The Rosenberg Trial

by

Jake Kobrick

Research Historian, Federal Judicial History Office, 

Federal Judicial Center

Prepared for inclusion in the project

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Federal Judicial Center

Federal Judicial History Office

2013

This Federal Judicial Center publication was undertaken in furtherance of the Center’s 

statutory mission to “conduct, coordinate, and encourage programs relating to the 

history of the judicial branch of the United States government.” The views expressed 

are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Federal Judicial Center.

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Contents

United States v. Rosenberg, et al.—A Short Narrative, 1

Introduction, 1

The arrests and indictments, 2

The trial, 3

The verdicts and sentences, 5

The appeals, 6

The aftermath and legacy, 9

The Federal Courts and Their Jurisdiction, 11

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 11

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 11

Supreme Court of the United States, 11

The Judicial Process: A Chronology, 13

Legal Questions Before the Courts, 17

Were the defendants guilty of conspiring to commit espionage to aid the Soviet Union 

by providing it, during wartime, with classified information regarding the national 

defense of the United States? 17

Did the prosecution deprive the defendants of a fair trial by knowingly using perjured 

testimony from David Greenglass? 17

Did the admission of evidence of the defendants’ admiration for the Soviet Union and 

membership in the Communist Party deprive them of a fair trial? 18

Did the behavior of Judge Kaufman deprive the defendants of a fair trial? 19

Did publicity before and during the trial create an environment in which the 

defendants could not receive a fair trial? 19

Did a press conference given by U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol, in the midst of the trial, 

regarding the arrest for perjury of an associate of Julius Rosenberg and Morton 

Sobell, deprive the defendants of a fair trial? 20

Did the Rosenbergs’ death sentences violate the constitutional ban on cruel and 

unusual punishment? 21

Should the defendants have been sentenced under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 

rather than the Espionage Act of 1917? 21

Did the Supreme Court have the power to vacate the stay of execution issued by Justice 

Douglas? 22

Legal Arguments in Court, 23

The attorneys for the U.S. government, 23

The attorneys for the defendants, 24
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Biographies, 25

Communist Party USA, 25

Julius Rosenberg, 26

Ethel Rosenberg, 27

Morton Sobell, 28

David Greenglass, 30

Ruth Greenglass, 31

Harry Gold, 33

Irving Saypol, 34

Roy Cohn, 35

Emanuel Bloch, 36

Irving Kaufman, 37

Jerome Frank, 39

William O. Douglas, 40

Felix Frankfurter, 41

Media Coverage and Public Debates, 43

Historical Documents, 47

Emanuel Bloch, closing argument for the defense, 47

Irving Saypol, closing argument for the government, 48

Judge Irving Kaufman, charge to the jury, 49

Judge Irving Kaufman, sentencing of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 50

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, decision on the defendants’ appeal of their 

convictions, 51

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, decision on defendants’ 

motion to have their sentences overturned, 53

Supreme Court of the United States, opinions regarding stay granted by Justice 

Douglas, 54

Federal statutes regarding espionage, 56

President Dwight Eisenhower, statement regarding executive clemency, 57

Intercepted Soviet intelligence cable regarding Ethel Rosenberg, 58

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, prison correspondence, 59

Ethel Rosenberg, letter to President Dwight Eisenhower, 61

Letters to Justice William Douglas regarding the stay of execution, 63

U.S. Representative Elijah Forrester, remarks on Rosenberg protests, 65

Los Angeles Times, editorials regarding Rosenberg executions, 66

Bibliography, 69
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1

United States v. Rosenberg, et al.—A Short 

Narrative

Introduction

The 1951 trial of Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell, Communists 

accused of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, drew worldwide 

attention at a time of heightened American concerns about nuclear warfare, Soviet 

aggression, and Communist subversion. In the eyes of those who believed the United 

States to be under siege by Communists, the defendants were powerful symbols of the 

threat of subversion. For Americans on the left who had participated in radical political 

and labor movements in the 1930s and 1940s, the case aroused fears of government 

persecution. The Rosenberg case has remained alive in public memory, generations 

after its conclusion, as a watershed political and cultural event of the Cold War era.

A confluence of events between 1948 and 1950 convinced many Americans that 

Communists were working toward global domination and that the Soviet Union 

posed a threat to the United States. The Cold War intensified in 1948 when the Soviets attempted to expand their influence in Europe by backing a Communist coup 

in Czechoslovakia and blockading portions of Berlin that had been occupied by the 

United States, Britain, and France since the end of World War II. Developments in 

Asia stoked fears as well, as Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong took control 

of the mainland in October 1949 and forced nationalist forces to flee to the island of 

Taiwan. In June 1950, the Soviet- and Chinese-backed state of North Korea invaded 

South Korea, beginning a conflict that soon involved American troops in the fight 

to repel the Communist invaders.

Perhaps most important, in August 1949, the Soviets conducted their first successful test of the atomic bomb, shocking many in the United States who had believed the U.S.S.R. to be several years away from attaining a nuclear weapon. Since 

the development of its first atomic bomb in July 1945, the United States government 

had viewed the bomb as a major asset, particularly as a deterrent to Soviet expansion 

in Eastern Europe. News of the test sparked fears of nuclear warfare and raised the 

possibility of a Soviet first strike on a major U.S. city. The Los Angeles Times asserted 

that the Soviets’ development of the bomb placed “the very existence of the western 

world at stake.” 

Meanwhile, events within the United States drew attention to the potential for 

Soviet infiltration of the federal government. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former 

Soviet spy who had since become a zealous anti-Communist, testified before the 

House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee, describing the Communist Party as dedicated to the infiltration and eventual overthrow of the United 

States government. Chambers identified Alger Hiss, a former high-ranking official 
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of the State Department, as a Communist spy. After denying the charge, Hiss was 

convicted of perjury in a trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of 

New York in 1950. Also in 1950, the House of Representatives Un-American Activities 

Committee investigated possible Communist influence in Hollywood, and Senator 

Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin began his crusade to uncover Communist infiltration 

in the federal government. 

Suspected Soviet influence and domestic subversion prompted a series of federal 

prosecutions. In 1948, eleven leaders of the Communist Party USA were indicted 

for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government, and in 1951 their 

convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court in Dennis v. United States. By the time 

of the Rosenberg trial, federal prosecutors in several high-profile trials had argued 

successfully that membership in the Communist Party was itself evidence of an active 

commitment to the overthrow of the U.S. government.

As prosecutors, political leaders, and much of the public believed, the Communist 

Party USA was actively involved in Soviet espionage in the United States. As would 

be publicly documented only in the 1990s with the release of intercepted cables and 

the opening of Soviet archives, hundreds of American Communists and party supporters worked as part of an extensive network of spies in the 1930s and 1940s. In 

the 1930s, domestic Communists working for the Soviets focused mainly on political 

organization and on obtaining American foreign policy secrets, particularly with 

respect to potential threats posed by Germany and Japan. Beginning in 1941, the 

Soviets placed a greater emphasis on using the Communist Party USA as a source 

for military and technical secrets, with gathering information about the American 

atomic bomb program the top priority.

The arrests and indictments

In February 1950, British authorities arrested Klaus Fuchs, a German-born scientist 

living in England, on suspicion of providing the Soviet Union with classified information regarding the American atomic bomb program in Los Alamos, New Mexico, 

on which he had worked. Fuchs’ confession led to the arrest in May 1950 of Philadelphia chemist Harry Gold, who served as a courier between Fuchs and Fuchs’ Soviet 

handler, Anatoli Yakovlev. Gold made a full confession as well, informing the FBI of 

his June 1945 encounter with a U.S. Army officer who provided him with classified 

information from Los Alamos, which Gold then turned over to Yakovlev. Gold’s description of the man he met led the authorities to Sergeant David Greenglass, whom 

authorities arrested in June 1950.

Like Fuchs and Gold, Greenglass quickly confessed, admitting that his wife, Ruth, 

had been involved in espionage as well. Both David and Ruth Greenglass soon agreed 

to cooperate with the government’s investigation. They blamed David’s sister Ethel 

Rosenberg and her husband Julius, who, they claimed, had indoctrinated them with 
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Communist beliefs and recruited them into their espionage ring. Although they made 

no formal deal with the government, the Greenglasses hoped that their cooperation 

would secure a lighter sentence for David and spare Ruth from prosecution. U.S. 

Attorney Irving Saypol and his assistant, Roy Cohn, repeatedly warned the couple 

that Ruth Greenglass could be charged as well if they did not disclose all they knew, 

particularly regarding Ethel Rosenberg, about whom little evidence had emerged. As a 

result of the Greenglasses’ claims, Julius Rosenberg was arrested on July 17. Two days 

later, confronted by Julius’s refusal to discuss his espionage activities or to reveal the 

names of other spies, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover suggested to Attorney General 

J. Howard McGrath that to bring about a “change in [Julius’] attitude,” “proceeding 

against his wife might serve as a lever in this matter.” The following month, federal 

prosecutors began to present the espionage case to a grand jury in New York City, 

and immediately after testifying before the grand jury, Ethel Rosenberg was arrested 

as well.

