make him divulge the names of his clients, though he admitted Emmitt
Warring was one. The others, he said, were known to the public only as
respectable businessmen. They were “more powerful” than Warring or even
the late Jimmy La Fontaine, who were only peanut-peddlers compared to
them, he said.
When pressed, Ford remembered a man by the name of Bettis whom he
represented; and Earl MacDonald and Attilio Acalotti. He said he
thought he had represented another defendant, named “Washington--I
think it was George Washington, and that’s all I can remember now.”
Ford’s business is not confined to the gambling and hustling
fraternity. You see his name bob up in court on almost every kind of
criminal case. One of his recent ones was the arrest of two men on
charges of violating the alcohol tax laws.
“Did you have a warrant?” Ford thundered at the ATU agent. When he
conceded he had not, Ford asked, “How did you know this is alcohol?
Don’t you know it is illegal to arrest people without a warrant?”
“I smelled the alcohol,” declared Agent Sweeney. “I’ve been in
this business for 17 years and I’ve developed a keen sense of
smell--especially for alcohol.”
Ford’s clients were accused of unloading a truck with 127 gallons of
moonshine whiskey.
Ford’s office has practically a monopoly on the setting up of and
organizing after-hour bottle-clubs. He is generally given credit by the
local legal fraternity for being the genius who figured out the way to
sidestep the 2 o’clock closing ordinance. His associate is defending
the confessed killer in the recent Hideaway shooting; Ford himself
secured the Hideaway’s after-hours charter.
Ford’s operations are not confined to the District, but lap over into
nearby Maryland, where, as trustee for the multi-million-dollar estate
of gambler La Fontaine, he finds plenty of activity. Many of the
gamblers and other shady citizens whom he represents operate across
state lines. The boundaries often come to the aid of his clients. For
many offenses, especially most of those before the District Municipal
Court, there is no method whereby authorities can extradite defendants
from Maryland or Virginia, and vice versa. It is very much as if a
law-breaker could take refuge in Brooklyn when wanted in Manhattan,
both boroughs of New York City. There is no more physical difference
between Prince Georges, Maryland, and the District than that.
This all-service Ford is chairman of the Criminal Law Committee of the
District Bar Association.
Another lawyer who frequently appears in court for arrested hustlers is
Ed Buckley.
Fifth Street, between Indiana and D, is called “The Fifth Street
Lawyers’ Association,” because so many bondsmen, shysters and good
lawyers have offices there.
We asked a friend to name the real sure shot mouthpiece who could
spring you if you were arrested for murder and knew you were guilty.
He said William Leahy was the best trial lawyer in town and one of the
most respected. James Laughlin, who himself was once arrested but not
prosecuted after a reversal, is another successful practitioner.
Others who do considerable criminal defense work are Denny Hughes, Sol
Littenberg and Milton Ehrlich.
Another interesting criminal lawyer is Robert I. Miller, who shot and
killed a St. Elizabeth’s Hospital psychiatrist whom he suspected of
playing with Mrs. Miller. The shooting took place at about noon one
day, in the heart of the shopping section at 11th and G Streets. He
was represented by H. Mason Welch, who sob-storied the jury into an
acquittal on the “unwritten law.”
Miller is not the smartest lawyer in town, but he does a tremendous
business defending Negroes and other superstitious criminals who engage
him sometimes just to sit at the trial table for good luck, because
he beat his own case. Miller, an ostentatious person, often wipes his
glasses with a $100 bill while addressing a jury. He claimed close
friendship to Roosevelt and Garner and decorates his office with photos
of them. He ran a Republicans-for-Roosevelt club.
Some lawyers win their cases through merit, others through a fix. Still
others, who weren’t envied by their colleagues, had to do it the hard
way when a certain former bachelor-lady judge, who shall be nameless,
rendered her verdicts in favor of clients of the mouthpieces whose
persuasion grew between covers not on law books. She was an awful
tomato, and many attorneys preferred to lose their cases.
