The Charlotte News
Thursday, March 9, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Millard Tydings, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the charges by Senator Joseph McCarthy that there were Communists in the State Department, gave notice to Senator McCarthy that the subcommittee expected him to produce voluntarily his files on which he based the charges or they would be subpoenaed. Senator Brien McMahon demanded that the Senator provide all information he had on "case 14", a phrase used by Senator McCarthy to refer to unnamed disloyal persons maintained in the State Department by intervention of high officials. Senator McCarthy rejoined that Senator McMahon was not fooling him, that the subcommittee wanted the names of his informants so that they could be fired by the State Department, that he was surprised that the subcommittee had become "the tool of the State Department". Senator McMahon expressed shock at the statement and denounced the accusation.
Thus far, Senator McCarthy had named two people in the State Department who were sponsors of subversive organizations. The female lawyer whom Mr. McCarthy accused the previous day of being a member of 28 subversive organizations said that he was a liar "in his teeth". The subcommittee promised that anyone named by the Senator would be given an opportunity to testify.
In London, the Labour Government said that it would resign and call for a new election if a motion opposing nationalization of steel succeeded this night.
Administration leaders in the Senate were engaged in trying to save rent control, set to expire June 30.
The United Steelworkers rejected John L. Lewis's offer of a mutual aid pact to benefit both the Steelworkers and UMW in the event of a strike by either union.
In New York, Judy Coplon, convicted the prior Tuesday of attempted espionage by conspiracy to provide secret Justice Department documents to a Russian, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Her convicted accomplice, Valentin Gubitchev, received, on the recommendation of the Government, a 15-year suspended sentence and deportation to Russia within two weeks. The court specified that the sentence of Ms. Coplon was not to run concurrent with the 40-month sentence imposed for taking the documents without authorization, of which she had been convicted in Washington the previous summer. The maximum prison sentence for the offenses of which Ms. Coplon was convicted was 25 years.
In Manchester, N.H., in the trial of the doctor accused of first degree murder for the killing of his terminally ill cancer patient, summations took place. The defense argued that euthanasia was not the defense but rather that the patient was already dead when the doctor injected air into her veins and that, in any event, 40 cc's of air, as the prosecution claimed was the amount injected, could not have killed her and that in fact only 28 cc's had been injected. The prosecutor did not seek the death penalty but the jury could impose it under state law.
Apparently, the defense did not seek an instruction on manslaughter, as the defense did not argue it as a possible verdict, probably believing that the jury would not be inclined in any event to find the defendant guilty of murder and not wanting to allow them an easier alternative route to a verdict of guilty. Moreover, the argument in support of manslaughter would have been inconsistent with the defense. It was also possible that the court had refused the instruction on the basis that the evidence, which showed that the act of injecting the air was deliberate, did not support either negligent or reckless homicide. But the doctor had testified that he believed the patient was already dead when he first encountered her at the time in question but injected the air suddenly without knowing in hindsight what had come over him. Such evidence, if the jury found, as the prosecution expert testified, that she died from an embolism induced by the injection of the air, but also believed the doctor's account, could result in a verdict of negligent or reckless homicide on the assumption that the doctor believed her dead at the time. Thus, it was more likely that the defense expressly declined the instruction for the reasons indicated.
In Albuquerque, N.M., a fire the previous night killed fourteen military prisoners at the Sandia base guardhouse. The base was a semi-secret point of assembly for the atom bomb.
In Advance, Mo., a fire at a farmhouse took the lives of three boys and their father. The mother and another son escaped with serious burns. It was believed that the fire was caused by an exploding kerosene stove.
In Bowling Green, Ky., a war veteran shot himself fatally with a shotgun in his hotel room as his brother pleaded with him via telephone not to take his own life. Members of the veteran's family said that he had been in ill health and was despondent.
In New York, five bank robbers forced employees of a Queens bank into its basement at gunpoint and escaped with nearly $64,000—obviously having answered the question almost correctly.
In Charlotte, Dr. Charles Beam, superintendent of Presbyterian Hospital for the previous 21 years, died at age 57.
In Minerva, O., a cat spent 36 hours accidentally left to bake in a 900-degree kiln at a brick company but emerged alive, if scorched and dried out.
It could have been worse. The cat could have been used as a brick.
Part of chapter twenty-five of The Greatest Story Ever Told appears on the page as part of the abridged serialization by The News of the book.
On the editorial page, "Let's Knock This in the Head" finds the offer of John L. Lewis to have UMW and the United Steelworkers join in a mutual assistance pact, together with his offer of aid to the UAW in the Chrysler strike, to be a conspiracy which, if undertaken by three major industries with one another, would trigger Congressional investigation for antitrust violations. The piece thinks it ought be stopped by Congress forthwith.
"Scott Should Prove His Case" asserts that Governor Kerr Scott should show the basis for his claim that the conservative legislators of the 1949 General Assembly had been responsible for the five million dollar deficit. In so doing, he would have to find a way to explain away the fact that the Assembly had defeated a measure the Governor backed for paying teacher salary increases from the general fund, instead using the wartime budget cushion surplus. The Governor's proposal would have generated an additional 25 million dollars of deficit spending.
"A Judge Scolds a Jury" tells of a North Carolina Superior Court judge in Fayetteville having chastised a jury for acquitting two defendants of armed robbery. The piece was unfamiliar with the evidence and so could not render an opinion on the appropriateness of the judge's condemnation of the jury, but nevertheless welcomes the court's outrage.
