Old-Fashioned Justice

Many a racketeer last week viewed with alarm a reversion to horse-&-buggy justice when a Manhattan jury pointed Charles ("Lucky") Lucania and eight of his lieutenants toward stiff jail sentences by convicting them, not on an oblique income tax-evasion charge but directly for doing illicit business.

For three weeks prostitutes and bawds had paraded through the courtroom, while Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey questioned them on the details of their occupation (TIME, May 25). No old-fashioned vice trial was this. The prosecutor had been appointed at the request of New York's Governor Lehman, not to wipe out an ancient profession but to abolish rackets. Lucania and his prosperous executives had terrorized a large section of the city's dealers in flesh, had put prostitution on a chain-store basis.

At the end of the long trial through which sleek Businessman Lucania sat with reptilian calm, his high-powered lawyers launched into a 13-hour summation for the defense, attacking the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses, declaring that strumpets had been taken on wild parties by the state in order to induce them to testify. Mr. Dewey contented himself with a seven-hour answer. Urging the jury not to spare Lucania, he declared: "Unless you are willing to convict the top man you might as well acquit everyone."

Justice McCook summed up in words of homely wisdom: "Most of those pretty faces are but masks for tainted bodies. The prostitute is both victim and enticer and her life is full of lies. . . . [But] if you believe what she says, then the story stands and the fact that she is a prostitute is of no moment."

It was 10:55 Saturday night when the jury of business and professional men retired to consider the case. Rather than lock up the jurymen, Justice McCook went to sleep in his chambers. Lucania and his friends lay down in their cells. Their wives went home. Just after 5 the next morning the judge was roused from his sleep. Lucania & friends shuffled into court in wrinkled clothes. Prosecutor Dewey, on the other hand, bounced in with a fresh shave.

The verdict was "guilty." There were 62 specific charges against each of the nine defendants. Defense lawyers demanded that each juror be polled. It took three-quarters of an hour. Each juror declared each defendant guilty of every charge against him. Said Judge to Jurors: "I congratulate you on the service you have rendered the people and the righteousness of your verdict." He smiled in the Sabbath dawn. "And now run along."

Having convicted the racketeers, Special Prosecutor Dewey straightway last week went after the racketeers' lawyers. To the New York City Bar Association he sent the names and misdeeds of two lawyers who had done legal work for last week's defendants.

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