* Thomas Foran; Prosecuted Chicago Seven

Thomas Foran, 76, prosecutor in the Chicago Seven conspiracy case of 1969 and 1970. Foran was the pugnacious United States attorney in what at the time was called the trial of the century: the prosecution of seven men accused of conspiring to incite the violence that racked Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when thousands of militant antiwar demonstrators battled police and National Guard troops in the city’s streets and parks. The defendants--David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Lee Weiner and John Froines--were jailed for contempt of court, along with their attorneys, during the four-month trial, which was disrupted many times by outbursts from the accused. All sentences and fines against the defendants were eventually dismissed. An eighth defendant, Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, was at one point gagged and bound to a chair and was tried separately. Foran was known for the pugnacity with which he battled the defense attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass. He once described the trial as “root canal all day long.” After the trial, he returned to private practice and in 1972 mounted an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for governor of Illinois. On Sunday of cancer at his home in Lake Forest, Ill.