On August 17, 1950, the federal grand jury for the Southern District of New York 

indicted Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Anatoli Yakovlev, who was no longer 

in the United States, charging them with conspiracy to spy for the Soviet Union in 

violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Although the indictment defined the object 

of the conspiracy broadly as the transmission of information relating to the national 

defense of the United States, public statements by Hoover made clear that government prosecutors believed that the Rosenbergs conspired to give the Soviet Union 

secret information regarding the atomic bomb. The charge of conspiracy, rather than 

espionage, required the prosecution to prove a common plan among the defendants 

and at least one overt act in furtherance of that plan, but did not require proof that 

the defendants succeeded in transmitting classified information to the Soviets. 

The day after the indictment of the Rosenbergs, the FBI arrested engineer Morton 

Sobell, Julius Rosenberg’s college classmate and friend, on suspicion that he was a 

member of the espionage conspiracy. The grand jury soon added as defendants Sobell 

and David Greenglass, whose earlier indictment in New Mexico had been dismissed 

so that his case could be combined with those of the New York defendants. David 

Greenglass was the only defendant to plead guilty. Ruth Greenglass and Harry Gold 

had been named as co-conspirators in the original indictment but not charged. (Gold 

had pleaded guilty to espionage in federal court in Philadelphia.)

The trial

The trial of Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell opened on March 6, 

1951, before Judge Irving Kaufman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District 

of New York. Kaufman, a former federal prosecutor, had been on the bench less than 

two years, but already had a reputation as a staunch anti-Communist. A few months 

before the Rosenberg case, Kaufman presided over the trial of Abraham Brothman 
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and Miriam Moskowitz, Communists accused of conspiring to obstruct justice by 

convincing Harry Gold to lie to a federal grand jury investigating espionage in 1947. 

After the defendants were convicted, Kaufman gave them the maximum sentence, 

castigating them for attempting to “destroy” the United States. U.S. Attorney Irving 

Saypol, the chief prosecutor on the Brothman case and an assistant prosecutor in 

the Hiss and Dennis trials, headed up the Rosenberg prosecution. Emanuel Bloch, 

Julius Rosenberg’s attorney and the head of the defense team, was well known in New 

York City for working on behalf of a number of leftist causes and had represented 

Communists in other cases. 

The prosecution’s case rested primarily on the testimony of four witnesses—David 

and Ruth Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Max Elitcher. Elitcher, a classmate of Julius 

Rosenberg and Morton Sobell at the City College of New York in the late 1930s, 

was the only witness to name Sobell as a member of the Rosenberg espionage ring. 

David and Ruth Greenglass provided the only testimony linking the Rosenbergs to 

espionage. Together they described a series of events that were at the center of the 

prosecution’s case. According to Ruth, the Rosenbergs in November 1944 asked her to 

visit David, who was stationed at Los Alamos, and to convince him to steal classified 

information about the atomic bomb program. Ruth said that she persuaded David 

to participate in the espionage scheme and that she returned to New York with the 

requested information. David claimed that he returned to New York City on furlough 

in January 1945, whereupon he gave Julius sketches he had drawn of high-explosive 

lens molds used in the atomic bomb, and he described his work at Los Alamos to 

an unnamed Russian to whom he had been introduced by Julius. The Greenglasses 

testified that in June 1945, by which time Ruth was living with David in New Mexico, 

they passed stolen information to a courier who arrived at their home and uttered 

the predetermined phrase, “I come from Julius.” Julius, they claimed, had set up the 

meeting in January. Julius had given Ruth half of a torn Jell-O box and promised 

that the courier would arrive bearing the matching half. Harry Gold, the courier in 

question, took the witness stand and corroborated the Greenglasses’ testimony. 

In the most damaging account, David Greenglass testified that he returned to New 

York City on another furlough in September 1945 and gave Julius several pages of 

handwritten notes and sketches regarding the atomic bomb. When the prosecution 

introduced replicas of the notes and sketches, Bloch asked that the documents be 

“impounded” and that Judge Kaufman bar spectators and reporters from the courtroom while Greenglass testified about the material. Although Bloch was attempting 

to impress the jury with his and the defendants’ concern for national security, his 

request was seen by many observers—including the prosecutors, Sobell’s lawyers, and 

at least some of the jurors—as a major blunder that lent credibility to the prosecutors’ 

contention that the material in question did, in fact, contain “the secret of the atomic 

bomb.”
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5

David and Ruth claimed that Ethel typed a copy of David’s notes for delivery to 

the Soviets. Without this testimony, the prosecution would have had little evidence of 

Ethel’s involvement in espionage beyond her supposed role in asking Ruth Greenglass 

to recruit her husband into the spy ring in November 1944. In his closing argument, 

Irving Saypol told the jury that Ethel “sat at that typewriter and struck the keys, blow 

by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets.”

The testimony that sealed Ethel Rosenberg’s fate was almost certainly false. The 

Greenglasses made no mention of it in their initial confessions or in their subsequent 

interviews with the FBI, and Ruth did not bring it up in her testimony before the 

grand jury. It was not until shortly before trial, when Ruth still feared she would be 

indicted, that she first implicated Ethel in preparing the notes. David corroborated 

Ruth’s testimony on this point, but admitted years later that he had done so only to 

protect his wife.

Upon the conclusion of the prosecution’s case, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg took 

the stand to testify in their own defense. The Rosenbergs offered rote denials of the 

government’s allegations, and when they were asked whether they were Communists, they invoked their Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer. Julius, while 

proclaiming allegiance to the United States and respect for its system of justice, 

admitted that he admired the accomplishments of the Soviet Union and felt that it 

was primarily responsible for the defeat of the Nazis. The New York Times described 

Julius as “glib” and “self-assured” during direct examination but beset by “nervousness” and “hesitation” when cross-examined. Jurors later recalled the Rosenbergs as 

displaying no signs of emotion in court; one juror called Ethel Rosenberg “a steely, 

stony, tight-lipped woman.” 

The verdicts and sentences

After the three-week trial and eight hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdicts 

on March 29, 1951, finding Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell 

guilty of conspiring to commit espionage for the benefit of the Soviet Union. Judge 

Kaufman told the jurors, “My own opinion is that your verdict is a correct verdict.” 

Prior to sentencing the defendants on April 5, Kaufman announced that because 

of the gravity of the case, he had not asked the prosecution for a sentencing recommendation, preferring to bear sole responsibility for his decision. Kaufman, however, 

had privately solicited the views of the prosecution, other judges, and Department of 

Justice officials. In his sentencing statement, Kaufman explained that the sentence was 

presented “in a unique framework of history” defined by democracy’s “life and death 

struggle with a completely different system.” He accused the Rosenbergs of trying 

to destroy the United States, characterizing their crime as “worse than murder.” He 

also assigned them at least partial blame for the outbreak of the Korean War, “with 

the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of 
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6

innocent people may pay the price of your treason.” Kaufman then sentenced Julius 

and Ethel Rosenberg to death, as authorized by the Espionage Act of 1917 in cases 

of wartime spying, and ordered that Morton Sobell spend thirty years in prison, the 

maximum term allowed under the statute. The following day, Kaufman sentenced 

David Greenglass to a reduced term of fifteen years in prison, citing his cooperation 

with the government.

The appeals

For more than two years after the sentencing, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg fought to 

avoid the electric chair. They appealed their conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for 

the Second Circuit and then to the Supreme Court of the United States. They returned 

to the district court to request a rehearing and a reduced sentence, and when those 

efforts failed they appealed again to the Court of Appeals, and on several occasions 

to the Supreme Court. They and other lawyers directly petitioned the Supreme Court 

for writs of habeas corpus and stays of their execution pending arguments on new 

appeals and new evidence. The Rosenbergs also petitioned President Harry Truman 

for executive clemency in January 1953. Truman left office later that month without 

acting on the petition, and his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, denied the request in 

February. Subsequent clemency petitions, one accompanied by a personal letter from 

Ethel Rosenberg, met with the same denial by Eisenhower.

In their appeals, motions , and petitions, the Rosenbergs and their lawyers argued 

at one point or another that both newspaper publicity and Judge Kaufman’s hostility 

toward the defendants had unfairly prejudiced the jurors; that the defendants were 

essentially being tried for treason without the constitutional protections guaranteed 

in treason prosecutions; that witnesses, including David Greenglass, committed 

perjury with the knowledge of the prosecutors; that the lead prosecutor was guilty 

of misconduct when he held a press conference announcing the indictment of a 

Rosenberg associate scheduled to give testimony; that the death penalty was cruel and 

unusual punishment because associates convicted of similar crimes received lighter 

sentences; that the prosecutors had violated the rules enforcing the constitutional 

right to cross-examine witnesses; and, in one of the last appeals, that the Rosenbergs 

should have been sentenced under a more recent act of Congress that required a 

jury recommendation for imposing the death penalty on defendants convicted of 

transmitting atomic secrets to a foreign nation. 

