Radicals Retried

The seven justices of the Supreme Court of California last week descended from their high judicial bench to hear John MacDonald recant testimony that had sent Thomas J. Mooney and Warren K. Billings, radical labor agitators, to prison for life. Sitting without robes, not as a court but as an advisory pardon board, the justices commenced what was virtually and peculiarly a retrial of the bombing of San Francisco's Preparedness Day parade in 1916. Billings, as a two-time felon, could be pardoned only with the Supreme Court's approval.

Witness MacDonald, wandering waiter, had been found in Baltimore and sent to California by the Mooney-Billings defense to admit his perjury after the Supreme Court refused last month to recommend a pardon for Billings (TIME, July 21). In 1916 he told trial juries that he had seen Billings and Mooney with a suitcase, presumably containing the bomb, at the street corner where occurred the explosion that killed ten persons. Last week before the Supreme Justices he swore that he had seen neither of them there, that, in fact, he was not sure if he had really witnessed the bombing at all, so muddled were truth and falsehood in his clouded brain. He charged that the San Francisco police had coached him to identify Mooney and Billings as the bombers, that Charles M. Fickert, the prosecuting attorney, had influenced his testimony, had promised him a "large slice" of the $17,500 reward in return for damning evidence.

Unique in California history was last week's hearing. The justices huddled about Witness MacDonald. They denied him the benefit of counsel or the privilege of direct statement. Associate Justice John White Preston, a onetime U. S. District Attorney experienced in prosecuting radicals, acted as the court's special prosecutor to examine MacDonald. The little old man, who claimed he only wanted to "clear his conscience," cringed, trembled, wept under the ferocity of Justice Preston's interrogation.

The apparent purpose was to make MacDonald out a habitual liar who was perjuring himself now no less than he may have done at the Billings-Mooney trials. Time and again Preston would harshly ask: "Was that a lie?" "Weren't you lying when you said that?" When MacDonald became hopelessly rattled, Preston scornfully inquired: "You've told five different stories at five different times. How is the court to know which one to believe?" Meekly replied MacDonald: "You'll have to use your own judgment."

Throughout the ordeal, however, MacDonald stuck to the main outline of his recantation. He claimed that police Captain Charles Goff had forced his identification of Billings and Mooney in the city prison, that District Attorney Fickert had put "a whole pack of lies" into his head which he repeated to the trial juries. Said he: "Fickert told me if I would stand by the identification of Billings and Mooney I'd get the biggest slice of the reward." Asked Justice Preston mockingly: "You swore this at the time God was judging you to be a liar" MacDonald only wept.

Mr. Fickert coldly watched his onetime prime witness across the chamber. Justice Preston asked MacDonald: "Do you still feel in Fickert's clutches?" Replied MacDonald pitifully: "I do. I'm in a daze right now."

Police Captain Goff testified that MacDonald had identified Billings and Mooney without any prompting from him. Another witness declared that he had heard MacDonald describe the bombing and the two men with the suitcase two hours after the explosion. The hearing unexpectedly broadened out when Miss Estelle Smith, onetime dental nurse, drug addict and witness against Billings at his trial, revised her testimony, charged that Prosecutor Fickert had pressed her into perjury. Incidentally she set up an alibi for Billings by declaring he was in her office, a mile from the explosion scene, just a few minutes before the bomb went off. She swore he carried a suitcase in which was, not bombs, but a supply of acid which Billings was squirting on automobile engines as part of a garage mechanics' strike.

Because Mooney is a first offender, California's Governor Clement Calhoun Young is empowered to pardon him without the Supreme Court's recommendation, on his own initiative. But because the facts in the two cases are so intertwined, Governor Young was being guided largely by the Supreme Court's hearing in the Billings case. Last week he summoned MacDonald to Sacramento to hear him repeat his recantation.

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