Pennsylvania Privilege

No sooner had U. S. publishers congratulated themselves on the outcome of the Louisiana newspaper tax suit before the U. S. Supreme Court in Washington, D. C. fortnight ago than there began in Washington, Pa. a criminal libel trial which most U. S. newspaper owners looked upon as another major threat to their liberties.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is known as the ''Bible of Pennsylvania Republicanism." In the heat of last autumn's state campaign, the Inquirer declared that "law partners and associates of Charles J. Margiotti, Attorney General and political bludgeon of the Earle Democratic Administration, are out to grab a tax collection authority which may net them millions in the next four years."

Attorney General Charles Joseph Margiotti is said to control the votes of 200,000 Pennsylvania Italians. A candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor in 1934, he turned Democrat after losing the primary, won a place in Governor Earle's "Little New Deal." When he read in the Inquirer that his law partners were supposed to have sewed up several Pennsylvania counties on the basis of collecting back taxes for a worth-while percentage of the receipts, he declared: "I am not, nor ever have been, a party either directly or indirectly to any such plan . . . nor does any such plan exist," demanded from the Inquirer a full retraction unless it wanted to be sued for criminal libel.

No retraction was printed, and on the eve of last autumn's elections, the Inquirer's President Charles A. Tyler and Editor John T. Custis were haled before a Jefferson County grand jury in Mr. Margiotti's home grounds. "A desperate attempt to muzzle [the Inquirer] in the midst of a political campaign!" wrote Editor Custis. The Inquirer got a change of venue to Washington County and a postponement.

Fortnight ago, in an atmosphere bristling with Pennsylvania politics, the Inquirer showed up at the Washington courthouse with a scrappy lawyer named Ralph B. Evans. Plaintiff Margiotti was flanked by the pick of the State's prosecutors. Lawyer Evans put the Attorney General on the stand, got him to admit that he had given advice in some of the tax cases the Inquirer had originally mentioned. When the Attorney General persisted in elaborate asides to the jury, Lawyer Evans infuriated him by leaning back, hooking his thumbs in his vest and observing: "I have the bulge on you, Mr. Margiotti. I can talk to the jury after your mouth is closed."

On its part, the prosecution introduced witnesses to show that the motives and methods of Charles Joseph Margiotti were above reproach, that the Inquirer had maliciously defamed him. When it came to charging the jury last week, Judge William S. McLean Jr. announced, among other things, that the Inquirer's article was privileged--i. e., the paper was entitled under Pennsylvania law to inform the public in full about Mr. Margiotti's activities as lawyer and Attorney General, so long as the information was true, unless the jury believed that the publication was maliciously made. After more than 28 hours, the jury acquitted the Inquirer of criminal libel.

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