Two Acquittals

In one day last week, two conspicuous San Franciscans were acquitted of grave charges. Their trials took place on opposite edges of the continent. Their characters and cases were similarly antipodal. One was a member of an old and distinguished family, having a judge for a father, a university dean for a brother. The other was a shanty Irish agitator. Complaint against one was that he was a corrupt official. The other claimed that he was the victim of corrupt officialdom.

Judge. Sitting for the first time in 20 years as a court of impeachment, the Senate concluded its trial of Federal Judge Harold Louderback. charged by the House with abusing his judicial powers in bankruptcy cases. Evidence against him was diffuse and contradictory. His own vehement denials of wrong-doing were impressively detailed. Of the five counts against him. he won easy acquittals on the first four. On the fifth, a catch-all charge of general misconduct, 45 out of 79 Senators found him guilty. That was not enough to convict. The prosecution lacked eight votes of the necessary two-thirds majority. His puffy face wrinkled with smiles. Judge Louderback had his hand pumped by Huey Long, said he would take a little vacation before returning to his bench.

Agitator. Either because of police vigilance or because his radical sympathizers decided for once that a demonstration might prejudice his case, the trial of Tom Mooney in San Francisco was completely calm. As a world public now knows. Tom

Mooney was tried with Warren K. Billings for bombing the city's 1916 Preparedness Day parade. Mooney was given a death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment, on the specific charge of killing Hetta Knapp. Six other charges relating to six other victims were dropped. In the past 17 years four California Governors and the State's highest courts have refused, in the face of strong national and international pressure, or have been unable to exonerate Mooney.

Last week's case was based on the death of the eighth victim, Arthur Nelson. The Mooney defense hoped that by reviving the case it might make a matter of court record the snarl of perjured testimony which originally helped convict the 50-year-old onetime labor agitator. But it takes two sides to make even a court fight. The District Attorney, a Mooney protagonist, refused to bring charges. His assistant told Judge Louis H. Ward he had no case. Up rose Agitator Mooney to demand his constitutional right to defend himself, to put evidence of his innocence before the jury.

"The defense." ruled Judge Wrard, "in presenting a case would be merely . . . shadowboxing. . . . There is no evidence here," said he, turning to the jury, "that a murder was committed. There is not even a corpus delicti. I therefore advise you to return a verdict of acquittal." In two minutes the jury did.

Still unaffected was Mooney's prior conviction. All that he had gained was additional publicity for his case, perhaps grounds for a second pardon plea to unsympathetic Governor Rolph. His counsel held out the hope that last week's acquittal might provide cause for an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court on the assumption that Mooney is now deprived of his liberty without due process of law. Sticking out his hands for his handcuffs, Tom Mooney went back to San Quentin Prison to wait some more.

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