The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 29, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Brussels, the five Western European Union nations, France, Britain, and the Benelux countries, formed the Council of Europe, with a fledgling cabinet and an advisory parliament. Other European countries would be asked to help form the Council. It was considered to be a first step toward formation of a United States of Europe. But surrender of individual sovereignty to a central governing body would, it was stressed, have to be a slow process.
In China, the Communists suggested piece-meal settlement of the civil war, but demanded in a radio broadcast that the Nationalist Government first arrest Chiang Kai-Shek and other top Government officials as war criminals. The Communists were placing artillery on the north bank of the Yangtze and the demands, impossible of being met for the top officials having left Nanking, appeared to dash any hope for a peace settlement.
Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut said that the Congress intended to tell the people living in Russia and otherwise behind the iron curtain what atomic energy could mean to them, in the hope that it would encourage new agreements and overcome the deliberate ignorance in which Russians were being kept by Soviet propaganda regarding the benefits of atomic energy and the stance of the U.S. on sharing it under proper controls.
The Administration asked Congress to repeal Taft-Hartley and enact in its stead a new labor law based on the Wagner Act, stripped of the court injunction provisions enabling stoppage of strikes. Labor had vigorously protested the Government's right to seek injunctions under Taft-Hartley.
About 750 Chicago landlords gave approval to the plan of the Tulsa Property Owners Association to withdraw rental units from the market on 60 days notice to avoid extended rent control, being considered by Congress. The Chicago group, claiming to control 98,000 Chicago rental units, intended to do likewise. The chief judge of the Chicago Municipal Court, echoing the Administration and Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, said the previous day that the courts would seek to stop mass evictions on the basis that the landlords would not be acting in good faith.
The Congress allotted $500,000 in additional funding to the Midwestern and Western states for storm relief.
Did the poor little lambs get rescued? They're cold. They need sweaters.
A B-29, missing for two days on a flight from Dakar to England, had still not been located and the search continued.
Two men and two Central High School students of Charlotte were killed in the fiery crash of a rented Beechcraft Bonanza plane at Hendersonville. The two men were on a business trip and had their sons along.
In Charlotte, thirteen persons escaped injury as a fire roared through the three-story downtown headquarters of Wright's Mill Remnants Co. on East Trade Street during the morning and afternoon. Six firemen were overcome by smoke.
The cause of the fire appeared to be an errant Dr. Pepper igniting during a break.
Time has run out on the "Mr. X" contest. The answer was Dean Acheson. Now, all you have to do is backtrack and figure out our clues, each of which, we assure, was pointing precisely toward the new Secretary of State.
A new contest will begin Monday. We hope that the Scrooges of Charlotte will not be so eager to identify the mystery person this week and destroy Christmas for needy families, leaving many small children in tears while the winner uses her $20 prize to obtain a tan in Miami.
On the editorial page, "State Safety Laws Are Working" discusses various proposed legislation before the General Assembly regarding motor vehicle inspection and driver license renewals.
It's bound to be very interesting.
It recommends keeping the general system, which had earned the state praise from the National Safety Council, and improve minor provisions of its administration to make the process more convenient for drivers to comply.
That sounds good.
"Handling Juvenile Delinquents" comments on the Bob Sain piece on the page regarding the juvenile court system in North Carolina. Of the recommendations made by Dr. Wiley B. Sanders of the UNC School of Social Work, three stood out: that there should be better legal training of juvenile court judges, probation officers and case workers, that incarceration of juveniles, against state law, should be eliminated, and that whipping of juvenile defendants, also against the law, should be eliminated.
The statistical abstract compiled by Dr. Sanders was a great service to the State in improving its juvenile justice system.
The system as it stood, it finds, was not all bad, but in need of improvement, that the worst of it only stimulated hate in the juvenile defendants pressed into it.
"In Accordance With the Law" finds Governor Scott to have been correct in refusing to commute the sentence of James R. Creech, Jr., to life imprisonment for the first degree murder of his wife the previous July. Mr. Creech had been executed the previous day. The plea for commutation was based on the claim of his judgment being impaired by alcohol at the time of the crime and that the State Supreme Court had two dissenters, one of whom had been Justice Sam J. Ervin, to its decision affirming the conviction.
He had shot his wife twice, the second time as he stood over her as she lay on the floor. The piece seems to miss the point, however, in saying that there was no question, therefore, regarding the presence of premeditation, as the claim of his impairment was presented as negating his ability to premeditate the crime.
The piece says that the Governor would have established a dangerous precedent to find that voluntary intoxication was the equivalent of insanity. But again the piece misunderstands the law. Not guilty by reason of insanity is different from an inchoate defense of insanity or diminished capacity, allowing for reduction of degree or punishment, but not a finding of not guilty such that the person would be institutionalized. The defense had argued only insufficient mental capacity for first degree murder or at least insufficient to warrant imposition of the death penalty, not insanity. Nor would a governor's commutation generally be considered to set a precedent, as such decisions are ad hoc, based on matters peculiar to individual cases and defendants.
