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3 Civ. Lib. Dock. [i] (1957-1958)

handle is hein.civil/cvlibdok0003 and id is 1 raw text is: CIVIL LIBERTIES DOCKET Conspiracy to Advocate Since the passage of the Smith Act in 1940, 17 groups of defendants have been brought to trial for conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the U. S. Government by force and violence. The first group, members of the Socialist Workers Party in the middle west, were con- victed (Dunn, et al. v. U. S., 138 F. 2d 137) and the Supreme Court denied: certiorari (320 U. S. 790, 1943). The remaining 16 cases involve groups of leaders and members of the Communist Party, with a total of 138 persons indicted since 1948. Of the 14 cases already tried, only 2 have been heard on appeal by the Supreme Court. Dennis v. U. S. (341 U. S. 494) was heard in 1951. The Court denied certiorari in the next two Smith Act cases coming before it: Flynn v. U. S. (216 F. 2d 354 (CA 2 1954)) and Frankfeld v. U. S. (198 F. 2d 679 (CA 4 1952)). In June, 1957, the Court handed down its decision in Yates, 304 U. S. 98. The status of Smith Act cases since the Court's decision in Yates is summarized below: ACQUITTALS: Defs. acquitted prior to Yates decision Defs. acquitted in Yates and as result of Yates Indictments dismissed by Gov't after Yates and Jencks decisions Gov't has confessed insufficient evidence to support convictions since Yates NEW TRIALS: 11 11 6 2 30 Defs. granted new trials by Cts. in Yates and since Yates 16 Gov't has confessed entitled to new trials since Jencks 24 40 PENDING: In Courts of Appeals (not counted above) 18 Not yet brought to trial 16 34 NO. OF DEFENDANTS WHO SERVED SENTENCES: After review by U. S. S. C. 11 Review denied by U. S. S. C. 17 28 5 Defs. severed prior to trial. 3 died during proceedings, not included above. Total defendants in table: 138 Of the defendants acquitted, all were acquitted on due process grounds: insufficiency of evidence, improper in- structions by Court on advocacy, impropriety of or- ganizing charge, etc. No defendants have been acquitted on the basis of denial of their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly, political belief. But see dissent by Black, J., in Dennis, and his concurrence in Yates. See cases at 241.1-.13, pp. 5-6. Membership in the Communist Party Since 1954 eight persons have been indicted solely under the membership clause in the Smith Act. Four of the cases have not yet been tried, the trial courts having con- tinued the cases expecting a decision on the constitu- tionality and interpretation of the statute by the Supreme Court in the Lightfoot and Scales cases, 242.1 and .2. The Court has just reversed these two convictions and remanded for new trials, under the Jencks decision, 291.1. Two cases are pending before Courts of Appeals in the Second and Third Circuits. Unreliability of Government Witnesses In several recent proceedings, the Government has con- fessed the unreliability of its own witnesses, or courts and administrative agencies have held such witnesses to be not worthy of belief. The testimony of Isaac Alex- ander Wright was stricken from the record in Brownell V. American Peace Crusade, 211.7, before the Subversive Activities Control Bd. The testimony of Mazzei was found unreliable in Mesarosh, 241.2 and Sheiner, 265.3. (The Government dropped the Mesarosh case when re- manded for new trial. Key witnesses had been Mazzei and Cvetic.) The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Cir- cuit just upheld the dismissal of deportation proceedings in Yiannopoulos, 355.6, because based on unreliable testi- mony of Nowells and Syrakis. And the Board of Immi- gration Appeals itself just reversed a finding of deport- ability in Navarrete-Sanchez, 355.7, because three Gov't witnesses were unreliable. Reversals of Government Positions The Government has confessed error in three Fifth Amendment cases involving witnesses before Congres- sional Committees who declined to answer questions con- cerning their addresses. (See McKenzie, Wollam, Simp- son, 331,4, .5, .6.) The Attorney General recently removed the Associa- tion of Lithuanian Workers and Lithuanian Literary Asso- ciation (221.3) from his list of subversive organizations. No reason was given. At the same time the Attorney General notified the Supreme Court that the cases brought by these organizations had become moot. (These organi- zations had taken defaults rather than answer the many 'interrogatories propounded by Brownell.) Miscellaneous Cases The trial court ordered a verdict of acquittal in the McDaniel case (292.1) involving an employee charged with answering falsely a security questionnaire for a contractor for the A.E.C. In the first test of the power of a Congressional Com- mittee to compel witnesses to answer, despite a claim of the privilege against self-incrimination, under the Immun- ity Act of 1954, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed and directed that the Government's application for immunity be dismissed (Glasser, 334.2?. VOL. III, No. 1 HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS ISSI h

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