"Not Guilty"

John Philip Hill of Baltimore, Republican Congressman from the third District of Maryland, indicted for violating the Volstead Act (TIME, Oct. 6), was tried last week. And John Philip Hill was acquitted.

John Philip is a character. Hear about him in the sparkling words of Correspondent Clinton W. Gilbert:

"He lives by headlines. If newspapers were abolished, he would curl up and die. I know he will read this with delight and paste it away in his scrapbook. That's why I am writing it.

"A man who devotes all his energies to being a good story should receive some encouragement. And he is a lusty, vigorous fellow, full of animal spirits, and where one of this sort sometimes loves food, sometimes loves women, sometimes loves adventure, John Philip loves publicity . . .

"He has imagination as well as energy. Farmers could make cider and no one went around to find out how much alcohol it contained. Well, why not have a farm in a Baltimore backyard? He had two windows painted on his front fence with painted cows' heads looking out of them. Then he had apple trees with apples carefully tied on them moved into his backyard. Then he set up a cider press ..."

Yes. He set up a cider press and allowed his cider to ferment a bit, just as he had done previously with some grapes, and he gave his neighbors to drink.

He was indicted on six counts for illegal manufacture and possession of the forbidden, and for constituting a public nuisance. But it is notorious that six counts does not constitute a knockout. John Philip took his six counts, then he took a reelection, and then he took his trial.

The decision does not greatly alter the force of the Volstead Act. That Act forbids the manufacture, etc., for sale, of intoxicating beverages and defines such beverages as those containing more than 1/2% of alcohol. But tucked away in the Act is a sentence which says:

"The penalties provided in this act against the manufacture of liquor without permit shall not apply to a person for manufacturing non-intoxicating cider and fruit juices exclusively for use in his home. . ."

Federal Judge Morris A. Soper interpreted this to mean that the home juicemaker was exempt from the arbitrary definition that 1/2% alcoholic content makes a beverage "intoxicating." For beverages on sale, he held that the 1/2% criterion was legal and unassailable, but within the walls of a man's home what he made exclusively for his own use was not to be so strictly governed.

Judge Soper therefore charged the jury that, for the purposes of this case, "the question for you to determine is whether these articles were intoxicating in fact. . . . Intoxicating liquor is liquor which contains such a proportion of alcohol that it will produce intoxication when imbibed in such quantities as it is practically possible for a man to drink. . . . Perhaps I might interpolate here that the intoxication in this law means what you and I ordinarily understand as average human beings by the word 'drunkenness' . . ."

As far as regards the two counts charging John Philip with maintaining a public nuisance, the Judge instructed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty, since none of the questionable beverages was sold.

Then the jury went out to determine whether wine containing from 3.34% to 11.64% of alcohol and cider containing 2.7% alcohol was intoxicating in the ordinary meaning of the word. For 17 hours the jurymen were closeted. Two of them held out for a verdict of guilty. At last they gave in. "Not guilty."

John Philip, shaking hands vigorously, exclaimed: "Well, boys, you can make all the cider and wine you want now."

Then he added more formally:

"Independent of the verdict, the opinion of Judge Soper to the effect that fruit juices and cider made in the home for use there must be intoxicating in fact and are not limited to 1/2% alcoholic content, fixed by other sections of the act to regulate other beverages, is of the utmost importance.

"It strengthens us tremendously in our position in asking Congress to give us light wines and beer. It proves what I have always maintained--that the Volstead act is hypocritical, crooked and marked by two standards. . .'