In the law, the devil is in the details, to be viewed case by case. None can be ignored or generalized. That is why we have good attorneys, as Senator and former Governor J. Melville Broughton in this instance, willing to argue against the common grain, the "common sense" perception emanating from a visceral, emotional reaction to heinous acts.
Senator Broughton, incidentally, would die of a heart attack only five weeks later.
As referenced in the above editorial, Bob Sain of The News provides a review of a book by Dr. Wiley B. Sanders of the UNC School of Social Work, titled Juvenile Courts in North Carolina. The book explained that juvenile delinquency in the state and across the nation, contrary to popular belief, was declining, not increasing. Dr. Sanders had maintained track of every juvenile case in the state between mid-1934 and mid-1944, compiling statistics along the way on 72,000 cases. (The piece confuses figures on this point. Dr. Sanders states in the Preface to the volume that he utilized 32,000 such cases for study. There were 72,000 cases in all estimated to have been handled by the North Carolina juvenile justice system between 1919 and 1944.) More black youths than white came into the system, the average age of offenders being 14 or 15, more urban than rural, more boys than girls. About half were from "broken homes". Most were placed on probation, with only about 16 percent being institutionalized. The most frequent charge was larceny but the offenses ran the gamut of criminality.
It was against the law to place children in jail, but Dr. Sanders had found, nevertheless, that in 1944, 63 children under 14 years old had been incarcerated with adult offenders. In many cases, children had been whipped, with the tacit or expressed permission of the court. The juvenile judges, clerks of the Superior Court, were found to be without legal training in most instances and without any experience or education in handling children.
Dr. Sanders had made 18 recommendations for changes to the juvenile court system in the state, the primary three being provided by the piece in the column above.
William Dunn, Jr., Acting Parole Commissioner, responding to criticism by judges and others over the release of serious offenders on parole after service of only small portions of their sentences, explains the State's parole system. He says that the trial judge retained great discretion in determining the length of actual service of sentences. The statutes, however, required that every prisoner after serving a fourth of his term had to be considered for parole. Each prisoner was thoroughly investigated prior to the time of his parole review. While some persons were placed on parole who, it became subsequently evident, should not have been, overall, he asserts, the system worked well.
The 1,500 men placed on parole the previous year earned 1.5 million dollars in total income. Most of that money went for the support of dependents who otherwise would have been on welfare. Only a small proportion of parolees committed other crimes and many of those were not violent. Nearly half of those who failed on parole were returned to prison without commission of another criminal offense.
Every person recommended for parole to the Governor showed evidence of rehabilitation. And everyone placed on parole was subject to careful supervision until the parole period was complete. Eighty percent of the paroled cases resulted in good citizenship and thus acted as a benefit to society.
He concludes by saying that the
Parole Commission made mistakes and was willing to share in the
responsibility for them, but should not be made the whipping boy for
recidivism
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan having told the Senate Agriculture Committee that the Government might have to purchase 800 million bushels of excess grain in the coming year, as farmers were overplanting grain and cotton, which could send prices downward. Support prices would likely therefore have to be reduced as the amount of appropriations for farm price subsidies would not likely be increased. While he said that 100 percent parity, as sought by many farm groups, was desirable in the abstract, it would only encourage further overplanting and was not practicable financially.
Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma, who had once speculated on cotton and grain based on fluctuations in price stimulated by his own floor speeches in the Senate, now favored Government construction of warehouses and grain elevators to enable more buying of grain and cotton to discourage speculation.
Secretary Brannan, however, did not think much of the suggestion, wanted the storage limitation imposed by the previous Congress lifted but not entry by the Government into construction or buying of grain elevators and warehouses.
Friends of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn wondered how the bachelor would spend the extra $10,000 of salary and $10,000 in expenses allotted by Congress, decided that he probably would not change his ways to incorporate more lavish living as it would be uncharacteristic.
Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., had introduced a bill to require firms which did business with the Government to hire employees by the year, passing the firm's thus acquired security on to the employees.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, seeming to foreshadow the state of things in the country during the last 14 years or so, finds the need for a loyalty oath and non-Communist affidavit becoming so prevalent, having recently been made a requirement by the Detroit Police Commissioner for issuance of a press pass, that it would soon be necessary to have a flashcard credential of the sort to use as a commuter pass on the subway or bus. He finds it "an elaborate fiddle-faddle" only for harm. For no good could come from having everyone's affidavit on file in a warehouse. It would only signify a lack of mutual trust among Americans and put the Government in the business of monitoring people's thoughts rather than actions.
It was illusory to believe that the system could smoke out Communists inimical to the country's security. There was no danger in a Communist who did not act on his or her beliefs.
A Quote of the Day: "A nudist colony is dickering for a Florida key. Preferably one without a keyhole." —Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press
That probably,
therefore, was not Key
Framed Edition
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