The Charlotte News

Friday August 26, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "The State Serves Notice" points up a lurid practice which was apparently fairly commonplace in the South of 1938, kidnapping African-American females for sport. That the death penalty was sought for the crime points out the rampant nature of it; that the people of the jury served up an acquittal in less than an hour where the evidence appears to have been ample for conviction, the gross disconnect between law and common attitude.

That such a disconnect is not altogether cleansed from the South of the present day is plain enough, though strides have been made generationally toward a narrowing of this gap to comport with justice, equality, fairness and recognition of not only the law as an arbiter for redress but application of that law as well by the twelve good and true to all, every man and woman, regardless of background, skin color, class, education, money in the bank.

Credibility of competing testimony and strength of the evidence generally should ultimately be the only factors in any given criminal trial which determine whether the state has met its heavy burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty on each element of the charged offense.

And the test of credibility is the inherent trustworthiness or not of the story being told, either because of its numerous glaring variations from telling to telling or from telling to known events demonstrably provable by other factors than mere testimony. It does not mean, however, subjectively deciding that, because Witness A looked a lot like the fellow on the tv cop show who was lying, while Witness B sure enough resembled Abe Lincoln in the flesh, Old Honest B must be telling the truth, because you fell asleep half way through Snidely A's testimony anyway, which wasn't so nearly and cleverly colorful as Old B wearing the stovepipe hat.

Justice and fairness begin with listening to both sides carefully, and then weighing judiciously.

In any event, we venture that it typically cannot be done, in even the simplest cases, within the space of 50 minutes.

To the Council at its meeting this week, the Progressive Charlotte Association, open Sunday advocates headed by Attorney Walter Hoyle, presented membership files listing 10,000 Charlotteans. The cards they had signed petitioned the Council for a recreational Sunday, and one would have thought that a specific (and not unheard-of) request from so many people would have found the Council alert to give serious consideration to whatever it was they proposed. But no.

Mayor Douglas, inquiring if there were any other delegations, passed on to the next order of business. Mr. Hoyle, we take it, packed up his files and departed. And that was that.

But there will be other Council meetings and other Councils. And some of these days, the Blue Laws will be amended to permit recreation of all kinds on Sundays. Not this year, in all probability, but next; and if not next year, why, the year after. Maybe after a referendum has been held: maybe on the authority of the Council itself. But the laws will be modified, never fear.

And that will be that.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars in convention assembled have adopted a resolution requesting the Department of Labor to "proceed forthwith in the prosecution" of deportation charges against Harry Bridges, West Coast maritime labor leader, whose "trial," the resolution goes on to say, "now appears to have been indefinitely postponed."

It's odd how the fixed belief prevails that Harry Bridges is an alien illegally remaining in this country at the sufferance, indeed, with the connivance, of the Labor Department. His immigration status is unquestionable. He came as an unknown seaman in 1930 and was duly admitted. In time he filed his first papers but let them lapse without applying for citizenship. [At least two years and not more than seven must elapse between the date of the first papers and the application for citizenship.] Again he filed his first papers, though whether he actually intends to become a citizen, we cannot say.

In any case, he may remain here as long as he pleases without either becoming a citizen or being subject to deportation. That is the law. The Department of Labor has dutifully checked up on the charges that he entered this country under a false identity, that he has a criminal record, that he is a Communist: and it has given him a clean bill of health. He is not deportable. He may be an undesirable, but not as the immigration laws specify undesirability.

If he hadn't used the word "offhand," there would be more positive significance in the remark of Senator Brown of Michigan, chairman of the Senate's Democratic Campaign Committee, that in the Fall elections his group would support party nominees. The question was put to him with direct reference to Idaho, where the New Deal's man Senator Pope lost out in the primary and now seeks the White House blessing to run as an independent. "Offhand," replied Senator Brown,

It is the custom, offhand and automatic, for the Democratic organization to support party nominees. But this is not an offhand year. The boss of the Democratic Party is doing his durnedest to bring about the defeat of established Democratic politicians. To be sure, he is urging the nomination of other Democrats in their stead, but there is no certainty that he will abide by the result if it does not suit him. And yet--

And yet, he probably will, just as Senator Brown's offhand opinion is that his campaign committee will. For the binder that holds a political party together is organization, and if that binder is dissolved, the party and all members of it are endangered. FDR is too good a politician to take such a risk. He may play a lone hand in primaries, but in elections he will rally again around his brothers of the lodge.

If we could just get the evening off from taking in the Charlotte Hornets and other local phenomena, we'd drive down to Columbia tonight to hear Ellis D. (Cotton Ed) Smith wrangle with his two Senatorial campaign opponents, Governor Olin D. Johnston and State Senator Edgar A. Brown. This will be the last appearance of the trio in their olio of welkin-ringing, table-thumping, flag-waving, slack-wire balancing, vituperation, personal revival calisthenics, and the you-old-meanie name-calling. Having thus entertained and bemused the citizenry for more than a month, the performers will retire to their tents and await the verdict of the hustings.

The South Carolina brethren not only put on a rattling good show but a classic show. This is the way the lusty Greeks and Romans, who invented democracy and the art of politics, did it. They did it by debating the tax on corn, by shows in the arena, and by personal appearances. There's something convincing and honest about an election in which the candidates appear before the populace on the same rostrum and argue with each other. And it's the people's choice, to such a personal, private extent that not even a President dares interfere with a purge.

Well, the shells will be cast August 30. Undoubtedly, the classic South Carolinians will celebrate and with burnt offering sacrifices of pig and cow, called barbecue, upon which they will pour libations. We are scanning the horizon now for a flight over Capitoline Hill any minute now as a harbinger from the gods.

The verdict of the jury in the case of the three white men charged with having criminally and repeatedly assaulted a Negro woman, mother of six children, was for acquittal. Their story--that the woman jumped into their car and that they, three against one, couldn't get her out--was pitiably thin. It must have appeared so to the jury and have accounted for the 50 minutes taken to reach a decision.

But even though the jury declined to find anything against these representatives of the superior race, the bringing of the criminal action and the way the State put its back into the prosecution was precedent-making. Mr. Fisher, who handled it ably, sought a verdict which would have carried a death penalty, and that at least had the effect, we should think, of scaring the accused within an inch of their lives.

They came off scot free. Nevertheless, notice has been served that insofar as the State is concerned, there is no color line in assault cases. An unwritten law has been sharply challenged.

To Admiral Nicholas Horthy, visiting Regent of Hungary, Adolf Hitler this week made a toast. It was a long toast, for brevity is not of Adolf's talk the way. It traced, this toast, the centuries of friendship between Germany and the old Austria-Hungary, and it concluded with his rousing assurance:

A pretty sentiment, and we applaud it. But it was only six months ago that another visiting foreign plenipotentiary heard fall from Adolf's lips--nothing so ephemeral as a toast but an agreement to respect the independence of his country. Within two weeks his country had been seized, its government dispossessed, and he himself run into a polite equivalent of a prison.

That visitor's name was, of course, Schuschnigg, his country Austria. And surely the recollection of those brisk events must dampen Regent Horthy's pleasure that Hungary is now neighbor to so capricious a toastmaster as Adolf.