Court Troubles

In line of duty, nine newsmen were last week in trouble with the courts.

P: The Miami Beach (Fla.) Tribune's crusading Reporter Shannon Cormack happened to let an error of fact into a story he wrote last February about Circuit Judge Jefferson B. Browne, who was trying a Florida State Senator on gambling charges. Cited for contempt, fined $50 and sentenced to one day in jail, Newshawk Cormack appealed. Last week, all appeals having failed, Cormack served his one-day sentence.

P: Of late the Panama American's stormy crusading publisher, Nelson Rounsevell, has been enraging U. S. Army officers in the Canal Zone's Fort Clayton by headlining stories to the effect that merciless discipline and overwork in tropical heat have driven enlisted men to smoking narcotic marijuana cigarets, caused four of them to commit suicide. An Army investigation whitewashed officers. Last week Rounsevell was arrested on five criminal libel warrants, sworn out by topnotch U. S. Army officers in the Canal Zone. Bail was set at $2,500.

Up bobbed the Republic of Panama's valiant little President Harmodio Arias with his personal check for the $2,500 bail. The chuckleheaded court constable refused it. President Arias sent out a detail of his own police to cash a check of Publisher Rounsevell's. They returned with 250 lb. in silver pesos, which the court constable was obliged to accept.

Said President Arias: "The Panama American is proof that absolute liberty of the Press exists in Panama."

P: A Minneapolis grand jury last week indicted Walter Liggett, famed muckraker for Plain Talk, Common Sense, et al., now publisher of the Minneapolis MidWest American, on a charge of sodomy against an 18-year-old girl. Muckraker Liggett's Wife Edith promptly countercharged that "Governor Floyd B. Olson's gang" was trying to "disgrace and discredit Walter by making the alleged offense as dirty and infamous as possible. . . . The prosecution of Walter is one of the foulest frame-ups ever engineered. . . . [Walter has] demanded the impeachment of the Governor on ten definite counts. . . ."

P: In the little county seat court of Angleton, Tex., big, fatherly Judge M. S. Munson had on his hands three trials growing out of a murder of a convict by three fellow-convicts within the nearby State Prison Farm. At the outset of the trial of the first prisoner Judge Munson told reporters from the Houston Post, the Houston Press and the Houston Chronicle that they could sit in the courtroom but that their papers must not print any news about the three trials until all were over, on pain of a citation for contempt of court. "These cases are all tried in the newspapers," complained the old judge, "before the defendant gets into court.

There will not be a talesman in the county fit to sit on a jury." The three newspapers went right on reporting the trial, printing the testimony as it came out. Last week Judge Munson cited for contempt of court the Post's Reporter Frank White and Managing Editor Max Jacobs, the Press's Reporter Harry McCormick and Managing Editor Ed Pooley and the Chronicle's Reporter Ed Rider and Editor George W. Cottingham, who had just been appointed chairman of the Texas Public Safety Commission, heading the entire Texas police system. Meanwhile the first defendant got his third life sentence, the second convict got 50 years and the third went on trial.

Said Judge Munson: "My purpose is to test out my powers with regard to publication of testimony of a trial in such circumstances as this." Over the newspapermen's ardent defense of Freedom of the Press, the judge arbitrarily fined the editors $100 apiece, the reporters $25, released all on $200 bail apiece.

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