"Jokester"

Shrewd editors do not print in their columns wild and derogatory letters signed by fictitious names without first ascertaining the identity of the writers. Because in at least one such case he was not shrewd, Editor John Wesley Mapoles of the Hopewell (Va.) News last week found himself sharing a jail cell with a prominent Hopewell bootlegger.

The case began when Editor Mapoles, fined $10 for contempt of court because of a newsstory which offended Judge T. B. Robertson, appeared in court with 17 local lawyers to appeal his case. Soon afterward the following letter appeared in the "People's Forum" of the News:

"What a ludicrous incident that was Friday! Sixteen lawyers, all good and true, facing an irate court official. . . . If sixteen efficient men of the Virginia bar . . . have no success in pleading a case, it looks like that many men might be 'hefty' enough to remove the court bodily.

--JOKESTER.' "

Infuriated, Judge Robertson called Editor Mapoles into court again, demanded to know who "Jokester" was. The editor said the name of "A. P. Harp" was signed beneath the pseudonym. No Mr. Harp was found in Hopewell. Barked the judge: "Take him and lock him up, sergeant; take him and lock him up until he produces A. P. Harp or tells who really wrote that letter--not more than 30 days."

Stung by editorial criticism of his conduct of the Kentucky mine murder trials, Judge Henry R. Prewitt ruled that no representative of the Knoxville News-Sentinel (Scripps-Howard) may sit in his court "until that paper retracts the libelous, slanderous, false statements it has published about this and other Kentucky courts."

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