Fallen Acquitted

William J. Fallen, not yet 40, since the War the most daring and spectacular criminal lawyer of the New York Bar, was acquitted last week, after a dramatic trial lasting nearly two weeks before Judge McClintic (of Charleston, W. Va.), sitting in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, of the charge of bribing, in 1922, a juror in the so-called Durrell-Gregory mail-fraud case. Fallen conducted his own defense, alleged that he was the victim of a far-reaching conspiracy on the part of certain editors and reporters of the New York American, acting under the personal orders of William Randolph Hearst, because he (Fallon) had in his possession the birth certificates of the children of a certain (unnamed) prominent cinema actress.

For years Fallon, the possessor of a singularly effective voice, has been noted as much for his continued appeals to jurors as for the vehemence of his crossexamination. "The truth will come to you," he said in his address to the jury on his own behalf (characterized as "perhaps the most brilliant achievement of his career" by the New York World), "clearly and suddenly as though written with chalk on a board, and you will know me innocent. I leave with you all that the world holds dear to me."

The verdict of acquittal, given after five hours of deliberation, was the signal for what the press described as "one of the most remarkable demonstrations ever seen in a New York courtroom." Fallon, who never lost his poise, even during the anxious hours of the jury's deliberation, thanked each juror individually and then was carried by his friends to a waiting automobile. The next day he held what amounted to a reception in a box at the baseball game at the Polo Grounds.

Assistant U. S. Attorney William J. Millard said after the trial: "I hope that William J. Fallen has learned his lesson and will become a noble, forceful character and a great power for good in this community."

In 1920, Fallen was chief counsel for "Nicky" Arnstein, so-called Master Mind of the $5,000,000 Wall Street bond-theft plot. In 1922, he defended E. M. Fuller in two trials for bucketing, the jury in each trial being unable to agree. Charles W. Rendigs, the juror Fallon was accused of bribing in the Durrell-Gregory trial, also sat in one of the Fuller trials and voted steadfastly for acquittal. Rendigs is now a convicted perjurer awaiting sentence.