Keep Calm

Federal Judge Harold Medina, whose silken calm has carried him successfully through weeks of shrill legal heckling, addressed himself to 16 solemn citizens of New York last week.

"I do beg of you as we go through this trial to be patient," he said. "There are few qualities of life that are so important. If you don't let little things disturb you at all, then you get a certain calm and peace of mind about it. That is the sort of thing that is the essence of the administration of justice. Now do that."

His hushed audience was the jury of twelve (plus four alternates) finally picked to hear the trial of eleven Communists, charged with conspiring to overthrow the U.S. Government. For weeks the Reds' lawyers had incessantly argued that their clients would not get a fair trial because New York's system of selecting juries discriminated against Negroes, Jews, the poor, and women. The jury finally chosen showed the quality of their long-winded complaint. Among the 16 were three Negroes, eleven women. The foreman: Mrs. Thelma Dial, a Negro dressmaker. Three of the jurors were unemployed. The only ostensibly well-to-do juror in the lot was Broadway producer and author Russell Janney, 63, who wrote the bestselling Miracle of the Bells, and got $125,000 from Hollywood for it.

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