Misdemeanor

In New York State, it is no great crime to spit in a subway car or on the street. It is no great crime to wake sleeping citizens with ribald songs, to walk on the grass. According to the State statutes these are only misdemeanors, minor offences which are not felonies. For a misdemeanor, a man may spend at most a year in jail, pay a $500 fine.

Maurice E. Connolly, for 17 years Borough President of Queens, N. Y., has not been spitting, grass-walking, disturbing. But last week, in the Queens County Court House, he was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the City in $29,500,000 contracts for sewer construction. Famed Lawyer Emory Roy Buckner, conducting the State's prosecution, showed circumstantial evidence that Mr. Connolly had aided the late John M. ("Gentleman Jack") Phillips to achieve a sewer pipe monopoly in Queens Borough. In 1917 specifications were doctored to require the kind of pipe that only Mr. Phillips could sell. From 1917 to 1927 Mr. Phillips' prices were exorbitant. Lawyer Buckner dramatically displayed them on a chart. Mr. Connolly had the power to jockey contracts. He seemed to have awarded them as he wished. He mysteriously acquired thousands of dollars. Mr. Connolly, said many, looked like material for a long-time jailbird.

Famed Lawyer Max D. Steuer for the defense, employed his familiar theatricalities to emphasize the purely inferential nature of the testimony. The late Mr. Phillips, he said, was the true rogue. He had made more than $3,000,000 in graft. "I hope that to God he has made a satisfactory reckoning." screamed Lawyer Steuer. The corpulent Mr. Connolly was pictured as the victim of persecution. But shades of the prison house still gathered about the ex-Borough President.

The haggard jury said GUILTY after 24 hours of bickering. Justice Arthur Sidney Tompkins gave the maximum penalty. Many were shocked. It appeared that conspiracy to defraud the city, when millions were involved, was simply a misdemeanor. Mr. Connolly was sentenced to a year in jail, a fine of $500. Criminally he had attained no greater stature than a subway spitter.

Engineer Frederick Seely, aide-de-camp of Mr. Connolly, was also convicted of misdemeanor. His sentence was suspended. Mr. Connolly had hardly spent two days in welfare island prison when Lawyer Steuer obtained a certificate of reasonable doubt on the conviction. Mr. Connolly was released on $5,000 bail. Glum experts figured that unless the grafters could be forced to surrender some $10,000,000, the sewer conspiracy would cost every man, woman & child in Greater New York $2.82.