Two Famous Prisoners

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17750, 29 June 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

Two Famous Prisoners

Next to Sacco and Vanzetti, the most famous prisoners America has had in recent years are Thomas J. Mooney and Warren K. Billings, who ■ire now serving life sentences in California prisons. Their oases are' even older than those of the famous pair who were executed In Massachusetts in 1927.

Mooney was sentenced to death early in 1917, Billings to life imprisonment late in 1916, In 1918 Mooney’s sentenoe was commuted by the Governor of California to life imprisonment, after President Wilson, with all the moral prestige whioh was his during the war, had repeatedly asked that he be given a new trial or, .at least, be not put to death,. The oase had attracted wide attention abroad, and Mr Wilson argued that the harmonious relations with the Allies were being jeopardised by it. American Liberals have fought unceasingly since then for the release of Mooney and Billings, a new committee having been formed a short time ago for this purpose. Mr C. C. Young, the present Governor of California, has promised to make an Independent inquiry into the faots, but those interested in the two prisoners, remembering the outcome of the “independent inquiry” Into the Saoco-Vanzettl case, are none too sanguine as to the result. The Alleged Crime. The important faots about the affair are few and easily stated. Mooney and Billings were sentenced for causing a bomb explosion whioh took plaoe during a “Preparedness Day" parade in San Prancisoo on July 22, 1916, in whioh nine persons were killed. Actually, however, there Is the best of reasons to believe that they were, like Sacco and Vanzetti, viotims of class prejudice and antipathy for their social philosophy. Mooney was a Radical “labour agitator” who took part in various strikes In the region around San Francisco. Billings, a muoh younger and less forceful man, was associated with him. For at least three years before the bomb explosion the same forces of “law and order" which succeeded in fastening that crime upon them had sought to send them to prison for other alleged crimes directly associated with labour struggles. ■ In 1913, for instance, Mooney was working with the leaders of a telephone linesmen’s strike in Contra Costa County, near San Francisco. Private deteotives in the pay of the employing corporation “found" materials for a bomb in a boat belonging to him, and he was arrested and tried three times for this, being acquitted each time. In the same year, and in con-

Mooney and

Agitation for

nection with the same strike, Billings was asked by one of the detectives, posing as a striker, to carry a suitcase into-a certain saloon in Sacramento, When he did so he was seized by other detectives, and the suitcase was opened and found to contain dynamite. For this he was sentenced to two years in prison, but was paroled before completing his term. In 1916, shortly before the bomb explosion, Mooney was active in another strike against an electric power company in San Francisco. One night ai “bomb explosion” took plaoe at one ojf the company’s transmission towers. It did damage to the extent of only about £6O, and gave every evidence of being the work of an agent provocateur. The same detective Who 'had "found" the dynamite in Mooney’s boat three years before sought to fasten this crime on him as well. A taxi driver who offered evidence in support of Mooney's innocence was visited by this deteotive and was told that if he would say that he had oarried Mooney to the scene of the explosion he would receive a reward of £IOOO, while if he refused his taxicab license would be cancelled. A similar offer was made to Billings, i Both men refused, and apparently because of this they were included a few weeks later among those arrested for the “Preparedness Day" explosion, the other defendants being Mr and Mrs Mooney. Mrs Mooney and the taxi-driver, named Israel Weinberg, were acquitted. As to the trial because of which Mooney and .Billings are still in prison, it may be said that there is now not one shred of substantial evidence against them. Every hostile witness has either been proved to be a perjurer or to be mentally unbalanced. The chief witness was an Oregon ranchman named F. C. Oxman, who averred that he saw Mooney, Billings, Weinberg, and two other persons, one a woman, drive up to the scene with a suitcase shortly before the explosion took plaoe. ,After thc trlal was ovor lQttors wore ’discovered which had boon written by Oxman to a friend in Illinois in which he invited this friend to come to California and offer perjured tetstlmony In support of his own Presently it was rovealod that ho himself had not been in San Franolsco on tho day of the oxplosion, and that his story was a ho from begin-

Billings ... An Their Release

• nlng to end. The same was found to be true of the other witnesses, some of whom confessed to having committed perjury under pressure from the District Attorney’s office, and others of whom were found to be notoriety-seeking eccentrics.

Judge’s Effort for Rolease. Oxman was tried for perjury, but the District Attorney's offloe, which had drilled him in his story told at the Mooney trial, was half-hearted, to put it mildly, in prosecuting him. California at that time was in hysterioal fear of “Radicalism,” which was associated in that State with the Itinerant ranch labourers, the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World). The jury believed Oxman had been fighting Radicalism, and he was acquitted. Charles M. Fickert, the Dlstrlot Attorney, who was responsible for the whole making of the case against Mooney and Billings, actually engaged the lawyer to defend Oxman, and the oost of his defence was paid by the Chamber of Commeroe, an ultra-Con-servative organisation of anti-union employers.

Judge Franklin Griffin, before whom Mooney had been tried, was shocked to learn that the testimony had been perjured, and Instantly began a struggle to get a new trial or have Mooney and Billings set free. Technicalities in the law, somewhat similar to those which made a new trial for Sacco and Vanzetti impossible in Massachusetts, prevented a new trial, and for some years all efforts have been concentrated on obtaining a pardon. A tireless worker for this purpose has been Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco Call and one of America’s most distinguished journalists, who has unearthed much of tho new evidence in the case. The appeals for clemency have also been signed by the Captain of Deteotives, who, innocently and in good faith, helped to prepare the case, and by every living member of tho Jury with one exception. Yet for more than ton years successive Governors of California havo fallod to act.

California Is one of (ho most Conservative States in thc Union, antiRadlcal feeling still runs high, and the prevailing sentiment seems to be that evon if Mooney and Billings arc innocent they arc undesirable characters and had bcLtor remain where they arc.