Trial's End

The biggest and noisiest sedition trial in U.S. history ended last week. On the evening of the 102nd day, U.S. District Judge Edward Clayton Eicher, 65, went home, died of a heart attack. No one in Washington doubted that a ludicrously undignified trial had hastened the death of a scrupulously dignified judge. An ardent New Dealer, a onetime Iowa Congressman (1933-38) and SEChairman (1941-42), Judge Eicher had done his amiable best with a clumsy Justice Department mass indictment which accused 30 defendants of conspiring to Nazify the U.S. For more than seven .months he had banged a tireless, ineffectual gavel at a score of jack-in-the-box defense lawyers bent on turning his courtroom into a vaudeville stage.

Since the trial's start, Judge Eicher had patiently refused some 500 motions for a mistrial or a directed verdict. The testimony had already run to 3,000,000 words; the Government had spent $65,000, introduced but 39 of a contemplated 200 witnesses. One defendant had died. Seven lawyers had been fined a total of $1,220 for contempt.

Some of the defendants, long since bored with jeering and demonstrating in court, took court-approved vacations to engage in more exciting business. As the trial dragged on, Mrs. Lois de Lafayette Washburn--who opened the proceedings with a Nazi salute and once appeared in court in a pale blue satin nightdress--was teaching a night class in stenography. Lawrence ("The Brain") Dennis, top intellectual of U.S. fascism, spent his mornings browsing sedately in the Library of Congress. Mrs. Elizabeth (The Red Network) Dilling was touring the Midwest, singing anti-Semitic and anti-rationing songs to America-First rallies.

Defense lawyers could, if they wanted, allow the trial to continue with a new judge. But few wanted this procedure. The Government had three alternatives: 1) pick a new judge and begin all over again; 2) split the defendants into small groups and try them separately; 3) forget the whole thing.

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