AFTER 17 YEARS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18064, 15 April 1933, Page 5

AFTER 17 YEARS

NEW TRIAL ORDERED FAMOUS MOONEY .CASE SAN FRANCISCO BOMBING SAN FRANCISCO, April 1. After spending 17 years in gaol, Thomas J. Mooney, convicted of takmgi part in the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco, in which 10 persons were killed and 44 injured, has been granted a new trial. In the intervening years there have been a series of agitations, commissions, inquiries and public investigations, all aimed at disproving or affirming Mooney’s guilt. The whole American“public is pleased with the order for tho new trial, made, out by Superior Judge Louis H. “Ward, on the plea of the attorneys for the defence that Mooney should ho given a chance to acquit himself of the charges. Jurors and Bar supported the petition. The bombing occurred during that period when war interest in America was at fever pitch, yet, so shocking was the crime, that for a time it supplanted even the World War in the United States as a subject of national interest. Extracts from the newspapers of the period tell a grim story. In chronological order the facts were:—

July 23: Bomb explosion killed six and injured many in Preparedness Parade.

July 24: The Mayor, Mr. Rolph, offered 5000 dollars reward for apprehension of criminals. Witnesses told of having Seen man leave with suitcase on sidewalk. L H. Lambone offered 1000 dollars reward ; Dr. G. L. Painter and A. A. Fox die of injuries. July 25 : Rewards of 13,000 dollars offered for apprehension of anarchists responsible for the outrage; police behoved plot hatched in Chicago July 28: Six alleged dynamiters held in custody. August 5: District-Attorney Fickert notified that T. P. Shouts and W. D. Mahon, strike organisers, had employed Thomas Mooney, implicated in the bomb throwing during Preparedness Parade. Ever since that date Mooney’s trial and the death sentence, which was later commuted to life imprisonment, has been the subject of thousands of newspaper articles. Among those who interested themselves in his case were President Hoover, Governor Young, Mayor (now Governor) Rolph, President Wilson’s Mediation Commission, and the former Mayor of New York (Mr. Jimmie Walker). DEATH-BED CONFESSION Not the least unusual feature of a case which became known as “America’s Dreyfus case” and “The American Sergeant Grisdha,” was the alleged confession made by Louis J. Smith, of Cleveland, before ho died. Smith’s sistei - , her son and a friend of Smith declared in 1929 that he had confessed on his death-bed seven years previously that he had committed the crime which was keeping Mooney behind gaol walls for the rest of his life and making husky, black-haired man a prisoner with lined and pallid face and snow-white hair. Smith’s brother, Jess, also stated that Louis had told him of tho bombing on several occasions, and that ho had also admitted that, employed as a German spy just before America entered the war, he had blown up a consignment of ammunitions bound for Russia, near Washington. It was subsequently established that Smith had been employed as a dynamite mixer and that ho was in San Francisco at tho time of tho bombing Now that the trial has been granted, both Mooney and tho State may find difficulty in preparing their cases, as many of the important witnesses have died.

Mr. J. Garred, of Sydney, a member of the Commercial Travellers’ Association, who was in America when the Hoover Commission was investigating Mooney’s case in 1951, speaks with authority on the subject. Ho saw Mooney at tho San Francisco Hall of Justice, and later when he was whisked out of the court under an armed guard which kept back the big crowd of demonstrators.

“1 was struck by the conflicting evidence of tho witnesses,” says Mr. Garred, “and personally I think that if the same evidence tendered in 1916 was submitted now, Mooney would never have been convicted.”