QUEER CONTRADICTION IN AMERICAN LAW.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19060, 3 May 1930, Page 28 (Supplement)

QUEER CONTRADICTION IN AMERICAN LAW.

CAUSTIC COMMENT ON ACQUITTAL OF DOHENY. (Special to the “Star.”) SAN FRANCISCO, March 28. The dismissal in the Courts of Edward L. Doheny, the American multimillionaire oil magnate, who had been charged with bribery, caused great surprise throughout the United States, and produced some strong comment, particularly on the part of Senator Heflin, Democrat, of Alabama, who, in a statement issued in Washington, said: “The verdict in the Doheny case was a travesty on justice. The jurors who acquitted Doheny ought to be listed for life and never allowed to sit as jurors again. “If this was some poor starving man who stole a loaf of bread they would have sent him to gaol,” shouted Heflin. “If it was a poor woman who stole to live, she would have been sent to the penitentiary; but this millionaire, who sought to plunder the Government, gets his freedom. The jurors just sang ‘Bye, Bye Blackbird.' It is common knowledge that in the other oil trials jurors blossomed out in automobiles and bank accounts they had never had before. Every man and woman on the Doheny jury should be blacklisted for life. I hope to see the time w'hen we w'ill have one standard of justice for rich and poor alike.” At El Paso, Texas, Albert B. Fall’s granddaughter asked her mother: “If Mr Doheny is not guilty of giving a bribe, how can grandfather be guilty of accepting one?” “That, said the mother, “is a question the whole country is asking to-day.” A strange contradiction is involved in these two verdicts of District of Columbia juries. Fall, the former Cabinet Minister, was convicted of taking 100.000 dollars from Doheny and giving Dohenv oil lands w’orth, probably. 100,000.000 dollars, that had been set aside for the nation’s defence in the event of war. Now Doheny has been acquitted of bribing Fall. Some are contending that this indicated a fundamental weakness in the American jury system, others that it proves that a man with enough money cannot be reached by the law. Probably what it does prove is that the men and women on the Doheny jury were unwilling to send a man of sevent\'-four to prison.

Radio Police System. It is no longer quite safe to be professionally criminal, even in the more crime-hardened districts of New York and Chicago, since radio has entered the field of crime detection.

The Federal Radio Commission sometime ago set aside three short-w’ave frequencies exclusively for police operations. Now police motor-cars cruising the streets of fourteen cities, with receiving sets tuned to the signals of the stations out of the reach of the ordinary listener, wait only a flash from “headquarters” before they are off to the scene of murder, burglary or theft.

There have been instances of arrests within thirty seconds of the time this signal was given. On the average only one minute is necessary for the police car to reach the scene of crime. , So successful have been early experiments that the Radio Commission has been asked to broaden its present policy. The three frequencies now in use already are “overcrowded”, the commission is informed, and additional assignments will be necessary. . . Lieutenant Kenneth Cox, of the Chicago Police Department, told the commission that in cutting down the “escape period” crime's latest scientific adversary deals with the most vital phase of the police probleirp In a few vears every city of over 20 000 population will establish a radio police force Cox says. As there are 550 cities of this size in the United States, the situation demands that the commission form a definite and most liberal policy. Modern Architecture’s Trends. Variety may be the spice of life, hut there is a question as to how much

spice is advisable in architecture and city planning. At least one is led to speculate upon the matter from the statement of J. Monroe Hewlett, vicepresident of the American Institute of Architects, who says that “America is suffering from architectural indigestion.”

Hewlett, whp is an international figure in the world of art by reason of his fine mural paintings, adds that “thirst for variety that appears almost insatiable has produced hodge-podge in American cities that bears no resemblance to harmony, dignity* or individuality.”