Judge Hitz, the humorist of the local bench, got off a dilly when he
discovered the plaintiff in a matrimonial action was still living with
her husband, the whole divorce proceedings being a sham to swindle
creditors. Said the judge, in dismissing the action, “You can’t
litigate by day and fornicate by night.”
31. THE BOSSES
The last orthodox political boss of Washington was Alexander Robey
Shepherd. When he finished with the city treasury, Congress voted to
end home rule and took back the government.
From the time of its incorporation as a city, in 1802, Washington was
run by elected mayors and aldermen. In 1871, in President Grant’s
administration, it was turned into a territory, similar to Alaska or
Hawaii, with delegates in Congress and a large measure of home rule.
Shepherd was a pal of General Grant, who had numerous smelly friends.
Shepherd’s stewardship was modern in every respect. He went in for a
New Deal on a big scale. The town was torn up while Shepherd paved
streets, installed sewers--sometimes two sets to one avenue--went
in for slum clearance, built squares, parks, circles, gas-mains and
sidewalks. Shepherd began life as a plumber, and showed partiality for
anything with pipes.
Shepherd had built up a small Tammany to keep his boys in power. Votes
were bartered, crimes were fixed, laws were perverted. When the end
came, Shepherd skipped and hid out until the statute of limitations ran
out. When he returned they greeted him with a brass band, like New York
did Jimmy Walker, and built him a statue.
The Congress was more interested in the welfare of the District of
Columbia 75 years ago than it is now. Unable to stomach the stench, it
decided to exercise its Constitutional right to govern the District,
and substituted the present commission-form of government in place of
home rule and local suffrage.
Under the present setup, the executive is a three-man commission,
appointed by the President for a three-year term. One must be from the
Corps of Engineers of the Army. On the law books, these commissioners
have no more power than a New York City Borough President They can
do practically nothing without approval from Congress. But by virtue
of the apathy that prevails in Washington, these men have become
little czars. Congress, by statute, has empowered the commissioners
to make building and plumbing regulations and to create and enforce
all reasonable police and other city rules. But they do not levy taxes
or make appropriations. That is done by Congress. And that’s the
District’s chief squawk.
Every buck collected in Washington goes into the general funds of the
U.S. Treasury; not earmarked for the District. All payments come out
of the same general fund. The result is that, while Congress pays up
to ten percent of the cost of local government, the citizens bear the
other 90 percent. But 52 percent of all the property is tax-exempt. The
government owns more than 40 percent, the rest belongs to embassies,
tax-free organizations like the Red Cross, etc. So the residents
complain that the rich U.S. government is riding along on a free pass,
leaving local property to bear the cost of supporting the huge Federal
establishment.
The present commissioners are John Russell Young, president of the
Board; Guy Mason, and Brigadier General Gordon R. Young, the engineer
commissioner. Mason’s term expired in February, 1951, but he is
permitted to serve until another is appointed or he be reappointed.
Under them, the commissioners have a large staff of special assistants,
private secretaries, administrative assistants and others who have
access to their offices. We are just telling you this in case you are
thinking of making a fix, for one of these persons is the guy to see.
One of the three commissioners is noted for his ability to bollix
everything up after a big, bad night--which is almost every night.
Even his enemies consider inebriation a valid excuse for his befuddled
condition. A Congressman investigating the Commission said, “After all,
the poor guy always has a hangover. You can’t blame him for what he
does when he feels awful.”
Under the commissioners are such usual municipal executive officers
as assessors, auditors, tax collectors, license commissioners and
bureaus of public welfare, recreation, traffic, police, fire, health,
corrections; and--oh, yes--the corporation counsel.
The observer who takes a gander at the judicial branch of the District
government sometimes wonders if he followed Lewis Carroll’s Alice down
into the rabbit hole.
The judicial powers are exercised by the District courts, which sit not
only for federal cases, but for felonious breaches of the local law,
too; and by municipal courts, judges of which are appointed for six
years. They have jurisdiction over minor suits and unimportant law and
ordinance violations.
Members of the federal judiciary for the District of Columbia need not
be local residents. They may be appointed from anywhere in the country.
