Ohio Justice

One dewy morning two years ago, squat George Remus, onetime 'legger and Federal convict, chased his wife Imogene, who was suing him for divorce, across the grass of a Cincinnati park. He caught her, shot her dead. Tried for murder, he claimed she had plotted his death. He pleaded insanity, was acquitted. A writ of habeas corpus soon freed him from Ohio's State Hospital for the Criminal Insane. "Ohio justice," like "Indiana politics," became a national byword.

Last June at Columbus, Dr. James Howard Snook, 49, professor of veterinary medicine at Ohio State University, quarreled with Theora Hix, 24, coed. For three years they had loved surreptitiously, Dr. Snook plying her with aphrodisiacs.

Their quarrel arose because Miss Hix was jealous of his wife. Snook beat her four times over the head with an automobile hammer, cut her throat with a penknife, left her dead at a suburban rifle range where they had often trysted. Arrested, put on trial, Snook, cold, unmoved, said she had threatened to kill him, his wife, his young daughter, claimed he was emotionally insane, remembered nothing of his grisly deed. So vile was the testimony that no paper would publish it verbatim. Low-minded persons scavanged the official transcript, printed pamphlets omitting no horrid word, sold them on Columbus street corners. Last week a jury in 28 minutes convicted Snook of first degree murder, automatically carrying a death penalty.

Ohio citizens, remembering the Remus case, felt better, applauded the balancing of "Ohio justice."