Police Brutality, Latino Suspects, and African American Judge George Leighton's 1965 "Broken Bottle" Ruling

In 1964, two Mexican American men were charged with assaulting two off-duty Chicago police
officers and faced ten years in prison. Their public defender smartly rejected their initial assigned Cook County Criminal Court judge and requested a bench trial with George N. Leighton, a longtime criminal defense attorney, civil rights activist, and newly elected judge. Most judges would automatically accept testimony from police officers, especially white ones, but the public defender knew that Leighton would not be sanguine about police accounts. While the white officers claimed that the two Latino men had attacked them with a broken bottle, Leighton knew that their story did not add up. In his final ruling, he sided with the defendants and ordered their release from Cook County Jail. The rare verdict against police officers outraged the state’s attorney and many “law and order” advocates. The “broken bottle ruling” became a notorious media sensation. This paper examines the details of the case and argues that the judge’s verdict presents a moment when men of color escaped the grip of “the carceral state.” That the defendants were Latino and the judge was African American played a critical role in the backlash against the ruling. Nevertheless, among Latino and black communities familiar with the pain of police brutality during these years, the verdict was a victory indeed.