In Mobile

Although the U. S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the press against statutory attack, there is only one Federal law which guarantees it against attack by individuals. This is Title 18, Section 51 of the U. S. Code, directed against persons who "conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution. . . ." Passed in 1870 as a weapon against the KuKluxKlan, Section 51 has since been used occasionally in cases involving intimidation of witnesses or voters, such as last year's Kansas City vote-fraud cases (TIME, April 11, 1938). Last week it was used successfully for the first time in its 69 years of existence to protect the freedom of the press.

The details were as sordid as the case was significant. Ten years ago strapping, handsome Henry Philip Ewald went to Mobile to become executive editor of a new afternoon paper, the Press. A tireless crusader, Editor Ewald launched campaign after campaign against gambling, political corruption, vice. He not only wrote editorials, but poked & pried into the recesses of Mobile's underworld.

Editor Ewald's crusade was good for his paper. The Press bought out the morning Register and Henry Ewald became editor of both papers. Last fall he went after the lottery racket, spread the front pages of the Register and the Press with pictures of lottery tickets that Mobile's police said they could not find.

On the night of February 14 Henry Ewald went to a small, unpainted wooden house in Mobile's red-light district. A few minutes later the door burst open, a flash bulb glared and Crusader Ewald was photographed in bed with a man and a woman. Before he was blackjacked, tough Henry Ewald knocked three of the intruders sprawling and threw a fourth out of the window. He staggered home, called his publisher, Ralph Bradford Chandler, told him he had been framed.

Next day Publisher Chandler started a private investigation, learned to his sorrow that his crusading editor's personal record was bad. Henry Ewald resigned and left Mobile. But Publisher Chandler kept up his campaign. Government investigators went to Mobile, laid their evidence before U. S. District Attorney Francis Harrison Inge. District Attorney Inge got indictments against the four men who had trapped and photographed Editor Ewald, and the woman who had invited him to her room. Also indicted was a young assistant circuit solicitor (State's attorney), Bart B. Chamberlain Jr.. who had boasted publicly that he knew all about the case.

Last week five of the six defendants stood convicted of conspiring to intimidate Editor Ewald into silencing his anti-lottery campaign. Sam B. Powe, Mobile's lottery king and ringleader of the plot, was sentenced to seven years in prison, his fellow conspirators to terms ranging from 18 months to five years. Their convictions will be appealed. Solicitor Chamberlain was acquitted, but resigned two days later. What had happened to honest, courageous, but perverted Editor Ewald, no one in Mobile knew.

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