“De mortuis nil nisi bonum” (translation: “Speak no ill of the dead“).

During the contested Republican mayoral primary of 1931, the incumbent
mayor, the Honorable William Hale Thompson, Jr., was opposed by two candidates.
Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the powerful publisher of The Chicago Tribune was
a determined opponent of Thompson’s re-nomination bid. In a startling
display of bravado, a Thompson operative happened to liberate a draft copy of the
mayor’s obituary from the Tribune files. The mayor reproduced the text of the
obituary and made McCormick into a laughingstock in the process.

Thompson had undergone an emergency appendectomy during the previous autumn
and the paper had prepared an obituary. It is not an uncommon journalistic
practice to prepare obituaries in advance of a noteworthy person’s death. The
summaries are largely biographical and can be easily revised by rewrite men.
The key thing is that the newspaper can publish its breaking news rapidly.

When McCormick savaged Thompson in print during the primary, the mayor
distributed copies of his prospective obituary to all comers. In the copy,
Thompson was lauded by the Tribune for his many accomplishments with special
emphasis being paid to his public works programs which had beautified the city.
Thompson had the good fortune to be in office when most of the improvements
recommended in the Burnham plan were implemented (the Chicago River is still
spanned by numerous bridges erected during Thompson’s mayoralty, most notably the
landmark Michigan Avenue Bridge). It certainly did not hurt that the public
works contracts permitted the mayor to employ large numbers of laborers and
contractors all of whom expressed their gratitude at the polls on election
days. Big Bill coasted to re-nomination and Colonel Bertie was left red faced by
the audacious theft. The Stetson wearing, cowboy mayor could not relish his
prank for long. A few weeks later, Anton Cermak succeeded in denying
Thompson an unprecedented fourth four year mayoral term. Afterwards, McCormick’s
petty revenge consisted in the refusal of his reporters and editors to include
Thompson’s name in print whenever it was possible to exclude it by means of a
euphemism.

The recent passing of former Appellate and Circuit Court Judge R. Eugene
Pincham reminded me of Thompson. His obituaries tried to accentuate the positive
in describing one of the most colorful, controversial and outrageous
characters to inhabit the local political scene. Like Bill Thompson, Pincham was fond
of wearing cowboy hats and he prospered by delivering diatribes and engaging
in race baiting.

Purple and black bunting will be displayed at the courthouse next week to
indicate a period of public mourning. Of course, all of the latest testimonials
and tributes have depicted Pincham as statesman and civil rights hero. Come
off it. The truth is stranger than fiction and it is much more fun for my
money. Let us be frank.

During the 1987 mayoral campaign, while serving as an Appellate Court
Justice, Pincham made the provocative statement that any man South of Madison
Street who did not vote for Harold Washington’s re-election ought to be hung.
Forever afterwards, he was known as “Lynch’em Pincham.” The firebrand Reverend
Jeremiah Wright could not have matched Pincham’s eloquence on that infamous
occasion. Appropriately enough, Pincham attended Wright’s Afrocentric Trinity
United Church of Christ.

A scandal followed and the matter was litigated in the civil courts and
Pincham was referred to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board for misconduct. The
disciplinary case was mooted when Pincham conveniently resigned his position in
1989 before the imposition of any penalty. Significantly, his timely
resignation saved his judicial pension. The Judicial Inquiry Board entered no
sanction in the case and finally dismissed the case in 1992 after four years of
official procrastination without making any findings. As a consequence, Pincham
did not forfeit his retirement benefits.

After retiring from the judiciary, Pincham resumed the practice of law. He
made three quixotic runs for public office. After losing Democratic nomination
for President of the Cook County Board to Richard J. Phelan, Pincham withdrew
from the general election ballot declining a certain opportunity to serve as
a county commissioner. He chose instead to throw in his lot with the newly
formed, Harold Washington Party, and ran as a third party candidate for mayor
in 1991. He carried nineteen predominantly African American wards, but was
defeated by the incumbent mayor, Richard M. Daley, in the general election. His
last campaign occurred in 1996 when he made an unsuccessful run for State’s
Attorney. He condemned a challenge to the legal sufficiency of his nominating
petitions as being racially motivated.

