R.D. Herman; ‘Harrisburg 7’ Trial Judge

R. Dixon Herman, who presided over the federal trial of Father Philip Berrigan and the “Harrisburg Seven” Vietnam protesters, has died of a heart attack. He was 78.

Herman, a U.S. District Court judge in Harrisburg, Pa., died Thursday in Harrisburg Hospital.

He first came to national attention in 1972 as the balding, bespectacled, no-nonsense judge in charge of the three-month trial of Berrigan and six other priests and nuns. The seven were charged with conspiring to blow up underground steam tunnels in Washington and kidnap Henry Kissinger in order to force an end to the Vietnam War. At the time, Kissinger was President Richard M. Nixon’s national security adviser.

“This is not a funny trial,” the tight-lipped, strict constructionist Herman declared repeatedly during the trial, banging his gavel.

Laughter threatened to overtake the courtroom several times, including during jury selection when a prospective juror said he thought it was a joke that a group of priests and nuns were accused of plotting to “run off with Henry Kissinger.”

The seven were acquitted by the jury of all charges except smuggling.

Herman, who was born about 50 miles north of Harrisburg and spent most of his life in the area, also made a key ruling in the Patty Hearst kidnaping case. In 1975, he ordered Jack and Micki Scott to testify before a grand jury investigating if they had harbored the heiress in a Pennsylvania farmhouse.

The most significant ruling in Herman’s career was in 1979 when he, a pilot himself, ruled that damage claims against Piper Aircraft Co. resulting from a plane crash in Scotland must be tried in that country.

Upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981, that decision determined that damage claims arising from overseas accidents cannot automatically be tried in the United States. The ruling played a part in the decision that suits against Union Carbide over the 1984 gas leak which killed 3,500 people in Bhopal should be heard in India.

Appointed to the federal bench by Nixon in 1969, Herman moved to semi-retired status as a senior judge on Sept. 25, 1981.

He earned his degrees from Bucknell University and Cornell Law School and served with the Navy in the South Pacific in World War II. He had served as assistant district attorney and common pleas judge in Harrisburg.

Active in civic and religious organizations, Herman was a Mason and a Sunday school teacher.