The Court That Tamed the West by Cahan Richard;Hinckle Pia;Ocken Jessica Royer;

Author:Cahan, Richard;Hinckle, Pia;Ocken, Jessica Royer;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heyday

FIG. 6-2

Defense attorneys Vincent Hallinan (left) and James MacInnis confer during Harry Bridges’s 1949 perjury trial. Hallinan was sentenced to six months in jail, and MacInnis to three months, for contempt of court. Courtesy of the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Later that month, the court of appeals ruled that he should be released. “There is no showing that Bridges has in the present juncture committed any recognizable crime, or that he has himself counseled or advocated sabotage or sought to foment strikes or the establishment of picket lines on the waterfront or impeded by other means the prompt loading and dispatch of ships from the Far East,” wrote Judges William Healy and William Orr. The appeals judges wrote that the effort to jail him was “as startling as it is novel.”

Bridges’s 1950 conviction was set aside by the Supreme Court three years later after the court determined that the three-year statute of limitations on perjury had already expired when he was indicted in 1948. Bridges’s citizenship was restored.

Amazingly, the government went after Bridges one more time, with a civil suit seeking his denaturalization in 1956. Once again, witnesses were trotted out to testify for and against Bridges. But unlike previous trials, Judge Goodman put an end to the folly. “The testimony of the ‘former Communists’ was tinged and colored with discrepancies, animosities, vituperations, hates, and above all, with lengthy speeches and declarations of viewpoints,” he wrote. The testimony of the witnesses did not add up to any proof: “To sift the truth from this welter of words of these witnesses is a task for the omniscient.” Goodman concluded that the government failed to prove that Bridges was a member of the Communist Party, and the saga was over.

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