Usually these plums go to deserving Democrats from elsewhere. At this
writing there are 12 District judges and 10 municipal court judges,
in addition to justices of the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia, the Municipal Court of Appeals, and the Juvenile
Court.
The District courts serve a two-fold function. They act both as federal
courts and as superior state courts, handling civil and criminal
matters. No judges of either court are elected by the local citizens or
by their representatives. They have no interest in the community. They
do not partake of a legacy of local common law and custom.
If any courts should be impartial, those of the District might be. But
they are not. Some of the judges are venal, inefficient party hacks or
militant propagandists for left-wing philosophies.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has the most overworked
office in the land. He not only functions as a local district attorney
and as United States attorney, but triples in brass with a job
corresponding to a state attorney general. But his budget and the
number of assistants allotted him are on a per capita population basis,
as though he had to prosecute only federal cases in any city the size
of Washington.
In the prosecution of some minor cases in municipal court alone has
he any assistance. The city Corporation Counsel’s office handles
those. To demonstrate again what can happen when a bureaucracy turns
dictator--the criminal division of his office has no law library. It
does not have a secretary.
If he or his assistants want to check a law or a decision they have to
buy their own books. He is given no fund to keep records, so no records
are kept. It is almost impossible for him to find out the disposition
of cases. He has only five low-paid assistants assigned to municipal
criminal courts, and these are so overworked, sometimes they have
to prosecute cases on an average of one every three minutes. Under
District law, defendants are permitted jury trials in all cases where
the penalty is in excess of ninety days or a $300 fine. It is no wonder
the Corporation Counsel is usually willing to take a plea of disorderly
conduct, instead. The maximum penalty for that is $25, no jail.
Persons accused of serious crimes under federal law must be booked
immediately before a United States Commissioner, as all crimes in the
District, even those like assault, robbery, drunken driving, gambling,
homicide, and rape, which elsewhere belong exclusively to the state,
are federal matters here.
We gave you a rough idea of the volume of such criminal activities
in the District. If those defendants had been arrested for the same
offenses in states, they would be booked before a magistrate, a police
court or a justice of the peace. There are none such in Washington
other than the judges. The chief committing magistrate is the United
States Commissioner, and he has no assistants. He not only performs the
federal duties that U.S. Commissioners in other towns assume, but he
also acts as a committing magistrate on all local felony charges in the
District.
A U.S. Commissioner is not a judge. He is chosen by the local Federal
bench. He serves without salary on a fee basis, but is limited by
statute to a maximum of $9,400 a year, out of which he is required
to pay office rent and stenographic expenses. The law permits a
U.S. Commissioner to practice law on the side, and many in other
jurisdictions do, but, because the D.C. office is the busiest in the
country, he has no time to handle outside cases. The Commissioner is
on duty 24 hours a day. There is no night court. He is it. Police
awaken him at any hour of the night when they make important arrests
or require warrants, and he is busy at hearings, setting bail, and
presiding at arraignments all day.
When you get into the U.S. Attorney’s office you really see how things
are loused up here. The rich Federal government apparently has dough to
toss away everywhere else, but not in its own home. Of course, there
are no faithful voters to be placated here. District Attorney Fay has
only 34 men on his staff; his office is required to do more work than
the entire Second Judicial Circuit, which includes the entire states of
Vermont, Connecticut and the four districts of New York. His budget is
so limited, most of his assistants receive only about $4,000 a year,
and so the turnover is terrific; young men just out of law school go
to work for him for a couple of years, then go out to make a living.
His office is so understaffed, there are not enough employes around to
handle all complaints. It is possible to walk in and rifle the files
at will. Many shyster lawyers often do that, killing the cases against
their clients.
With such a small, unseasoned staff, it is no wonder the complaint
desk in the U.S. Attorney’s office has been compared to “a bargain
grocery counter.” It looks very much like one. It’s a long wooden
shelf behind which a deputy district attorney stands and does business
with plaintiffs, defendants, cops and lawyers across it. We noted that
police may not enter their own complaints. They must bring them to the
complaint bureau of the U.S. Attorney, before the hearing in court. It
is then up to the U.S. Attorney’s office alone to determine whether the
complaint will be made.
