Oklahoma Impeachment

By a vote of 32 to 15, precisely the two-thirds majority that was needed, the Oklahoma senate last week ousted State Supreme Court Justice Napoleon Bona parte Johnson, 74, on impeachment charges made by the state house of representatives (TIME, April 16). The case hinged on the testimony of former Justice Nelson S. Corn, 81, who was granted immunity after admitting that in 1957 he took a $150,000 bribe to mastermind the 6-2 reversal of a state tax claim against a shady investment company.

To swing that decision, Corn said that he paid $7,500 apiece to Justice Johnson and former Justice Earl Welch, 73, and later paid them another $2,500 apiece in an oil-lease case. Welch recently resigned, thus escaping impeachment. Johnson denied the charges, and when he was tried by Oklahoma's state senators, during one day's testimony, he repeated 56 times: "I don't recall." Johnson cannot appeal his removal from office. He and Welch also face probable criminal charges for bribery.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.