"Substantial and Punitive"

"Richard Whitney to the bar!" This week in the New York General Sessions Court of red-haired Judge Owen W. Bohan these simple words finally summoned the onetime president of the New York Stock Exchange to be sentenced for stealing his customers' securities (TIME, March 14, et seq.). His heavy face haggard, his hands twitching, Richard Whitney stood up.

Three days before, the fallen financier had undergone his last inquisition--by the SEC, which sought to learn from his crimes a basis for preventing any more like them in Wall Street This morning he had said good-by to his wife and two daughters, all of whom have indicated that they will go to work. Standing silently in court he had just listened to a long, florid plea for mercy by his lawyer, Charles Tuttle. Excerpt:

"On Monday, the 7th day of last March, I met Mr. Richard Whitney for the first time. He then told me in effect that certain of his actions had been wrong . . . that he felt that a public confession was due from him. . . . He added that he was determined to meet the consequences. In 36 years of experience at the bar I had never heard such an astonishing statement. . . . There are other men without number who have sought legal advice to avoid or delay the law, have lent a willing ear to tactics or procrastination, have stooped to pleas denying mental or moral responsibility or have chosen the coward's course of flight from the country or from life. . . . Never once has he faltered. Never once has he asked consideration, much less mercy, for himself. With unbroken fortitude he has endured the shattering fall from his high estate and faced the pitiless publicity, the universal stares, the ceaseless interrogation with calm, with fidelity to the duty of the moment and with the knowledge that life can hold no other purpose for him but now and always to labor to repair the wrong which he has done. . . ."

But before Judge Bohan was another long plea from District Attorney Thomas Dewey demanding a "substantial and punitive sentence" on two counts of stealing from his wife's trust fund and from the portfolio of the New York Yacht Club. As Richard Whitney stood pale before him, Judge Bohan lost no time in showing with which plea his sympathies lay. Said he:

"Were you . . . the ordinary type of cashier or other faithless employe, the court might be disposed to temper justice with mercy. But in this case I cannot. Your course in the last six years has been a course of thefts and larcenies, of frauds and misrepresentations, of falsifications of books and financial statements covering losses of several millions of dollars. As has been said, you were caught like a rat in a trap. Your acts have been deliberate and intentional and were committed with an unusually full opportunity for understanding their effect upon others and the consequences to yourself. You have enjoyed the advantage of the best education in America. You had the fruits of business and financial success. . . . You headed the greatest financial institution in the world. All of these you betrayed. By your example the decent forces of the world received a setback. I can see nothing in your record to mitigate the circumstances. . . . I sentence you to an indeterminate term of from five to ten years in State's prison. . . ."

Visibly shattered, Richard Whitney was led out, started toward Sing Sing, in the company of one John Mahoney, who had been sentenced to 30 to 60 years for stealing $60.

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