Julian Heicklen, Cantankerous Civil Liberties Advocate, Dies at 90

Julian P. Heicklen, a charismatic, cantankerous chemistry professor who devoted his retirement years to a sequence of public protests in protection of civil liberties, culminating in his 2011 indictment for jury tampering, died on March 11 at his residence in Teaneck, N.J. He was 90.

His daughter Judith Heicklen confirmed the dying however didn’t specify the trigger.

Dr. Heicklen took on many points, beginning with civil rights within the Sixties, when he fought in opposition to housing discrimination in Los Angeles. However his highest-profile marketing campaign was his final.

Beginning in 2009, he usually appeared in entrance of the federal courthouse on Pearl Avenue, in Decrease Manhattan, demonstrating in favor of jury nullification, a controversial observe during which members of a jury who discover a legislation unjust vote not responsible, whatever the info of a case, thereby nullifying the legislation.

Rain or shine, he arrived each Monday — the day when juries are sometimes chosen — holding an indication studying “Jury Data” and handing out yellow pamphlets that defined the that means and historical past of jury nullification.

Although he sometimes stood alone, he was considered one of many across the nation engaged in comparable protests, motivated by considerations about what they noticed as unjust legal guidelines and prosecutorial overreach and satisfied that jurors keen to take the legislation into their very own fingers had been the final barrier to tyranny.

Dr. Heicklen’s protests on the Pearl Avenue courthouse had been drawing the eye of legislation enforcement by his second week. When officers moved to arrest him, which they did a number of instances, he would fall to the bottom, limp, forcing them to hold him away to St. Vincent’s Hospital the place he can be given a psychiatric analysis and let go. He signed his launch kinds Ayn Rand, after the thinker and novelist, or John Galt, a personality from her e book “Atlas Shrugged.”

Lastly, prosecutors had had sufficient, and organized a sting operation. An F.B.I. agent, posing as a jury member, approached Dr. Heicklen in 2010 and requested about jury nullification. He bought an earful, and some days later, Dr. Heicklen was charged with jury tampering.

Prosecutors stated that by focusing on jurors, he was outdoors his constitutional rights, and that he posed a threat to the operations contained in the courthouse.

“No authorized system might lengthy survive,” they stated, “if it gave each particular person the choice of disregarding with impunity any legislation which by his private normal was judged morally untenable.”

The case drew in depth protection, giving Dr. Heicklen the type of platform he had solely dreamed of, and he performed it for all he might. At his bail listening to, he hung his head and refused to talk, main the choose to ask if he was sleeping.

“I’m exercising my Fifth Modification proper to stay silent,” he lastly piped up. At his arraignment listening to, he laid into the choose and prosecutors for what he known as their “tissue of lies.”

The case was short-lived: Choose Kimba M. Wooden threw it out in April 2012, ruling that so long as Dr. Heicklen was not focusing on particular person jurors, he was merely exercising his First Modification rights.

“I believe it’s a significant choice for the nation,” Dr. Heicklen informed The New York Instances. He added: “That is higher than having them throw me in jail.”

A decade later, jury nullification stays a fringe concept, however civil liberties advocates say that Dr. Heicklen’s story is nonetheless vital.

“The case cleared the way in which for folks throughout the nation to have the ability to have interaction in jury nullification advocacy with out the specter of federal prosecution,” Chris Dunn, the authorized director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, stated in an interview. “He stood on the market daily combating what he considered as unjust prosecutions and unjust legal legal guidelines. And that’s admirable, traditional political protest.”

Julian Phillip Heicklen was born on March 9, 1932, in Rochester, N.Y. His father, Arnold, was a lawyer and stockbroker, and his mom, Eva (Muchnick) Heicklen, taught Hebrew.

He obtained a bachelor’s diploma in chemical engineering from Cornell in 1954 and a doctorate in chemistry from the College of Rochester in 1958. After a sequence of post-doctorate applications, he moved to Los Angeles, the place he labored for a protection contractor.

He additionally grew to become lively within the native chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights group.

Dr. Heicklen moved to Pennsylvania State College in 1967, the place he grew to become well-liked for his unorthodox instruction. To drum up curiosity in his programs, his daughter stated, he would hand out campaign-style buttons and seem at school in a cape; he introduced in Penn State gymnasts to show chemical reactions and cheerleaders so as to add somewhat spirit to the proceedings.

He remained lively in civil liberties and civil rights, but it surely was solely after he retired in 1992 that he grew to become what one may ungenerously name a gadfly.

Together with common, unsuccessful runs for public workplace on the Libertarian Occasion ticket, he made weekly appearances on the foremost gates at Penn State, the place he would mild a marijuana cigarette to protest drug legal guidelines. He was arrested a number of instances.

He was detached, if not overtly hostile, to the authorized system. At one arraignment listening to, in 1998, he merely left the courthouse after a choose was 20 minutes late. He was rearrested at his residence — coincidentally, at 4:20 p.m. — and introduced earlier than a special choose.

“You arrested the fallacious man,” he stated, in accordance with The Every day Collegian, a scholar newspaper at Penn State. “I appeared, however the choose didn’t.”

Alongside together with his daughter Judith, he’s survived by his spouse, Susan (Hook) Heicklen; two different daughters, Alice Heicklen and Deborah Heicklen; his sister, Lillian Gordon, and eight grandchildren.

Dr. Heicklen and his spouse moved to Teaneck, a suburb of New York Metropolis, in 2006 to reside together with his daughter Judy, after which he introduced his protest energies to Manhattan.

His jury-tampering episode was his final main run-in with the legislation. Just a few months after the case was thrown out, he fulfilled a lifelong dream of shifting to Israel and turning into an Israeli citizen. He returned to Teaneck in 2016.