To the Legal Limit

"Corruption of public trust in high places, acts akin to treason and affecting the entire nation, cannot be tolerated or condoned. It appears conceded as a fact established during several thousand years, and not now to be philosophized away, that the fabric of justice cannot endure if mercy be permitted to set aside the penalties meted out in our gravest criminal cases by our highest law tribunal. . . . Parole issuance would be unjustifiable and incompatible with the welfare of society. . . ."

With these words the Federal Board of Parole in Washington last week decided to keep invalid, impoverished Albert Bacon Fall, 70, in the New Mexico State Penitentiary at Santa Fe to the legal limit of his year-and-a-day sentence. Petitions for his parole and for executive clemency had rolled in upon the Department of Justice from the not-too-sensitive Southwest. All were now sternly denied.

Convicted of accepting a $100,000 bribe from Oilman Edward Laurence Doheny while he was Secretary of the Interior, Prisoner No. 6991 has behaved himself well, should, with good time off, get out May 8. Still unpaid is his $100,000 fine. If he is unable to pay it, he will have to remain another 30 days in prison and take the pauper's oath. Prison medical facilities, the Board of Parole felt, were adequate for treating the heart trouble, chronic tuberculosis, chronic pleurisy and arthritis which many of his friends expected to kill Prisoner No. 6991 before he reached freedom.

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