The courts ordered several stays of execution to await further appeals or petitions, but none of the courts modified the sentences or ordered a new trial, and the 

Supreme Court never heard arguments on the Rosenbergs’ conviction. When asked 

to reduce their sentence to something less than death, Judge Kaufman refused and 

offered a strident defense of his decision. The Rosenbergs, he declared, “chose the 

path of traitors” and if ever released would resume their work for the Soviet Union; 
7

they maintained “a devotion which has caused them to choose martyrdom and to 

keep their lips sealed.” “The fact that the acts of the defendants were not characterized as treason” did nothing to mitigate the enormity of their crime, which exposed 

“millions of their countrymen to danger or death.”

The failed appeals and the vehemence of Judge Kaufman obscured the doubts 

expressed by other judges and the inner deliberations of the courts. Justice Felix 

Frankfurter wrote in his private notes that the published record of the Rosenberg 

case in the Supreme Court “does not tell the story. Indeed, it distorts the story; it 

largely falsifies the true course of events.” Similar comments might have been offered 

about the district court and the court of appeals. In the court of appeals, Jerome 

Frank, who was among those counseling Kaufman not to impose the death penalty, 

noted that precedent prohibited the appeals court from revising a sentence, but he 

suggested that the Supreme Court might want to revisit that rule. Frank privately 

wrote a prominent law professor that the trial had been fair, but that the sentence 

was not justified. In response to the alleged misconduct of the prosecutor who had 

held a press conference to announce perjury charges against a witness, Judge Thomas 

Swan wrote for the court of appeals that the apparent conduct of the prosecutor was 

“highly reprehensible” and “cannot be too severely condemned,” but the court denied 

the defendants’ appeal in part because the defense lawyers had made no motion for a 

mistrial when the incident occurred in the midst of the trial. Other decisions denying 

the Rosenbergs’ appeals cited the defense lawyers’ failure to ask for a change of venue 

or a mistrial or to raise related objections during the trial. 

The appeals process played out against the backdrop of continuing public interest 

in the case and the fate of the defendants. The Rosenberg trial attracted international 

attention, and the death sentences intensified the fervor surrounding the case. Many 

on the left, including intellectuals, artists, and writers, protested the death sentences 

and urged clemency based on the belief that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims 

of anti-Communist hysteria gripping the United States. Communists played a significant role in opposing the executions, but many others, especially clergy, fought 

for clemency because of religious and moral objections to the death penalty. In 1952, 

a reporter for the National Guardian, a left-wing New York City newspaper, led the 

creation of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, which 

sought a new trial or clemency. Its members picketed the White House and emphasized that the Rosenbergs’ two young sons, Michael and Robert, would be orphaned 

if the death sentences were carried out. The Committee included both Communists 

and non-Communists, but its leadership maintained distance from the Communist 

Party USA in order to avoid alienating mainstream liberals. 

By late spring of 1953, as opposition to the death sentences grew, many in the 

mainstream press and a number of government officials warned that the execution 

of the Rosenbergs might damage the international reputation of the United States in 

the Cold War battle for public opinion. The editorial writers for the Washington Post, 
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8

who considered the trial fair and the evidence of the Rosenbergs’ guilt overwhelming, 

suggested “that the value of this case to the international Communist propaganda 

would have been far less if the milder penalty had been imposed.” Still, the Post

noted, “the unhappy truth is that whether the Rosenbergs live or die, Communist 

propaganda stands to benefit. “ The U.S. ambassador to France, C. Douglas Dillon, 

writing through the secretary of state, urged President Eisenhower to appraise the 

Rosenberg sentence “in terms of higher national interest” and warned of the “long 

term damage that execution of Rosenbergs would do to foreign opinion of US and 

of our whole democratic processes.” Even the many French who accepted the guilt 

of the defendants, Dillon reported, “are overwhelmingly of [the] opinion” that the 

death penalty was unjustified. 

Despite the large number of people who wanted to see the Rosenbergs spared, 

many Americans strongly favored the executions based on a deep-seated animus toward Communism and the belief that the Rosenbergs had brought the United States 

closer to nuclear devastation by delivering to the Soviets the key to the atomic bomb. 

Several members of Congress denounced Julius and Ethel as traitors who deserved 

the death penalty, and Representative W.M. Wheeler of Georgia sought to impeach 

Justice William O. Douglas after he granted the Rosenbergs a stay of execution. 

Douglas’s chambers were also deluged by angry letters and telegrams, some of them 

from members of the military and their families. 

The legal appeals in defense of the Rosenbergs culminated in the Supreme Court. 

In October 1952, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 3, denied a petition for certiorari 

in the appeal of the conviction, with Justices Hugo Black, Harold Burton, and Felix 

Frankfurter in dissent. Over the next eight months, Black consistently voted to hear 

arguments on the various appeals from the Rosenberg trial, and Frankfurter became 

convinced that public acceptance of the verdict in this highly publicized trial would 

depend on the Supreme Court’s full review of the trial and conviction. The Court 

in November 1952 rejected a petition for a rehearing, and, after several shifts in the 

justices’ votes in their private conference, the Court rejected another certiorari petition 

in May 1953. Although five justices had at one point or another agreed, in private 

conference or in recorded votes, to accept some sort of appeal from the Rosenbergs, 

at no point were there sufficient votes to accept a particular petition or appeal. 

On June 17, 1953, two days before the rescheduled execution of the Rosenbergs 

and after the Supreme Court had adjourned for the summer, Justice Douglas, who 

until late May had voted to deny each Rosenberg appeal, granted a stay of execution 

to allow the lower courts to determine the validity of the new argument that Kaufman 

should have sentenced the Rosenbergs under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which 

required a jury recommendation for the death penalty. The evening before, Justice 

Robert Jackson arranged a meeting between Attorney General Herbert Brownell and 

Chief Justice Fred Vinson, who promised to call the full Court into session to vacate 

any stay from Douglas. The justices, some of whom had left for annual vacations, 
9

returned to Washington and on June 18 heard arguments on a motion to vacate the 

stay. On June 19, by a vote of 6 to 3, the Supreme Court lifted the stay, and in a per 

curiam, or unsigned, opinion announced that “the question is not substantial” and 

“further proceedings to litigate it are unwarranted.” 

Bloch made a final, futile appeal to Kaufman for a stay and to the president for 

clemency, but the Supreme Court decision to vacate Douglas’s stay cleared the way 

for the Rosenbergs’ execution, scheduled for that night at 11. In anticipation of the 

executions, thousands of people, some of them demonstrating in front of American 

embassies, rallied in support of the Rosenbergs in London, Paris, and other foreign 

cities as well as in the United States. After defense attorneys asked Judge Kaufman to 

prevent the executions from occurring on the Jewish Sabbath, which began at sundown, the judge ordered that the time be moved up to 8 p.m. On June 19, 1953, at 

8:06 and 8:16 p.m., respectively, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were pronounced dead 

in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. They were the only 

American citizens to be put to death for espionage. 

In July 1953, the Supreme Court issued signed opinions explaining the decision of 

June 19. Chief Justice Vinson’s opinion for the Court majority cited no precedent or 

statutory authority for the unusual decision to vacate a justice’s stay before the lower 

courts heard related arguments. Frankfurter’s dissent acknowledged the apparent 

“pathetic futility” of an opinion released after the execution, but noted that “history 

also has its claims,” and “this case is an incident in the long and unending effort to 

develop and enforce justice according to the law.” “The fact that Congress and not the 

whim of the prosecutor fixes sentences,” Frankfurter concluded, demanded that the 

Supreme Court should have addressed the question of the proper sentencing statute, 

regardless of how late the question appeared in the appeals. Douglas agreed that “no 

man or woman should go to death under an unlawful sentence merely because his 

lawyer failed to raise the point.” 

The aftermath and legacy

In the sixty years since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died in the electric chair, their case 

has lived on in public memory as a landmark event in the Cold War. For decades 

following the trial, the memory of the Rosenberg case served as an ideological battleground for those who decried the criminal prosecutions resulting from the Red Scare 

and those who insisted that the government had acted appropriately in response to 

a grave threat to national security. 

Numerous books on the Rosenbergs were published between the 1950s and the 

1990s, many of which reflected particular views of the Cold War and the impact of 

anti-Communism on the United States in the 1950s. Among those arguing for the 

Rosenbergs’ innocence were their sons, Michael and Robert, who took the last name 

Meeropol after being adopted following their parents’ deaths. In the mid-1970s, the 
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10

brothers co-authored a book arguing that their parents had been framed, and they 

successfully sued the federal government for the release of FBI records relating to the 

case. But the end of the Cold War and public statements of other defendants shifted 

the terms of the debate to focus on the degree of Julius’s culpability, the strategic 

value of the information he provided to the Soviets, and the justification for the death 

penalty.

In 1995, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. National Security Agency released intercepted cables, which, along with declassified documents from the 

Soviet archives, confirmed that Julius Rosenberg did spy for the Soviets throughout 

the 1940s and was part of a larger spy ring within the United States. As many suspected given the paucity of the evidence against her, Ethel Rosenberg, while likely an 

accessory, was almost certainly not a spy. A Soviet cable from 1944 stated that Ethel 

was “sufficiently well developed politically” and that she knew about her husband’s 

espionage activities, but noted, “in view of delicate health [she] does not work.”

