Zealous Judges

The exploits of New York City's vigorous young Racketbuster Thomas Edmund Dewey* not only gave impetus to a new cinema vogue but set up a lively demand for real life counterparts as well. Last month, before his legislature met, Missouri's Governor Lloyd Crow Stark published a tempting want ad. If any place needed a Dewey, thundered the Governor, it was that haven of corruption, Kansas City, stamping ground, of his old enemy, Boss Tom Pendergast. Governor Stark ordered his Attorney General Roy McKittrick to go into action. Last week the play was taken out of McKittrick's reluctant hands by an oldtimer at reform.

Missouri's Circuit Judge Allen C. Southern is a downright jurist who once kept a delegation of striking building workers away from his home with a shotgun. Every two years comes his turn to preside over his court's criminal division, and Judge Southern has taught wrongdoers to watch the calendar carefully. Last time he sat he tried to probe Kansas City's notorious 1936 election frauds, but Federal authorities beat him to the draw in a prosecution of 200 election officials and workers that severely shook the Pendergast machine.

When Judge Southern's turn came again, Governor Stark's demand for a Kansas City Dewey was still dangling. Attorney General McKittrick had conferred with Kansas City's Prosecutor W. W. Graves, a tame Pendergast cat, who announced that there was nothing to investigate. Judge Southern suddenly issued search warrants, sent police out raiding.

Judge Southern summoned a county grand jury and ordered Prosecutor Graves to keep hands off the evidence he had collected (including a sucker list of Kansas City's amateur gamblers complete with their credit connections). As Prosecutors Graves and McKittrick sat by, jaws hanging, Judge Southern snapped to the jury: "Gentlemen, the prosecuting attorney denies ... a general state of lawlessness exists.. .. It is certain that the prosecuting attorney has not prepared and will not be able to prepare evidence of a thing which he says does not exist. . . . The Attorney General tells me ... he has obtained no evidence . . . and that he is dependent upon the Police Department. . . . Gambling has been open and notorious in Kansas City for years. It is known fully by all the police ... I do not see how a police officer can come before the grand jury without incriminating himself." Barred in favor of three special prosecutors appointed by Judge Southern, Prosecutor Graves this week tied up proceedings by appealing to the State supreme court.

Meantime, Federal District Judge Albert L. Reeves, a Republican, who beat Judge Southern to the 1936 election prosecutions, beat him again by giving a Federal grand jury evidence of income tax evasion by Kansas City mobsters. Judge Reeves asserted that one "big man" (Charles Carrolla), had charged $30,500 for protecting a "residential resort." Said Judge Reeves: "There is an enormous income from gambling in Kansas City and so far as I know, the Government realizes no income from that gambling."

* As District Attorney Dewey last week began the retrial as a numbers racketeer of Tammany Leader Jimmy Hines, the big fish who escaped his net last year when Judge Ferdinand Pecora declared a mistrial, his star witness, George Weinberg, the racket's payoff man, committed suicide.

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