Untitled Report on Alleged Judicial Misconduct by Judge Harold Medina in the 1949 Smith Act Trial

N.p., n.d. (1949). Anonymously authored, untitled report. Folio; 60pp, mimeographed from typescript on legal-size sheeets (14" x 8-1/2"); ca. 15,000 words; stab-bound into plain card wrappers. Issued without imprint or attribution. Final ca. 30pp extensively highlighted in blue and red pencil; pencil annotation at bottom margin of p.30 suggests that this copy may have been the property of one of the eleven Smith Act defendants (see note below). Creasing to binder, with occasional dog-earing to text; aforementioned indications of use; Very Good.

A lengthy and extensively-documented report on alleged judicial misconduct in the 1949 trial of eleven Communist Party members for violation of the Smith Act. Though unattributed, the report appears to be addressed specifically to members of the legal profession, and its language strongly echoes that used by the ACLU in its various commentaries upon the Smith Act trials: "...In the United States Courthouse in Foley Square in New York a trial is in progress which merits the attention of every member of the American bar. Parallel with the trial of the defendants, there is being enacted a dramatic test of the right of a lawyer to represent his client in the face of a presiding judge's antagonism and under pressure of public sentiment against his client...newspaper reports have sought to give the impression that the lawyers have been guilty of misconduct which has brought threat of [contempt charges] from the Bench. The purpose of the present study is to ascertain from the record of the trial whether this is really a case of lawyers' misconduct or if, on the contrary, the Bar is faced with the serious problem of the right of a lawyer to defend zealously and conscientiously clients who are the leaders of a minority political group" (p.1).

The report goes on to document hundreds of courtroom interactions demonstrating Judge Harold Medina's outright hostility towards the Smith Act defendants and in particular towards their lawyers. In the end, all the defendants were convicted (and the convictions later upheld by the Supreme Court) but, more to the point, all five of the lawyers for the defense - Richard Gladstein; George W. Crockett, Jr; Harry Sacher; Abraham J. Isserman, and Louis McCabe - were found in contempt following the trial and sentenced to terms in prison. Two of them were later disbarred. The Smith Act trials effectively helped cast a pall over the radical left's expectation of an unbiased judicial system protecting it from attacks by political enemies.

A single marginal comment gives some evidence that this copy of the report belonged to one of the eleven Smith Act defendants. At the bottom margin of p.30, an unidentified reader has written, in response to a passage in the text: "This foolish statement shows our attorneys do not know what the case is, essentially. But it is only incidental, here, to a courageous fight;" and, with an arrow pointing directly to the offending paragraph: "In this thoughtless way, and I mean literally without thinking of what is the essence of the case, our well-meaning, courageous, intelligent lawyers make it doubly difficult to achieve their objective." A comparison of this handwriting with known examples of the defendants in the Foley Square trial yields no definite matches (Benjamin J. Davis is the closest possibility) - but examples for several of the defendants are either non-existent or inaccessible to us, so this is a potentially fruitful area for further research. In any event, a highly evocative and information-packed document from the height of Cold War anti-communist hysteria.