In 1960, David Greenglass was released from prison and rejoined his wife and 

children, who were living under assumed names. In 2001, Greenglass publicly admitted committing perjury on the stand in order to save Ruth from prosecution. 

Morton Sobell was released in 1969 and maintained his innocence until 2008, when 

he admitted in interviews that he had been a Soviet spy. 

The iconic status of the Rosenberg case kept it alive in popular culture as well, 

through frequent references in music, novels, movies, plays, and television shows. 

Filmmaker Woody Allen, for example, had his character in the 1989 film Crimes 

and Misdemeanors proclaim of a loathed in-law, “I love him like a brother—David 

Greenglass.” Playwright Tony Kushner’s 1993 play Angels in America included scenes 

in which prosecutor Roy Cohn was haunted on his deathbed by the ghost of Ethel 

Rosenberg. In 2003, the fiftieth anniversary of the executions, Robert Meeropol 

published another book regarding the case, and the following year Michael Meeropol’s daughter, Ivy, premiered her documentary film, Heir to an Execution. While the 

Meeropols acknowledged Julius’s guilt, they and many other Americans continued to 

view the case—and Ethel Rosenberg’s death in particular—as evidence of the nation’s 

overreaction to the Communist threat.
11

The Federal Courts and Their Jurisdiction

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

The Rosenberg trial took place in 1951 before Judge Irving Kaufman of the U.S. 

District Court for the Southern District of New York. After the defendants were 

convicted in a jury trial and sentenced by Judge Kaufman, the district court denied 

them posttrial relief four times between December 1952 and June 1953, declining to 

overturn or reduce their sentences and refusing to grant them a new trial.

The district courts were established by the Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789, 

and they serve as the trial courts in each of the judicial districts of the federal judiciary. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was established 

in 1814, when Congress divided New York into two judicial districts. New York was 

subsequently divided into three and then four judicial districts, but the Southern 

District has always included Manhattan. The court’s jurisdiction over the Rosenberg 

trial was based on the Espionage Act of 1917, a federal law making it a crime to conspire to transmit to a foreign power information relating to the national defense of 

the United States. 

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell appealed their convictions to 

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Their appeal was heard by a threejudge panel consisting of Jerome Frank, Thomas Swan, and Harrie Chase. In February 

1952, the panel affirmed the convictions in an opinion authored by Judge Frank. In 

April, the court denied a rehearing of the appeal. The court of appeals also affirmed 

each of the district court’s denials of posttrial relief and denied the defendants’ motion 

for an order requiring the district court to modify their sentences.

The U.S. courts of appeals were established by Congress in 1891. A court of appeals 

in each of the regional judicial circuits was established to hear appeals from the federal 

trial courts, and the decisions of the courts of appeals are final in many categories of 

cases. The Second Circuit consists of New York, Vermont, and Connecticut, and the 

Second Circuit court of appeals has always met in Manhattan.

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court never reviewed the Rosenbergs’ convictions, but it considered 

multiple petitions related to the case, and in the final hours before the executions the 

Court heard arguments about one justice’s decision to grant a stay of execution. In 
The Rosenberg Trial

12

October 1952, the Supreme Court had voted 6 to 3 to deny the Rosenbergs’ certiorari 

petition appealing their conviction. In November, the court denied their petition for 

a rehearing. In May, the Court denied a second certiorari petition, this one an appeal 

of the lower courts’ rejection of the defendants’ assertion of prosecutorial misconduct. In June, on the final day of the term, the Court denied a request for a stay, for 

hearing arguments on newly discovered evidence of perjury on the part of David 

Greenglass, and for rehearing the arguments on the rejected certiorari petition, and 

a majority of the justices also denied a petition for a writ of habeas corpus related 

to the evidence of perjury. 

On June 17, 1953, after the Court had adjourned, Justice William Douglas exercised an authority available to individual justices and granted a stay of execution to 

allow the lower courts to consider whether the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, rather 

than the Espionage Act of 1917, should have governed the Rosenbergs’ sentences. In 

an extraordinary special session two days later, the Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of vacating an individual justice’s stay before the lower courts heard 

arguments on the question. The Court’s decision, by a vote of 6 to 3, cleared the way 

for the Rosenbergs’ executions that evening.

The Supreme Court was established by Article III of the Constitution, which 

granted the Court limited jurisdiction. The Constitution also authorized Congress 

to grant the Supreme Court jurisdiction over appeals, and Congress provided for 

various types of appeals from state and federal courts. The so-called Judges’ Bill of 

1925 fundamentally redefined the Supreme Court’s role within the federal judiciary 

by repealing much of the mandatory jurisdiction of the Court. The act preserved 

an automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court in a few types of cases, but in 

other areas cases would come to the Court only when the justices granted a writ of 

certiorari in response to a petition from a party in a case before a lower court. 
13

The Judicial Process: A Chronology

July 17, 1950 

Julius Rosenberg was arrested in New York City by the Federal Bureau of Investigation 

on suspicion of having conspired to commit espionage.

August 11, 1950

Immediately after testifying before a federal grand jury in New York City, Ethel Rosenberg was arrested by the FBI on suspicion of having conspired to commit espionage.

August 18, 1950

Morton Sobell, suspected of conspiring with the Rosenbergs to commit espionage, was 

arrested by the FBI in Laredo, Texas, and subsequently brought back to New York City.

January 31, 1951

The federal grand jury for the Southern District of New York issued its third and final 

indictment (the first two having been issued in August and October 1950), charging 

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, David Greenglass, and Anatoli Yakovlev 

with conspiracy to commit espionage during wartime on behalf of the Soviet Union 

in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. 

February 2, 1951

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell pleaded not guilty, while David Greenglass pleaded guilty. Anatoli Yakovlev was no longer in the United States. 

March 6, 1951

The trial of Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell began in the U.S. 

District Court for the Southern District of New York before Judge Irving R. Kaufman.

March 29, 1951

The jury found all three defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage for 

the Soviet Union.
The Rosenberg Trial

14

April 5, 1951

Judge Kaufman sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death and Morton Sobell 

to thirty years in prison.

April 6, 1951

Judge Kaufman sentenced David Greenglass to fifteen years in prison.

February 25, 1952

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the Rosenbergs’ convictions.

October 13, 1952

The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, denying the Rosenbergs’ petition for 

certiorari.

December 10, 1952

Judge Sylvester Ryan of the district court denied the Rosenbergs’ motion that their 

sentences be overturned.

December 31, 1952

The court of appeals affirmed Judge Ryan’s December 10 decision declining to overturn the Rosenbergs’ sentences.

January 2, 1953

Judge Kaufman denied the Rosenbergs’ motion that their sentences be reduced from 

death to imprisonment.

February 11, 1953

President Dwight Eisenhower denied the Rosenbergs’ petition for executive clemency.

May 25, 1953

The Supreme Court again denied the Rosenbergs’ petition for certiorari.

June 1, 1953

Judge Kaufman denied the Rosenbergs’ motion to reduce their sentences from death 

to twenty years’ imprisonment.
15

June 2, 1953

The court of appeals denied the Rosenbergs’ request that it order Judge Kaufman to 

resentence them to twenty years’ imprisonment.

June 5, 1953

The court of appeals affirmed Judge Kaufman’s June 1 refusal to reduce the Rosenbergs’ sentences.

June 8, 1953

Judge Kaufman denied the Rosenbergs’ motion for a new trial.

June 11, 1953

The court of appeals affirmed Judge Kaufman’s June 8 decision denying a new trial. 

June 15, 1953

The Supreme Court denied the Rosenbergs’ petition for rehearing, their petition for 

a stay of execution, which had been presented to Justice Robert Jackson, and their 

petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

June 17, 1953

Supreme Court Justice William Douglas granted the Rosenbergs a stay of execution.

June 19, 1953

The Supreme Court lifted the stay of execution issued by Justice Douglas. After Judge 

Kaufman denied a further stay of execution and President Eisenhower rejected a final 

appeal for clemency, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death.

17

Legal Questions Before the Federal Courts

Were the defendants guilty of conspiring to commit 

espionage to aid the Soviet Union by providing it, during 

wartime, with classified information regarding the 

national defense of the United States?

Yes, the jury found Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell guilty of 

violating the Espionage Act by conspiring to pass classified defense information, 

including material related to the atomic bomb, to the Soviet Union. 

In order to prove a conspiracy under the Espionage Act, the government was required to establish the existence of a common plan among the defendants to transmit 

to a foreign nation classified information relating to the national defense of the United 

States, with the intent of advantaging that foreign nation, and at least one overt act 

in furtherance of that plan. The jury agreed with the prosecution’s contention that 

the Rosenbergs and Sobell collaborated on a plan to pass stolen defense secrets to the 

Soviet Union and that they committed several overt acts to further that plan. Sobell 

was not named in the indictment as committing any of the specific overt acts, but 

under the law of conspiracy an overt act by any one defendant was sufficient for the 

conviction of all defendants. The prosecution argued further that the defendants’ 

Communist affiliations and admiration for the Soviet Union were evidence that they 

acted with the intent of advantaging that nation, as prohibited by the statute.