What happens is that, every day, thousands of people mill around in
this complaint room. An onlooker can’t tell who are cops, lawyers or
prisoners. When the arresting officer speaks to the deputy D.A., he
does so in this cut-rate counter atmosphere, before the defendant and
his lawyer. There is no privacy. The cop has to spill his case to the
opposition. The defense lawyer then sets up an argument for dropping
the case or reducing the charge. The officials are so harassed, they
try to dispense with as much work as possible, which accounts for a
hefty proportion of pinches that never get past this bureau.
Sometimes a youngster just out of law school is the “grocery clerk.”
He makes such grave rulings as deciding not to prosecute a homicide
charge. These law clerks arrogate to themselves the rights and
prerogatives of the courts. When the D.A. decides to go before the
grand jury, he usually asks for an indictment for only one offense,
even if the accused has been charged with twenty. Elsewhere the custom
is to indict on each count and try on one or two, leaving the others
hanging over the defendant. That does not happen in Washington. After a
prisoner is discharged and commits a crime in some other jurisdiction
there is no record for probation officers there of other outstanding
charges against him. That’s another reason why the professionals like
to practice their trades in Washington.
There’s another booby-trap for the law. The prosecuting and corrective
branches of the government don’t take the cops into their confidence
when a prisoner is paroled. Elsewhere the police are notified when
a parolee is back on the streets, so they can keep an eye on him.
In Washington this is considered an invasion of the convict’s
Constitutional rights.
If the defendant cannot make a deal before the complaint bureau, his
lawyer is entitled on demand to get possession of the file on his case.
The place is so understaffed, with not enough stenographers, that the
only notes in these files are brief pencilled memoranda jotted down
by the Deputy District Attorney. There is never a complete record.
It is simple for defense lawyers to sneak some of the notes out of a
file; they’ll never be missed, because no carbon copies are made. The
overworked deputies can seldom remember what they wrote.
When the trial is scheduled, the deputy prosecutor seldom has an
opportunity to read the files, even if there were complete data.
Felony cases are often ground out in District Court at the rate of one
an hour, including time out for picking juries. When a U.S. Attorney
finishes with one case, the clerk hands him a folder on the next.
That is the first time he ever saw it. Add to this the fact that the
prosecutors do not work with the police in preparing a case, and you
can see what “confusion twice confounded” means.
One of the most unusual features in the setup of the District
government is the office of the Coroner. Until recently, this
functionary, who need not be a physician, had no laboratory. What
he has now is incomplete. He has no medical examiner and only a few
low-paid researchers.
But he has a swell job, with a ten-year tenure and a courtroom better
than the U.S. Commissioner’s. The present Coroner has virtually set
himself up as a judge, with no authority in law, and is said by his
critics to work with a gavel instead of a scalpel. He is one of the
town’s most powerful functionaries.
Among the many strange quirks of local law is one which requires the
Coroner at times to serve as a constable and to make levies. When
the Coroner acts as a coroner, he holds court like a judge. And he
thinks he is one, too. He has frequently discharged from custody
persons accused of homicide, who had been held without bail by a U.S.
Commissioner. He often sets bail and discharges defendants on bail,
though there are no statutes authorizing such procedure, and he has so
admitted under oath.
There have been instances when the Coroner has ruled a death was
justifiable homicide and released the prisoner. Though this is no bar
to subsequent indictment, prisoners often flee the jurisdiction before
the prosecuting attorney knows what has happened. The law does not
permit the coroner to discharge any person.
Coroner’s juries are impaneled by that official to meet his own
preconceived ideas and prejudices. There is no requirement that a
coroner’s juror must even be able to read or write. The salary is $7 a
day, and the Coroner has his favorites. Some men served as many as 31
times last year.
The Coroner frequently discharges the accused prisoners on grounds of
justifiable homicide, despite evidence that they had committed other
crimes at the same time, such as carrying concealed weapons or selling
narcotics. The coroner then shrugs his shoulders and says those things
are none of his business.
