GANGSTER POLITICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1939, Page 5

GANGSTER POLITICS

JAMES HINES CONVICTED IN NEW YORK MR. T. DEWEY’S SPECTACULAR VICTORY. MAY ASSURE NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENCY. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. NEW YORK, February 25. The jury, after seven hours’ deliberation, today convicted the former Tammany Hall leader, James Hines, on all 13 counts in the indictment which charged him with conspiring with gangsters to create and operate a “policy racket” estimated at 20,000,000 dollars annually. Hines faces a maximum of 27 years’ imprisonment. It was a spectacular victory for New York’s special racket and vice-prosecutor, Mr Thomas Dewey. Most observers were expecting an acquittal and it is now considered that Mr Dewej' will be almost assured of the Republican nomination for President in .1940. James Hines, Tammany Hall’s most powerful individual district leader, was arrested last May on lottery charges. He was charged with attempting to “influence and intimidate judicial officers and others charged with the duty oi enforcing and administering the laws of New York.” Hines’s arrest caused a sensation. It was made possible through the confession- of three members of the “Dutch” Schultz gang indicating that Hines provided protection against arrest and prosecution of this most notorious racketeer whose gains were estimated to total one hundred million dollars from the Numbers Lottery, in which even school children’s pennies were raked in. Hines was released on 20,000 dollars bail.

Mr Dewey, who was engaged in a bitter word battle with Hines’s attorney, in which the latter came off second best, intimated that the grand jury indictment would show that Hines consorted and shared profits with some of the most vicious gangster figures of recent years, including Bedises, Schultz, and the notorious Dixie Davis, and that he actively intimated judges and other law-enforcement officers who attempted to bring these men to justice. The arrest of Hines marked the first arraignment on serious charges of a Tammany leader for many years. Hines was also charged with receiving 500 to 5000 dollars weekly as a “rake off” from the Numbers racket. Tammany Hall is the headquarters of the Democratic Party “machine” in New York. Till recently it held undisputed sway over city politics.