On appeal, Sobell’s lawyers argued that the main conspiracy was aimed at 

transmitting secrets about the atomic bomb, and that Sobell, who was not linked to 

atomic espionage, should have been charged with a separate conspiracy with Julius 

Rosenberg to transmit non-atomic defense information. The U.S. Court of Appeals 

for the Second Circuit rejected this contention by a vote of 2 to 1, with Judge Jerome 

Frank casting the dissenting vote to grant Sobell a new trial.

Did the prosecution deprive the defendants of a fair 

trial by knowingly using perjured testimony from David 

Greenglass?

No, according to both the district court and the court of appeals, the testimony of 

David Greenglass was properly admitted into evidence.

The defense claimed on appeal that David Greenglass had committed perjury. 

The court of appeals, while acknowledging that “if that testimony were disregard-
The Rosenberg Trial

18

ed, the conviction could not stand,” held that it is “the jury’s province,” not that of 

the court, “to consider the credibility of witnesses or the reliability of testimony.” 

Moreover, the appellate court pointed out, Judge Kaufman had instructed the jury 

to view with caution the testimony of witnesses who, like Greenglass, had admitted 

to participating in espionage.

In a subsequent petition to the district court to overturn their sentences, the defendants further claimed that Greenglass lied on the stand, and that the prosecution 

had presented his testimony with knowledge that it was false. First, the defense alleged 

that Greenglass lied when he testified that he had made a full statement to the FBI on 

the night of his arrest, and that in fact his initial statement was inconsistent with his 

subsequent testimony. District Judge Sylvester Ryan ruled that because the defense 

neither attempted to use Greenglass’s initial statement when cross-examining him 

nor asked for it to be entered into evidence, the court was not obligated to conduct 

a postconviction review of the statement to see if it was consistent with Greenglass’s 

trial testimony. Next, the defense submitted affidavits from physicists expressing 

doubt that Greenglass could have reproduced from memory the sketches he made 

at trial to illustrate the information he provided to Julius Rosenberg. Judge Ryan 

found no factual basis for concluding that Greenglass had committed perjury or that 

the government knew his testimony to be false. Judge Ryan ruled that he could not 

consider the opinions of experts who had not seen the witness testify. The court of 

appeals affirmed Judge Ryan’s ruling, echoing his statement that only the jury was 

capable of evaluating Greenglass’s credibility as a witness. 

Did the admission of evidence of the defendants’ 

admiration for the Soviet Union and membership in the 

Communist Party deprive them of a fair trial?

No, according to the court of appeals, the defendants were not unfairly prejudiced by 

references to their admiration for the Soviet government and to their membership 

in the American Communist Party.

While admitting that such evidence could be “highly inflammatory in a jury 

trial,” the court of appeals nevertheless held that it was properly admitted. Evidence 

of sympathy for the Soviet Union, while not constituting proof of espionage, was 

relevant to the defendants’ possible motive for spying. As the court noted, membership in the Communist Party would not have been relevant to the defendants’ 

motive without evidence tying American Communists to the Soviet Union, but the 

prosecution presented testimony that the American Communist Party was part of 

the Communist International and took orders from the Soviet Union. The appellate 

court acknowledged that Judge Kaufman’s instruction to the jury that the defendants 

were not on trial for being Communists might have constituted “an empty ritual,” 
19

but explained that the defendants could have opted for a nonjury trial in order to 

avoid the risk of prejudice. 

Did the behavior of Judge Kaufman deprive the defendants 

of a fair trial?

No, according to the court of appeals, the judge’s behavior “stayed well inside the 

discretion allowed him.” Moreover, the court of appeals decided, the defendants’ claim 

on appeal of improper and prejudicial behavior by the judge was “not compatible” 

with the defense counsel’s statements during the trial that the judge had behaved 

fairly and properly.

The defendants claimed that Judge Kaufman improperly questioned the witnesses, 

reinforced the prosecutors’ arguments, dismissed arguments of the defense counsel, 

and protected the credibility of witnesses testifying against the defendants. The court 

of appeals reviewed over one hundred incidents of allegedly unfair behavior by the 

judge. The court of appeals panel concluded that “in general, we can find no purpose 

in the judge’s questioning except that of clarification. If, with that purpose, he gave 

witnesses who had contradicted themselves a chance to resolve that conflict, and took 

away defendants’ temporary advantage with the jury, it was an unavoidable incident 

of his unchallenged power to bring out the facts of the case.”

Did publicity before and during the trial create an 

environment in which the defendants could not receive a 

fair trial?

No, according to both the district court and the court of appeals, the defendants were 

not unfairly prejudiced by newspaper coverage of the case.

In their petition to the district court to nullify their sentences, the defendants for 

the first time raised the argument that media coverage of the case was sufficiently 

extensive and inflammatory to make impossible the selection of an impartial jury 

or the conduct of a fair trial.

Judge Ryan of the district court found the pretrial newspaper coverage “negligible” 

and, in reviewing stories published during the trial, found “nothing of an unusual or 

inflammatory character,” but rather “a fair response to a legitimate public interest in 

a matter of vital concern to all—the atom bomb and atomic energy and the hope for 

its employment for the benefit and not the destruction of mankind.” The judge also 

noted the defendants’ failure to request that the trial be delayed or moved to another 

court, both of which were common remedies for adverse pretrial publicity. Finally, 

the attorneys for the defendants did not object to the jury after it was selected and 
The Rosenberg Trial

20

did not use all of the challenges to prospective jurors to which they were entitled. 

The court of appeals affirmed the district court’s ruling on this issue.

Did a press conference given by U.S. Attorney Irving 

Saypol, in the midst of the trial, regarding the arrest for 

perjury of an associate of Julius Rosenberg and Morton 

Sobell, deprive the defendants of a fair trial?

No, according to both the district court and the court of appeals, the defendants 

were not unfairly prejudiced by Saypol’s statements. Although the court of appeals 

called Saypol’s conduct “highly reprehensible,” it agreed with the district court that 

the defendants’ failure to request a mistrial at the time barred them from obtaining 

relief later.

The defendants argued that the chief prosecutor had acted improperly by announcing to the press, during the trial, the indictment and arrest for perjury of William Perl, a Columbia University physics instructor. Perl had been arrested for lying 

to the grand jury after he falsely claimed not to know Julius Rosenberg and Morton 

Sobell. In announcing the indictment, Saypol told the press that Perl had been listed 

as a trial witness and that his intended role was to corroborate the testimony of David 

and Ruth Greenglass.

Perl was arrested on the evening of the day Ruth Greenglass took the witness stand, 

and the defense complained to trial judge Irving Kaufman that Saypol had timed the 

arrest and indictment to bring about negative publicity for Rosenberg and Sobell. If 

members of the jury heard about Perl, they could have inferred that had he testified 

at trial, he would have identified Rosenberg and Sobell as spies. The defense did not 

request that Kaufman grant a mistrial, however, after Saypol assured the court that 

the timing of the indictment was not intended to affect the Rosenberg trial.

Later, in asking the district court to overturn their sentences, the defendants argued 

that Saypol’s failure to bring Perl to trial by late 1952 proved that he had sought the 

indictment of Perl with the sole aim of affecting the Rosenberg case. Judge Sylvester 

Ryan, however, accepted Saypol’s explanation that he had not yet tried Perl for fear 

that his trial would lead to disclosures that could affect other cases. In any event, the 

judge ruled, the defense’s failure to ask for a mistrial barred them from complaining 

about Saypol’s actions later. The court of appeals affirmed Ryan’s decision on the 

same grounds, despite condemning Saypol’s conduct. 
21

Did the Rosenbergs’ death sentences violate the 

constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment?

No, according to the court of appeals, the trial judge acted within his discretion when 

he sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death.

In their appeal, the Rosenbergs claimed that although the Espionage Act authorized a death sentence for wartime spying, the particular circumstances of their case 

made such a punishment cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment. 

Specifically, the Rosenbergs pointed out that they had no prior criminal history, had 

not acted out of greed, and were accused of conspiring to pass information not to an 

enemy nation, but to a wartime ally. Furthermore, other wartime spies were sentenced 

to prison or avoided punishment entirely, and no civil court had ever imposed a 

death sentence in an espionage case. The court of appeals held that it had no power 

to modify a sentence allowed by a statute that had not been found unconstitutional. 

Judge Jerome Frank, who authored the opinion, added on his own behalf that even 

if a statutorily authorized punishment could be cruel and unusual, a death sentence 

in this case was not a punishment that “shocks the conscience and sense of justice of 

the people of the United States.” This was especially true, wrote Judge Frank, because 

the espionage conspiracy had lasted beyond the time when the Soviet Union was an 

ally and into the Cold War, when hostility between the United States and the Soviet 

Union had become readily apparent. 

Should the defendants have been sentenced under the 

Atomic Energy Act of 1946 rather than the Espionage Act 

of 1917?

No, according to the Supreme Court, the defendants were properly charged and 

sentenced under the Espionage Act.

