Only murder trial from 1967 riot came with unexpected ending
In the riot that erupted in Milwaukee during the summer of 1967, three people were killed by gunfire.
Only one of those shootings resulted in a murder trial. And when it finally came, in July 1968, it didn’t end the way many expected.
About 1:30 a.m. on July 31, 1967, a white man drove by a house at 2nd and Center streets, reportedly shouting racial slurs and firing a gun at a group of black people standing outside.
John Oraa Tucker — a 51-year-old African-American high school janitor, who was in the house with his wife and family — came out with a shotgun and fired. Minutes later, Milwaukee police, some of them plainclothes officers, arrived. Shots were exchanged, and police fired tear gas into the house.
Several officers were injured, and two people — including Patrolman Bryan Moschea — were dead. After an hourlong siege, Tucker was shot in the shoulder and taken into police custody. The house was engulfed in flames.
Soon after, Mayor Henry Maier asked Gov. Warren Knowles to declare martial law and send in the National Guard.
Later that day, Tucker was charged with nine counts of attempted murder. A week later, prosecutors added another charge — first-degree murder for Moschea’s death.
Tucker pleaded not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity, in Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Herbert J. Steffes’ court on April 1, 1968.
The trial started on June 26, 1968. The first witness called by District Attorney David J. Cannon was police Capt. Kenneth Hagopian, one of the officers injured the night of the shooting. When Alan Eisenberg — Tucker’s new court-appointed attorney — challenged Hagopian’s ability to identify Tucker as his assailant, the officer responded: “You’re wrong. That’s the man I saw standing in front of the house.”
Hagopian was the first of several officers to testify about the shootings; among them was John Carter, a detective who was shot in the face and blinded. While several of the officers testified they saw Tucker carrying a shotgun, several others said they did
RON OVERDAHL/MILWAUKEE SENTINEL
not.
In what the Milwaukee Sentinel’s Joe Pecor called “a surprise defense move,” Eisenberg on July 2 called Tucker to the stand. Steffes barred the jury from hearing his testimony but allowed the jury to hear police testify that Tucker had tacitly confessed at the hospital and said he was sorry — even though Tucker had said on the stand that he didn’t remember doing so.
Testimony wrapped up on July 12, a Friday; Steffes told reporters that the jury had been in isolation for 17 days already, the longest in Milwaukee County’s court history.
On July 15, Cannon and Eisenberg gave their closing arguments, and Steffes gave the jury — six men, one of whom was African-American, and six women — two hours’ worth of instructions.
The jury came back with a verdict the following afternoon.
Tucker was found not guilty of firstdegree murder and three of the nine charges of attempted murder. On the other six counts, he was found guilty of a lesser charge, endangering safety by conduct regardless of life.
When asked if he was grateful for the outcome, Tucker replied, according to Journal reporter Alex P. Dobish in a July 17 story, “I don’t know what you are speaking about, sir.”
In a short sanity trial, the jury found Tucker sane on July 19.
Steffes, who said he did not agree with the jury’s not-guilty verdicts, then sentenced Tucker to 25 years in prison.
Eisenberg called it an “unbelievably harsh sentencing statement,” and vowed to appeal.
The Journal’s Dobish reported on July 21 that the jurors said they were determined to treat the case on its merits, not in the context of the conflagration that engulfed the city afterward.
“We were not there on the jury to get vengeance,” one juror told Dobish.
Tucker filed an appeal of his conviction in 1972, citing community prejudice; his appeal was denied in 1973.
According to a story by Dobish in the July 18, 1977, Journal, Tucker was paroled on July 1, 1977, after serving nearly 10 years in prison. Living in an apartment in Wausau at the time, he told Dobish he had moved on.
“As long as people’s minds are in the past, it puts bumps and obstacles in the way of the future,” Tucker said. “It’s been a long time. Let’s forget about it.”