majority of his police officers were far more sophisticated in dealing with gays than police in other major cities. Police Officers Association president Bob Barry, for example, was outspoken in his opposition to the Briggs Initiative. In another time, the outbursts of police harrassment might not have been seen as a barometer of a changing social climate in the city. Coming just months after a former policeman killed the city's first gay official, however, they seemed part of a concerted effort by the police to pull San Francisco back. Gain, who was more sympathetic to gays than any other police chief in the nation, was powerless to change this growing perception that he reigned over the most anti-gay institution in the city.

*   *   *

“Have you ever supported controversial causes, like homosexual rights, for instance?”

Doug Schmidt asked this question of potential jurors since the judge had forbade him to ask directly if people were gay. Homosexual activists complained that few judges in America would allow black jurors to be systematically excluded from a jury weighing the murder of the nation's most prominent black public official. But the first days of the jury selection for the Dan White trial saw precisely the analogous drama unfold. One heterosexual woman was disqualified from the panel when she said she had gay friends and had once walked with them in a Gay Freedom Day Parade. One man was disqualified from sitting on the case when he answered the question about controversial causes by saying, “I sign anything that comes along Eighteenth and Castro.” When a juror appeared in a plaid shirt, blue jeans, and a thick, dark mustache, Schmidt asked with whom he lived. A roommate, he explained. “What does he or she do?” Schmidt asked. “
He
works at Holiday Inn,” the young man said, putting special emphasis on the sentence's subject. Schmidt asked the judge to pass the juror “for cause,” meaning it was prima facie that the man would not be a fair juror; the judge agreed. For the duration of the trial, gay papers pointedly referred to the panel on the case as the “all-heterosexual jury.”

Like almost every aspect of the Dan White trial, the jury selection process defied predictions. Legal observers had expected the selection to draw on for a week, maybe longer, so the court impaneled 250 prospective jurors instead of the usual one hundred. Prosecutor Tom Norman, the fifty-seven-year-old warhorse of over one hundred homicide prosecutions, asked the usual questions about whether jurors could vote for the death penalty. Doug Schmidt, however, took a much more unusual tact, asking about church attendance habits and choosing San Franciscans from white working-class and, most significantly, Catholic backgrounds. Such jurors are usually the very people most prone to support a law-and-order prosecution, but Doug Schmidt clearly had a novel strategy.

Reporters began to suspect that prosecution of Dan White would be less than aggressive when potential juror Richard Aparicio took the stand. Aparicio said he had worked briefly as a San Francisco policeman years back and had spent much of his life since then as a private security guard. He shopped at the same meat market where Dan White's uncle sold raffle tickets for his nephew's defense fund. When Schmidt asked Aparicio why he thought White killed Milk and Moscone, Aparicio said, “I have certain opinions.… I'd say it was social and political pressures.” Minutes after Aparicio made the statement—nearly a blueprint of the precise arguments Schmidt was expected to use in White's defense—Tom Norman told the judge he was happy with the jury and that he was ready to proceed with the trial.

The decision stunned both legal and journalistic observers, coming after only three days of jury selection and after Norman had used only six of his twenty-six preemptory challenges. The jury contained no blacks, no Asians, and no gays. Most of the jurors were white working-class ethnic Catholics, like Dan White. Four of the jury's seven women were old enough to be Dan White's mother. Half the jurors lived near Dan White's old supervisorial district; none, of course, lived in or near Milk's. Dan White would truly be judged by a jury of his peers.

As reporters rushed to file stories of the surprise denouement to what was expected to be a lengthy jury selection process, a woman in a brown leather jacket with a fur collar smiled from the back of the courtroom. On a chain around her neck dangled a swastika and a medallion with a Hebrew inscription which, she said, translated to “Hitler was right.” Sister Barbara explained that her friends in the local Nazi party had held a prayer meeting for Dan White right after a recent memorial service for “our beloved Führer.” Said Barbara, “I came to the trial because I care about Dan White. You see, we call him ‘Gentle Dan.' All over the city you see signs that say ‘Free Dan White.' He did what he had to do.”

*   *   *

“The city's gays pose what is probably the most serious challenge she has faced since becoming mayor,” wrote the
Examiner
's political columnist in a story released on the last weekend that the new Dan White jurors spent at home before being sequestered for the trial. Evidence of the growing gay discontent with Feinstein came from throughout the city. “Dump Dianne” buttons sold briskly at meetings of gay businessmen. The Harvey Milk Gay Democratic Club had unanimously voted to send a letter to Feinstein expressing the “club's disappointment” over her first months in office. Harry Britt talked openly of how a gay candidate for mayor might surface if problems with police continued.