Juries had great responsibilities to decide criminal cases fairly under the law, with the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. (The piece misapplies the standard by saying that if the evidence was "clear and convincing", the jury must convict. "Clear and convincing" evidence is a lower standard of proof than beyond a reasonable doubt, usually applicable to administrative proceedings. If a juror volunteered to an attorney after a criminal trial that he or she found the defendant guilty based on "clear and convincing evidence", it would be grounds to make a motion to set aside the verdict. Civil cases generally are subject to a preponderance of the evidence standard, more probable than not that a defendant caused the civil wrong, that it actually occurred and that damages resulted. No standard of proof is precisely quantifiable and can only be approximated by reference to the other two forms, with "clear and convincing" in between. Beyond a reasonable doubt is usually defined by uniform instructions as that state of the evidence regarding which a "moral certainty" exists of the truth of the charge.)
It finds the judge's criticism to be a good reminder that judges could preserve the foundations of the jurisprudential system if they were of a mind to do so.
The editorial appears to imply that judges ought
interject subjective bias to the proceedings to sway juries to their
point of view, always inappropriate, though not without occurrence,
usually out of range of the record, through body language, tone of
voice used toward one side and not the other, consistently favorable
rulings to one side only, etc.
On the subject, incidentally, of wiretaps
"Of Brooklyn and the South" finds that the testimony admitted against the defendant in the military tribunal trial of a woman in Frankfurt, Germany, for allegedly murdering her husband, that she had an argument with the witness an hour before shooting her husband, should have been inadmissible as showing her easy disposition to anger for the fact that the argument was regarding her Brooklyn accent and his Southern accent. He should have known better, posits the piece, than to mock the woman's Brooklyn accent, that it was bound to create anger. The Brooklyn accent had been the object of ridicule, as had the Southern twang, for a long time.
Just that week, a magazine had mocked a Brooklyn boy who went to visit his aunt in upstate New York, with the related conversation, "Hey, auntie, look at dat boid," to which the aunt had corrected that it was a bird. The boy continued to insist that it looked and flew, however, like a boid.
To mock the Brooklyn accent was tantamount to someone mocking a Southerner for saying "y'all". Reaction to it, it suggests, with some form of assaultive conduct would not be considered criminal in any court of the land.
But what wud wrong wid de boid?
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "Where the Big Rewards Lie", tells of the 125,000 boys and girls in 14 Southern states participating in the National 4-H garden program, learning how to generate high production yields, control pests, and market produce successfully.
A piece from the Washington Post looks at the refusal of the Federal court to find UMW in contempt for violation of the court's temporary restraining order ending the coal strike because UMW had demanded that the miners return to work, an order they refused. The Government was appealing the finding with respect to the civil contempt. The piece favors imposition of civil penalties against the union because its membership had refused to obey the court order and it was necessary to preserve the authority of the courts under Taft-Hartley to end strikes harming the welfare of the nation. It hopes therefore that the Court of Appeals would reverse the District Court's decision finding no liability.
An editorial from the Louisville Courier-Journal finds that if Alaska were admitted to the union as a state, it would eclipse Texas in its claims to superlative bigness, being more than double the geographical size of the Lone Star State. It thus foresees problems between Texans and the admission of Alaska, as ten-gallon hats would be shrunken to nine gallons.
Drew Pearson considers two options with respect to the Soviet Union, striking first with the atomic bomb before Russia had a chance to catch up with its nuclear arsenal, already superior ground and submarine forces, and nearly equal air force, or seek to grind out for 25 to 50 years a slow, toilsome diplomatic peace.
On the side of the first option was the notion that to wait could mean allowing Russia to equal or exceed America's military might, given that Russia's entire system was geared toward militarization, that it was unlikely that diplomacy would work anytime soon to crack the implacable will of the Politburo. And it was poppycock to assume, as Winston Churchill had urged, that the democracies could live in peaceful coexistence with the Soviet system. The Politburo would not allow it.
But in dispute of those arguments, the moral determination would be to take the diplomatic path, assuring in the process respect worldwide for the American effort and enabling the U.S. to have the moral high ground. Moreover, the aftermath of a nuclear war would be messy, requiring occupation of the conquered land and encountering in the process Russian bitterness which would always be awaiting the opportunity to wreak vengeance for such a first strike.
He concludes that there might come a time when it became necessary to use the atomic bomb, but the present was not that time.
Robert C. Ruark comes to the defense of the dead leopard which had escaped from the Oklahoma City zoo and was put down when it returned, lured by poison-laced meat.
Mr. Ruark thinks the leopard, which had not harmed anyone, should have been given a reprieve and allowed to return with impunity to its new home, just a week out of the wilds of Africa. Maybe, he suggests, it had just stepped out to register to vote or to clarify its immigration status.
James Marlow discusses the House-passed bills to make the territories of Alaska and Hawaii states, now bound for the Senate, where the same measure had died without a vote in the previous Congress. Should the same happen again, the whole process would have to begin anew.
Some of the arguments for statehood, overwhelmingly favored by the people of each respective territory, were that the laws of Congress and taxes applied to the citizens of the territories and yet they had no voting representation in Congress, only entitled to one non-voting representative each. Also, both territories held strategic significance for defense. Both had matured since becoming territories, Hawaii in 1900 and Alaska in 1912, such that they could function well as states, making their own state laws apart from Congress.
But the converse argument to representation was also propounded that, with only 20,000 people voting in Alaska, and only 100,000 in Hawaii, each would be entitled to two Senators as states, thus enjoying disproportionate representation in the Senate vis-à-vis most other states.
Both territories would eventually become states in 1959.
Framed Edition
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