Only in the final week of their appeals did lawyers for the defendants raise the 

claim that they had been sentenced under the wrong statute. Attorneys who did not 

formally represent the Rosenbergs raised the issue on June 16, 1953, three days before the Rosenbergs were put to death, in petitioning Supreme Court Justice William 

Douglas for a stay of execution. These lawyers claimed that the Atomic Energy Act of 

1946 had superseded the Espionage Act of 1917 with respect to conduct covered by 

both laws and did not allow a court to impose a death sentence for espionage without 

the recommendation of the jury and proof that the espionage had been committed 

with the intent to injure the United States. The prosecutors’ decision to charge the 

defendants under the Espionage Act was not binding on the trial court, which was 

responsible for deciding points of law. 
The Rosenberg Trial

22

Justice Douglas, believing the petition to have raised a substantial question, granted the stay on June 17 with the intent that the issue be resolved by the district court 

and then the court of appeals. In his decision, Douglas cited the fact that the alleged 

conspiracy did not end until several years after the passage of the Atomic Energy Act 

as well as the Act’s purpose of ameliorating the penalties for atomic espionage. The 

attorney general requested that the stay be vacated, and the Supreme Court held oral 

argument on June 18. The full Court, by a vote of 6 to 3, vacated the stay the next day, 

noting in the majority’s brief written opinion that “the question is not substantial” 

and “further proceedings to litigate it are unwarranted” because the latter statute 

had not repealed or limited the prior one in any way. The following month, Chief 

Justice Fred Vinson authored a longer opinion for the majority, explaining why the 

Court resolved the matter itself rather than allowing the case to return to the lower 

courts. Justices Douglas, Hugo Black, and Felix Frankfurter filed dissenting opinions. 

Explaining that when two statutes covered the criminal conduct in question, a court 

was obligated to apply the one with the lesser penalty, Douglas insisted, “I know deep 

in my heart that I am right on the law.” 

Did the Supreme Court have the power to vacate the stay 

of execution issued by Justice Douglas?

Yes, according to the Supreme Court, the stay was properly vacated.

The Supreme Court had never before vacated a stay granted by an individual 

justice, but the Court held that to do so was nevertheless permissible and was proper 

under the circumstances of this case. The sole reason for the stay was to preserve the 

opportunity to resolve the underlying issue raised by the petition—in this instance, 

the applicability of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 to the defendants. Because the 

question presented was strictly legal and did not require findings of fact, which would 

have been the province of the district court, the Supreme Court held that it was 

competent to resolve the issue immediately without adding months to the process by 

allowing the case to return to the district court and then the court of appeals. Chief 

Justice Vinson also wrote that the Supreme Court’s responsibility to supervise the 

administration of justice in the federal courts included a “duty to see that the laws 

are not only enforced by fair proceedings, but also that the punishments prescribed 

by the laws are enforced with a reasonable degree of promptness and certainty.” In 

their separate dissents, Justices Black and Frankfurter decried the haste of the Court 

in vacating the stay.
23

Legal Arguments in Court 

The attorneys for the U.S. government

U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol and assistant U.S. attorneys Myles Lane, Roy Cohn, John 

Foley, James Kilsheimer, and James Branigan argued that:

1. The defendants—Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton 

Sobell—in addition to David Greenglass (who had pleaded guilty), Ruth 

Greenglass (who was not indicted), Harry Gold (who had pleaded guilty 

and been sentenced), and Anatoli Yakovlev (who had left the United 

States), engaged in a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act of 1917.

2. The members of the conspiracy shared a common purpose to violate the 

statute by transmitting to the Soviet Union information related to the national defense of the United States. The prosecution defined the object of 

the conspiracy broadly, without reference to the atomic bomb, in order to 

include Morton Sobell, who was not linked to atomic espionage.

3. The members of the conspiracy were motivated by their belief in 

Communism, which led them to devote themselves to the welfare of the 

Soviet Union above that of the United States; as a result, they acted with 

the intent of advantaging a foreign nation, as prohibited by the statute.

4. The members of the conspiracy committed several overt acts in furtherance of their common purpose, including traveling, holding meetings, 

and receiving and transmitting information. It was not necessary for the 

government to prove overt acts with respect to all defendants; under the 

law of conspiracy, proof of one overt act on the part of one member was 

sufficient.

5. The conspiracy, which began in 1944, existed during wartime, making the 

defendants eligible for the death penalty under the statute. It did not matter that the United States and the Soviet Union were allies in World War 

II, because the law made no reference to the status of the foreign nation to 

which information was transmitted.
The Rosenberg Trial

24

The attorneys for the defendants

Emanuel and Alexander Bloch, the attorneys for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and 

Harold Phillips and Edward Kuntz, the attorneys for Morton Sobell, argued that:

1. None of the documentary evidence introduced by the prosecution—such 

as the replicas of sketches and descriptions of the atomic bomb David 

Greenglass made—tied the Rosenbergs to espionage.

2. David and Ruth Greenglass, on whose testimony the entire case against 

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg depended, committed perjury so that David 

would receive a lighter sentence and Ruth would avoid prosecution. The 

Rosenbergs were easy targets for the Greenglasses to implicate because of 

their alleged Communist ties and pro-Soviet views. The Greenglasses were 

further motivated to accuse the Rosenbergs by business disputes between 

David Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg.

3. The defendants’ alleged Communist beliefs and membership in the 

Communist Party USA were irrelevant to the case, as well as unduly prejudicial, and did not constitute proof that they had ever conspired to engage 

in espionage.

4. Harry Gold, a key figure in the alleged conspiracy, did not know the 

Rosenbergs and had no dealings with them.

5. Morton Sobell was not mentioned in any of the overt acts listed in the 

indictment. The only witness against him was Max Elitcher, who was not 

credible because he was attempting to avoid prosecution for having falsely 

taken an oath that he was not a member of the Communist Party.

6. Elitcher’s claim that Julius Rosenberg first approached him regarding espionage was not believable because Rosenberg had not seen Elitcher for 

many years prior to the alleged conversation, and it would have made 

more sense for Sobell, a close friend of Elitcher’s, to have approached him 

initially.

7. When Sobell traveled to Mexico in June 1950 after the arrest of David 

Greenglass, he flew under his own name and rented an apartment using 

his own name, only later using aliases, weakening the government’s claim 

that he was attempting to avoid prosecution. 
25

Biographies

Communist Party USA

When Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell went on trial in 1951, 

the United States was firmly in the grip of the Red Scare, and many Americans believed all Communists to be subversives bent on the overthrow of the United States 

government. American Communists had not always been so stigmatized, however. As 

recently as the 1930s, the Communist Party USA had worked alongside other liberal 

groups on a variety of causes. 

Founded in 1919, the Communist Party USA remained small and isolated during 

its first decade of existence. During the Great Depression, however, the party began to 

make serious efforts to organize workers, and its membership grew as its center shifted 

from Chicago to New York City. Between 1935 and 1939, on orders from Moscow, the 

party followed a Popular Front strategy, downplaying revolutionary rhetoric in favor 

of patriotic language and attempting to forge bonds with mainstream progressive 

institutions. Communists became deeply involved in the organized labor movement 

and worked with many of the unions making up the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations. The party also championed racial equality, making civil rights 

a major part of its agenda, and expressed support for many aspects of the New Deal. 

As would be revealed in documents released after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 

the Communist Party USA helped to establish an extensive network of Soviet spies, 

including Julius Rosenberg, in the 1930s and 1940s. 

The Nazi–Soviet nonaggression pact of 1939 made it untenable for American 

Communists to continue their Popular Front strategy, and the party dissolved during 

World War II. Although the party reconstituted after the war to continue to press for 

domestic reforms, it was already doomed, and the Soviet Union’s change in status 

from wartime ally to Cold War enemy ensured the party’s demise. In 1947, President 

Harry Truman’s Federal Employee Loyalty Program began a purge of Communists 

from the ranks of government, and the attorney general published a list of subversive 

organizations that included the Communist Party and other groups believed to be 

Communist “fronts.” 

In 1948, eleven leaders of the Communist Party USA were arrested and charged 

with conspiring to violate the Smith Act, a federal law making it a crime to advocate 

the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. The government alleged, in essence, 

that the party itself constituted a criminal conspiracy because the Marxist doctrine it 

espoused advocated the overthrow of existing governments in order to bring about 

Communism. The defendants were convicted, and the Supreme Court’s upholding 

of the convictions in 1951 was followed by a wave of Smith Act prosecutions of 

Communist Party leaders that did not end until 1957, when the Court modified its 
The Rosenberg Trial

26

stance, holding that criminalizing mere advocacy, unconnected to action, violated 

the First Amendment.

As a result of both international and domestic developments, the Communist 

Party USA had by the early 1950s been stripped of influence and legitimacy, its leaders branded as criminals, and its members deeply stigmatized. The party was never 

again able to participate in mainstream liberal causes and found itself consigned 

permanently to the margins of American politics. 

The defendants

Julius Rosenberg

Julius Rosenberg was propelled to worldwide notoriety when he and his wife, Ethel, 

were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the 

Soviet Union. After his death, his name became virtually synonymous with Cold War 

threats of Communist subversion and atomic warfare between the Soviet Union and 

the United States.

Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, into a poor family of Eastern European 

Jewish immigrants living on New York City’s Lower East Side. While attending the 

City College of New York, he organized the school’s chapter of the Young Communist League. After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering in 1939—the 

same year, according to the FBI, he joined the Communist Party—he married Ethel 

Greenglass, who had attended the same high school as Julius but was three years 

older. Julius and Ethel had two sons, Michael and Robert, who were born in 1943 

and 1947, respectively. 

In 1940, Julius began work as an engineer in a civilian position with the U.S. Army 

Signal Corps, a job from which he was dismissed in 1945 on the grounds that he had 

concealed his membership in the Communist Party. His firing from the Signal Corps 

occurred after the FBI sent U.S. Army Intelligence evidence of his party membership. 

Moreover, FBI informants who had infiltrated the party reported that Julius and his 

wife were active members in the 1940s. After his dismissal, Rosenberg opened a small 

machine shop with his brother-in-law David Greenglass, who had just finished a tour 

of duty in the army, and they remained in business together until 1949. 

Julius, whom the Soviets code-named “Antenna” and later, “Liberal,” had been a 

Soviet spy since 1941, leading a small espionage cell consisting of four other engineers, 

all of whom were Communists. The group at first focused primarily on obtaining 

classified information regarding radio engineering and aviation, and by 1942, its 

Soviet supervisors considered it to be productive. Between 1944 and 1945, Rosenberg 

contributed to Soviet efforts to steal information from the American atomic bomb 

project at Los Alamos, New Mexico. After his dismissal from the Signal Corps in 1945, 

the Soviets instructed him to keep a low profile and cease his supervisory activities, 
27

but by 1946 or 1947, he 

had resumed an active 

role in espionage. 

Observers at the 

Rosenbergs’ conspiracy 

trial described Julius as 

maintaining a calm demeanor and displaying 

virtually no emotion, 

even when he and his 

wife were sentenced to 

death. After the sentencing, however, guards at 

the prison where the 

Rosenbergs were held 

reported that the couple 

sang to each other from 

their adjoining cells. In 

the two years between 

sentencing and execution, Julius wrote Ethel 

a large number of letters 

declaring his love for 

her and his anguish at being separated from her and their sons. Julius’s letters also 

expressed anger at what he claimed was persecution by the government and bias on 

the part of the press. Ethel was not the only intended audience for these complaints; 

to gain support for the clemency movement, some of the Rosenbergs’ letters were 

published in the National Guardian and, shortly before their deaths, in book form. 

Evidence made public after the fall of the Soviet Union—including Soviet intelligence cables the United States intercepted and decrypted during World War II as part 

of the Venona project—proved that Rosenberg had spied for the Soviets. The notion 

that Rosenberg gave the Soviets “the secret of the atomic bomb”—as the prosecution 

claimed and for which Judge Kaufman imposed the death penalty—did not stand 

the test of time, having been discredited years later by leading atomic scientists, who 

stated that the atomic information Julius passed to the Soviets was of little value.

Ethel Rosenberg

Ethel Rosenberg, born Ethel Greenglass, was accused of conspiring with her husband 

Julius to commit atomic espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and was executed along with him in 1953. The evidence against her at trial consisted solely of the 

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are taken from the courthouse 

after being found guilty

New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-117772]
The Rosenberg Trial

28

testimony of her brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass, that she had 

participated in a few conversations and typed notes about the atomic bomb. Crucial 

elements of that testimony were later revealed to have been fabricated. Government 

documents released years after the trial suggested that Ethel was prosecuted mainly 

so that Julius would feel pressured to inform on other spies. A memo written by FBI 

Director J. Edgar Hoover proposed using Ethel as part of a “lever strategy,” and Assistant U.S. Attorney Myles Lane told the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic 

Energy that convicting Ethel would help to “break” Julius and convince him to talk.

Like her husband, Ethel Rosenberg came from a family of Jewish immigrants 

living on New York City’s Lower East Side. She was born on September 28, 1915, to 

a Russian father and an Austrian mother. After high school, she found a job as a clerk 

for a shipping company, from which she was fired four years later after organizing 

a strike among female employees. Ethel also took instruction in stenography and 

typing, and later studied voice, modern dance, and child psychology. She and Julius 

married in 1939, and the couple had two sons, Michael and Robert. Ethel was a devoted adherent to Communist ideology, and, according to FBI informants, a member 

of the Communist Party USA. At her trial for conspiracy to commit espionage, she 

described herself as a housewife.

Ethel struck many observers at her trial to be the most calm and self-assured of 

any of the defendants, and as seeming to be almost contemptuous of the proceedings. 

She displayed no emotion when her brother, David Greenglass, testified against her, 

or when Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced her to death. One juror later described 

her as “a steely, stony, tight-lipped woman.” Ethel’s resolve, which she displayed by 

keeping her composure on the way to the electric chair, led many, including President 

Eisenhower, to assume that she was the driving force behind the espionage conspiracy 

and was in control of her younger husband. While Ethel maintained a stoic demeanor 

in public settings, her prison letters to Julius were, like his, full of emotion, including 

avowals of love for him and longing for a reunion between the couple and their sons. 

In 1995, the National Security Agency released translations of Soviet intelligence 

cables that the United States intercepted and decrypted during World War II as part 

of the Venona project. One such cable, dated November 27, 1944, mentioned Ethel 

by name and stated, “Knows about her husband’s work. . . . In view of delicate health 

does not work.”

Morton Sobell

Morton Sobell, Julius Rosenberg’s college classmate and fellow Communist, was the 

least prominent defendant in the Rosenberg espionage case. Recruited by Rosenberg 

to spy for the Soviet Union, Sobell helped to provide the Soviets with non-atomic 

military secrets. 
29

Sobell was born on April 11, 1917, to an immigrant family in New York City. He 

attended City College of New York, where he joined the Young Communist League, 

and graduated in 1938. After working as an engineer in the Navy Bureau of Ordnance in Washington, D.C., from 1939 to 1941, Sobell earned a master’s degree in 

electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1942. While in Washington, 

he was a member of the 

Communist Party USA, 

but dropped out prior 

to World War II. During 

the war, he worked in 

the aircraft and marine 

engineering division 

of General Electric in 

Schenectady, New York. 

Prior to his arrest, Sobell 

was working as a radar 

engineer at the Reeves 

Instrument Corporation in New York City. 

He lived in Queens with 

his wife Helen, whom 

he married in 1947, and 

their two children.

On June 21, 1950, five 

days after the arrest of 

David Greenglass, Sobell 

and his family abruptly 

left for Mexico. The trip was supposedly a vacation, but the government alleged that 

Sobell was seeking to escape arrest and prosecution by fleeing to the Soviet Union, 

supporting the claim with evidence that he had used aliases when checking into 

hotels in Mexico City. On August 18, Mexican authorities seized him and drove him 

across the border, delivering him to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 

Laredo, Texas. Sobell, accompanied by U.S. marshals, was promptly flown back to New 

York City and later indicted on charges of participating in the Rosenberg espionage 

conspiracy.

Based on the testimony of one witness, Max Elitcher, and evidence regarding 

his flight to Mexico, Sobell was convicted. On the advice of his attorney, who felt 

that the trip to Mexico would be difficult to explain, Sobell declined to testify at 

the trial. Because he was not accused of conspiring to disclose secrets regarding the 

atomic bomb, he was spared the death penalty and instead sentenced to thirty years 

in prison. After the Rosenbergs were executed, many involved in the campaign to 

Morton Sobell (left) is escorted into federal court 

by a U.S. marshal

Acme Newspictures photo, New York World-Telegraph and the Sun 

Newspaper Photograph Collection

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-123563]
The Rosenberg Trial

30

win them clemency initiated an effort to clear Morton Sobell and have him released 

from prison. Although he was not exonerated, Sobell was released in January 1969 

after serving more than seventeen years of his sentence. 

Sobell maintained his innocence after his incarceration, claiming that he had fled 

to Mexico only to escape persecution for his previous membership in the Communist 

Party and for having falsely taken an oath that he had never been a Communist in order 

to obtain employment with the government. In 1974, he published a book, On Doing 

Time, in which he again insisted that neither he nor the Rosenbergs had ever engaged 

in espionage. In interviews published in 2008 and 2010, however, Sobell admitted that 

he and Julius had spied for the Soviets, and he provided details of their activities.

The witnesses

David Greenglass

David Greenglass, who spied for the Soviet Union while a U.S. Army soldier stationed 

at the atomic research facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico, implicated his sister, Ethel 

Rosenberg, and her husband, Julius, in the espionage conspiracy. After his release 

from prison, he lived anonymously, as his wife and children had already begun to 

do, in order to escape the notoriety he earned 

through his activities as a Communist spy 

and his role in sending the Rosenbergs to 

the electric chair.

