SIXTEEN YEARS IN GAOL

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 72, 27 March 1933, Page 7

SIXTEEN YEARS IN GAOL

CASE OF T. J. MOONEY

NEW TRIAL ORDERED

SAN FRANCISCO, March 25,

A new trial for Thomrfs J. Mooney was ordered today by Superior Judge Louis Ward, on the plea of the attorney for the defence that he bo given a chance to acquit himself of the charge of bombing at San Francisco during the Preparedness Day parade in

■ Over sixteen years after his conviction for a crime which he has consistently declared he did not commit, Tom Mooney is to have another trial. Tho crime was the bombing incident at tho junction of Market and Steuart Streets, San Francisco, on July 22, 1916. Ton people were killed and forty injured among the crowd awaiting the arrival of a, Preparedness Day parade, and four days later Mooney and Warren K. Billings were arrested. , Billings was the first; to go to trial. He was convicted of niui-der in the second degree in September, 1916, and was sentenced to . life- imprisonment as -having been twice convicted previously. Mooney'» trial followed in January and February, and Frank C. Oxman, an Oregon cattleman, testified to, seeing him and Billings arrive at tho scene of the explosion Mooney was convicted, and sentenced to death, and a motion for a new trial was denied.

Mooney and Billings had 1)0011 prominent in a strike against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in which power towers had been dynamited, and it was alleged by the defence that their arrest was tho result of these activities, and because of tho work of Mooney in organising a' street cat strike in San l^rancisco. The prosecution declared that booklets issued by a powder company had been found in Mooney's room, and that materials for making bombs were discovered in the basement of a house which he admitted visiting. Mooney, being by trade a moulder, would know how to make bombs, and a number of cartridges found in his room, matched those discovered at the scene of the tragedy. The long struggle for a new trial for Mooney began at once. Two months after Mooney was convictod, Frank C, Oxman was charged with perjury because of his testimony in the case. He "vas defended by •counsel retained by tho Ditsrict Attorney and was. acquitted. Nevertheless, tho disclosures at tho trial led to tho presiding Judge risking tho Attorney-General to petition the United States Supremo Court for a new trial. This was done, but the Unitod States Supreme Court helctf that it was powerless to act. By this t-imo the interest in the case was world wide, and there was a demonstration before tho United States Embassy in Russia. Next followed tho trial of Mrs. Mooney and a man named Israel Weinberg, a taxi-driver, who had been arrested for complicity in the crime. BotE were acquitted. Noxt the President's Mediations Commission reported that Mooney did not have a fair trial, and in January, 1918, President Wilson urged Gov. emov Stephens to grant Moouey a new trial. Two months later, Moouey hav> ing asked for a pardon, tho California Supreme Court reaffirmed his conviction, declaring that it could not review perjury disclosed after the trial. At the end of the year the United States Supreme Court refused to review the case. .

The matter was by now scon to be one for the State of California, and President AVilson twice urged Governor Stephens to act. The Governor then commuted Mooney's death, sentence to life imprisonment. That waa in November, 1018, aiid (the' next sensation eamo early in 1921, when John McDonald, who had testified that ho had seen Mobney and Billings at tho scene of the cxplosidu, repudiated his testimony, and said that ho had been told to identify Mooncy, had been coached in his testimony, and had altered his evidence at the request of a prosecutoi*.

Tho case dragged on through the years. In 1929 the Governor, now Gdv ernor Young, received an application for a pardon for Moouey and referred, it to the Advisory Pardon Board. Billings had also made a movo for a pardon, but tho Supreme Court of California, by a majority vote, declined to recommend one. Tho Court held that tho repudiation by McDonald of his testimony was not convincing, and that his former story rang true. A dissenting opinion, however, referred to a photograph showing Mooney and his wife (who- maintained that they wore never at the- seeno of tho crime) on n building some distance from tho place of the explosion. The photograph shows a clock which, when enlarged, indicated that the time was within the period at which McDonald placed Mooney and Billings near the scene of the explosion. In 1930 tho Governor rejected Mooney's application for a pardon, and though tho case was reopened in 1930, and Mr. James Walker, when Mayor of New York, made a special trip to California in connection with tho case in 1931, nothing has been accomplished until now. In April last Governor Eolph added his name to teh list of executives to refuse Mooney's effort to-- gain a pardon. .