There have been known instances of jury fixing. Through the proper
channels, a charge of a death caused by reckless driving has been
reduced to an innocuous misdemeanor or dismissed completely. One of
the coroner’s deputies was a notorious abortionist who performed the
autopsies on his own victims.
Too bad Boss Shepherd isn’t around today. He could appreciate what the
backroom boys have done to the District government.
32. MONARCHS OF THE METROPOLIS
Since wood-cuts added to the native press the element of pictorial
illustration, cartoonists have caricatured the American alderman.
His heavy foot is on the bottom rung of the legislative ladder. The
“gray wolves” of Chicago were known around the globe for venality,
degradation and cold-blooded chicanery. The Tammany members of the
board, the San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, New Orleans,
Boston, Albany and St. Louis “city fathers” were in their most
nefarious days gangsters, brothel-keepers and police court shysters,
overlaid with a refined sprinkling of saloon-keepers.
That mixture does not reflect the complexion of our Congress. But
when, twice a month, they sit as the Board of Aldermen of the city of
Washington, they are about as dignified and statesmanlike as the city
council of Peoria.
The Constitution says, “The Congress shall have power to exercise
exclusive legislation over such District.”
The actual detail of city government is delegated on the committee
system and for all practical purposes the rulers of everything within
the Columbia confines are 13 Senators and 25 Representatives on the
District committees. In an extremity they can be overruled by their
chambers and the President could veto any of their acts, but no one
remembers when such a thing happened.
There is a certain local prestige about being a D.C. committeeman. He
probably could with impunity drive through a red light or spit on the
sidewalk, or even jaywalk, which no unprivileged person this side of
an ambassador may dare without at least a stiff bawling out. But the
members of Congress assigned to weighty national and world problems
shun the task of managing the municipality.
Of the 38 who are completely responsible for every law, appropriation
and tax measure in this city of almost a million, only two in the
81st Congress came from communities as large as or larger. They were
Congressmen Arthur G. Klein, of New York City, and John F. Kennedy,
of Boston. Only three others in the last Congress came from cities
with a population in excess of 100,000--Senator Estes Kefauver, of
Chattanooga, Tenn., 130,000; Senator Harry Darby, of Kansas City,
Kans., 130,000; and Congressman John J. Allan, of Oakland, Calif.,
380,000. Darby is not in the 82nd Congress.
In other words, 33 of the 38 Senators and Representatives who ruled
this metropolis in the 81st Congress were from farms, villages, and
rural towns, that include Fairmont, W. Va.; Lander, Wyo.; Bristol,
R.I.; Middleboro, Del.; Madison, S.D.; Skowhegan, Maine; Burley, Ida.;
Florence, S.C.; Okolona, Miss.; College Station, Tex.; Scottsboro,
Ala.; Stone Mountain, Ga.; Cedar City, Utah; Hammond, La.; Kennett,
Mo.; Carrollton, Ill.; Frostburg, Md.; Glencoe, Minn.; Decorah, Ia.;
Rosemont, Pa.; and Farrell, Pa. Even those who were sincere did not and
could not understand the problems of a giant city.
In the current Congress there are a few more city slickers on the
committee: Senators Butler, of Baltimore; Bennet of Salt Lake, and
Pastore of Providence.
From time to time, about once every ten years, Congress gets appalled
at its own reflection and decides to investigate its own municipal
creation. After such probes a few anemic recommendations are submitted
to the Congress, a few minor corrective bills are passed. Then the
speakeasies and gambling houses reopen, the dope peddlers and murderers
come out again, and once more life goes on, as Washington life goes.
The last time Congress got in a mood of righteous selfexamination
was in 1950, when a sub-committee of five was appointed by the House
District of Columbia Committee to investigate crime and law-enforcement
in the capital. The sub-committee chairman was James C. Davis, of
Georgia, a sober and sincere lawyer with a distinguished record as a
crusading superior court judge and member of Congress. The Congress
originally voted the handsome sum of $10,000 to this committee, with
which it was expected to dig up the dirt on a billion-dollar-a-year
vice establishment.