COURT SENSATION

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 268, 12 November 1935, Page 5

COURT SENSATION

PERJURED EVIDENCE

MOONEY'S FREEDOM FIGHT. PROMISE OF A GOOD JOB. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, October 22. Providing the Tom Mooney habeas corpus hearing's greatest sensation, after I weeks of striking testimony in a case of world-wide importance, a surprise witness declared that Charles M. Fickert, the district attorney of San Francisco during the Preparedness Parade of 1016, had promised him a job if he would suppress evidence favouring Mooney, the so-called "American Dreyfus," who was convicted on perjured evidence and has served eighteen years in San Quentin Penitentiary after the San Francisco fatal bombing outrage. Charles A. Griffin is now a Seattle advertising man. At the time of the July 22, 1916, parade he was a parttime court reporter in San Francisco. From the witness stand at the Hall of Justice Griffin now testified he saw Mooney and his wife, Rena, on the roof of the Eilers Building at the moment the bomb was exploded at Steuart and Market Streets, a mile away. Griffin described has amazement when he bought a newspaper some time later and read that Mooney had been arrested for the crime. With the paper still in his hand, he testified, he hurried to Fickert's office. "Why, Mooney couldn't have planted that bomb. I saw them on the roof of the Eilere Building," he said he told Fickert. To which, he declared, Fickert replied: "Look here. Griffin, you have been practically a court deputy here and are well known. Yoii don't want to get mixed up in this case. Mooney and his gang are anarchists and ought to have been hanged long ago. Keep your mouth shut. Go some place —go to New York. If I want you as a witness I'll call you." "I was never called," added Griffin. A few days later, he said, he went back to see Fickert. "Don't talk td anybody

about this case and I'll get you a good job as court reporter with the grand jury," he said Fickert told him. "Anyway, you are mistaken about Mooney being on the Eilers Building. We have 20 or 30 witnesses who can prove he wasn't."

Changed His Mind. Cross-examined by deputy-Attorney General William F. Cleary, Griffin said that he took Fickert's advice about getting out of town and went to Salt Lake City. Before he left, however, he visited the late Judge William P. Lawlor, of San Francisco, and said: "Judge Lawlor advised me not to go clear to New York. He said, 'This looks like a nasty fight between capital and labour. Better not go too far away. And leave your address with Mr. Fickert. He may want to call you. , " "Why have you kept silent all these years ?" Cleary asked. "Well, I believed Mr. Fickert to be a man of integrity, and I took his word for it that Mooney was guilty. But since then I've changed my mind about Fickert," Griffin replied. "Hasn't your conscience bothered you?" Cleary asked. Griffin said it had, "since he changed his mind about Fickert." "After moving to Seattle," he continued, "I talked to some people at the Seattle Labour Temple about what I knew. They said I couldn't do anything about it, 'as the whole thing is a frameup' and warned me that 'you may be framed, too, if you mix in it.'" Asked how he recognised Mooney, Griffin said the Labour leader had been pointed out to him by the late author, Jack London. Mrs. Griffin, who followed her husband to the witness stand, said she had been with him on the roof, and testified Griffin had pointed Mooney out to her. She was not cross-examined and the hearing was adjourned for three days to be resumed in Portland, Oregon, to take the testimony of Frank B. Woods, friend of the late Frank C. Oxman, the cattle man whose evidence was subsequently disproved as being untrue. During a Court recess, Mr. Frank Walsh, of New York, the chief Moofley! counsel, was asked how the defence! lad i learned of Griffin's evidence. He I lid j Griffin had talked the tiling over \i ith j George F. Vandeveer, Seattle attor ley i and sportsman, who had coinmunic&tcd J with the defence. I