Pincham was a constant critic of the Chicago Police Department. He
frequently accused the police of engaging in institutionalized racism. One of his last
publicized cases involved representing two young suspects accused of
murdering another child, Ryan Harris. Charges against both boys, aged seven and
eight, were dropped. As a criminal courts judge, Pincham was often criticized
for being too quick to dismiss serious allegations of rape victims against
defendants. Similar complaints were made after he was appointed to the Appellate
Court where he voted to reverse many trial convictions. Pincham prided himself
on his dissenting opinions in which he found fault with the prosecutors and
police officers.

In private practice, Pincham also filed lawsuits challenging election
statutes and redistricting plans which he claimed produced racist results. A class
action lawsuit filed by Pincham on behalf of the Harold Washington Party
against various political officials and election authorities was dismissed by
the US District Court based upon Pincham’s failure to comply with filing
deadlines set forth in civil procedure code. Pincham claimed a “conspiracy”
existed to disenfranchise minority voters and deprive them of their rights. In the
1990s, Pincham acted as a lawyer in lengthy and expensive challenge to the
remapping of Chicago’s fifty wards following the census. This action resulted in
minor redistricting of several precincts in a single ward, the 18th. The
incumbent alderman, Thomas W. Murphy, a white elected official representing a
majority African American ward, was reelected in a special election following
the conclusion of the lawsuit. Murphy, who provided excellent constituent
services, was able to secure sufficient support from African American voters to
be elected to four aldermanic terms. Eventually, he resigned his position
after being elected as a Circuit Court Judge. Pincham claimed that his clients
who filed the lawsuit challenging the map were “impecunious” and he was
awarded a huge amount of attorney’s fees from the taxpayers for pursuing this
frivolous litigation for almost a full decade. In terms of altering the ward map, it
was the equivalent of visiting the Mayo Clinic for a mosquito bite. Pincham
could laugh all of the way to the bank.
Chicago has 2,579 election precincts. The costly remap litigation altered
the boundaries of less than one percent of the total city precincts.

Pincham was born in Chicago, but raised in Alabama where his mother returned
following her divorce. He attended Northwestern University Law School and
graduated in the same class as Harold Washington. In politics, Pincham was
devoted to his friend and classmate, Washington, but in a rare moment of candor,
he admitted to Mike Royko that Washington was not noted for a strong work
ethic as a government lawyer. Washington’s father was a top precinct captain in
the Third Ward Democratic Organization and his two sons followed in his
footsteps. As a reward, Harold Washington obtained two sinecure positions, first
with the city and then with the state. He routinely visited the office only
to collect his paychecks. After a time, he stopped coming to the office and
asked for his checks to be mailed. He could not be bothered to come downtown.
His explanation was that he was working for the Illinois Industrial Commission
on a mythical case in Waukegan. In effect, Washington was a ghost pay roller
for a time. Later, Washington was suspended from practicing law for
neglecting client matters and he was briefly jailed for failing to file tax returns.
Pincham remained loyal to his friend through thick and thin.

Pincham’s own son, Robert Eugene Pincham, Jr., followed his father’s lead
by studying law at Northwestern, but he did not escape controversy either. In
1996, he was disbarred by the Illinois Supreme Court for repeatedly neglecting
client cases (he was absent from thirty-one of fifty-four court dates in one
matter alone) and refusing to refund unearned client fees in numerous
instances. When threatened by a judge with the issuance of an arrest warrant as a
sanction for his unexplained absenteeism, he boasted that he “liked the
publicity.” At the time of his father’s death, the son listed his occupation as
that of a teacher. Good grief.

Pincham seemed to be a larger than life character. He would be more properly
remembered with such rascals and scoundrels as “Bathhouse John “ Coughlin, “
Hinky Dink” McKenna, the Republican turncoat, Democratic Congressman Bill
Dawson , and so many others. If nothing else, he was always entertaining.
This being Chicago, after all, someday, there will be a call to name a public
school after Pincham.

Daniel J. Kelley is an attorney and a contributor to “The Chicago Daily
Observer.”