Greenglass was born on March 3, 1922, 

and grew up on New York City’s Lower East 

Side. He looked up to his older sister and 

her then-boyfriend, and later claimed that 

his “hero worship” of Julius had led him to 

embrace Communism and to join the Young 

Communist League at age sixteen. In 1942, 

David married Ruth Printz, with whom he 

later had a son and a daughter. After attending several technical schools and beginning 

work as a machinist in New York, Greenglass 

was inducted into the U.S. Army as a private 

in April 1943. He worked as a machinist for 

the Army at various locations throughout 

the United States until being assigned in 

August 1944 to the Manhattan Project at 

Los Alamos. From 1944 to 1945, David used 

his position to gather classified information 

Cross-section of atomic bomb drawn by 

David Greenglass for use at trial and 

impounded at request of Emanuel Bloch

National Archives
31

from the facility for transmission to the Soviets. The letters David wrote to Ruth 

during his Army service revealed that he continued to embrace Communist ideals 

and followed the fortunes of the Communist Party USA with avid interest. Moreover, 

soldiers with whom David served remembered 

him as continually engaging in heated political 

rants in which he espoused left-wing ideals and 

praised the Soviet Union, making his Communist sympathies abundantly clear.

After his discharge from the Army as a sergeant in February 1946, Greenglass returned 

to New York, where he and Julius went into 

business, opening a machine shop. The business 

was not very successful, and in 1949 Greenglass 

obtained a new job with an engineering corporation. In February 1950, after atomic scientist 

Klaus Fuchs was arrested for spying for the 

Soviets, Julius warned David to leave the United 

States, but he declined. As Rosenberg had feared, 

Fuchs’ arrest led the authorities to courier Harry 

Gold, who in turn identified Greenglass as a 

spy who had stolen classified material from Los 

Alamos. Greenglass quickly confessed, implicating his brother-in-law and sister as the primary 

figures in the espionage ring.

Citing David’s cooperation, Judge Irving 

Kaufman sentenced him to only fifteen years in 

prison. Ruth Greenglass, who also confessed to 

espionage and testified against the Rosenbergs, was not indicted. David Greenglass 

claimed later that Assistant Attorney General James McInerney had promised his 

lawyers that he would receive a suspended sentence or, at most, five years in prison, 

but there is no known record of such a pledge. Released on parole in 1960, David 

Greenglass rejoined Ruth and their two children, who were living under assumed 

names. In 2001, Greenglass admitted that he lied on the stand when he claimed that 

Ethel Rosenberg had typed notes relating to the atomic bomb—the testimony most 

responsible for her conviction and death sentence. As of 2013, David Greenglass 

continued to live in the New York metropolitan area under his assumed name.

Ruth Greenglass

Ruth Greenglass, born Ruth Printz, was the wife of David Greenglass and the sister-in-law of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Although the government named her as a 

Jell-O box used at trial to demonstrate 

recognition signal used by David 

Greenglass and Harry Gold

National Archives
The Rosenberg Trial

32

member of the conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, she avoided 

prosecution by joining her husband in testifying against Julius and Ethel. Her trial 

testimony, which David corroborated, contributed significantly to the Rosenbergs’ 

convictions and death sentences. 

Born on April 30, 1924, Ruth was the oldest of four children. Like her husband and 

the Rosenbergs, she grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City, and she and 

David Greenglass, whom she married in 

1942, were childhood sweethearts. Like 

her husband, Ruth believed strongly in 

Communist ideology and was at one 

time a member of the Young Communist League, serving briefly as president 

of a local club. A Soviet agent reported 

in September 1944 that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg recommended Ruth “as 

an intelligent and clever girl” who was 

among recent recruits. The agent added 

that Ruth’s husband was working on the 

atomic energy project in New Mexico.

Prior to their arrests for conspiracy, Julius Rosenberg had urged David 

Greenglass to flee the country. Greenglass was reluctant to do so in any case, 

but when Ruth was badly burned in a 

household accident in February 1950, 

requiring her to be hospitalized for 

several months while pregnant with her 

second child, flight became impossible. 

When David was arrested a few months later, he revealed that Ruth had been involved 

in the espionage conspiracy as well. Although there is no known record of a formal 

deal with the government, David hoped that Ruth could avoid indictment if the 

couple cooperated with the authorities.

At the time of the trial, Ruth was working as a stenographer for Louis Lefkowitz, 

a Republican assemblyman who later became the state attorney general. In 1956, she 

was fired from her job with Assemblyman Lefkowitz as a result of publicity surrounding David’s testimony before Congress on the subject of Communist subversion. 

Although she soon found work elsewhere, the incident motivated Ruth to change 

the family surname.

Ruth’s most significant contribution to the Rosenberg trial was her testimony that 

Ethel Rosenberg had typed notes about the atomic bomb for transmission to the Soviets. Without this testimony, which David corroborated, the government’s evidence 

David and Ruth Greenglass

National Archives
33

of Ethel’s direct participation in espionage would have been almost nonexistent. FBI 

documents declassified in the 1980s as well as Ruth’s grand jury testimony, released in 

2008, made clear that Ruth made this allegation only very shortly before trial, when it 

was still uncertain whether or not she would be indicted. David Greenglass admitted 

in 2001 that he had no recollection of Ethel’s typing and had lied to protect Ruth. 

Ruth Greenglass continued to live in the New York area under her assumed name 

until she died on April 7, 2008, at the age of eighty-three. Her death was made public 

in June of that year when the federal government agreed to release the grand jury 

testimony of consenting or deceased witnesses.

Harry Gold

Harry Gold, born Heinrich Golodnitsky, was a biochemist from Philadelphia who 

spied for the Soviets on and off from 1936 until his arrest in 1950. Gold was not a 

Communist, but admired the Soviet Union and began his spying career by committing 

industrial espionage in order to aid that nation’s development. Only later did Gold 

begin to steal military secrets from the United 

States government. In the postwar period, Gold 

acted mainly as a courier, ferrying information 

from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs to Soviet 

spy handler Anatoli Yakovlev. In 1947, he was 

subpoenaed, along with his employer, engineer 

Abraham Brothman, to testify before a federal 

grand jury investigating espionage, but Gold 

was not indicted. Although he never met the 

Rosenbergs, Gold became a crucial link in the 

chain that ultimately led to their arrests.

 Gold was born on December 12, 1910, in 

Berne, Switzerland, to Russian parents. He and 

his family came to the United States in 1914 

and eventually obtained American citizenship, 

after which the family name was changed to 

Gold, and he became known as Harry. After 

graduating from South Philadelphia High 

School in 1928, Gold worked on and off at 

the Pennsylvania Sugar Company between 1929 and 1946. He also pursued higher 

education, attending the University of Pennsylvania, earning an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1932, and 

earning a Bachelor of Science degree from Xavier University in Cincinnati in 1940. 

At the time of his arrest for espionage on May 23, 1950, he worked as a biochemist 

at a Philadelphia hospital.

Harry Gold

National Archives
The Rosenberg Trial

34

Gold confessed to espionage and identified David Greenglass as a spy that had 

passed him classified information from Los Alamos, resulting in the arrest of Greenglass followed by those of the Rosenbergs. After pleading guilty in the U.S. District 

Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Gold was sentenced to thirty years in 

prison—five more than the government had requested—by Judge James McGranery, 

who resigned in 1952 to become the attorney general of the United States. Gold was 

paroled in 1966, after which he worked at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in 

Philadelphia, doing research on heart ailments. He died on August 28, 1972, while 

undergoing a heart operation at the hospital where he worked. His death was not 

announced publicly until 1974, after it was discovered by the producer of a television 

documentary on the Rosenberg case.

The lawyers

Irving Saypol

Irving Saypol, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was the chief 

prosecutor on the Rosenberg case. His aggressive handling of the case, combined 

with a penchant for seeking publicity, won him popular acclaim and helped propel 

him to a state judgeship shortly after the trial. 

Saypol was born September 3, 1905, and like the Rosenbergs, came from New 

York City’s Lower East Side. After attending New York City public schools, he studied 

at St. Lawrence University and Brooklyn Law School and was admitted to the bar in 

1928. He first worked in the office of the city’s corporation counsel, which he left to 

found his own law firm in 1934. In 1945, Saypol began work at the U.S. attorney’s 

office in Manhattan, and he served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of 

New York from 1949 to 1951.

Working as chief federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, which 

included Manhattan, during the height of the Cold War, Saypol built his reputation 

on cases involving Communists, including the leaders of the Communist Party USA. 

Next to the Rosenberg case, the most prominent was the perjury case against Alger 

Hiss, the State Department official convicted of lying about having leaked government 

secrets to the Soviets through admitted spy Whittaker Chambers.

In November 1951, Saypol was elected to a fourteen-year term as a justice of the 

Supreme Court of the State of New York, the state’s second-highest court; he was 

reelected in 1965, having enjoyed bipartisan support in both elections. In 1976, he 

was accused of using his power to appoint lawyers to court assignments to benefit his 

son financially, and was indicted by a grand jury on bribery and perjury charges. The 

charges against him were dismissed in January 1977. On July 1 of that year, Saypol 

died at the age of 71, only a few months before he was scheduled to retire from the 

bench.
35

Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn, an assistant U.S. attorney, was perhaps the only participant in the Rosenberg trial who became known primarily in connection with events unrelated to the 

case. Cohn’s most significant contribution to the trial was his direct examination of 

key witness David Greenglass, which produced testimony devastating to Julius and 

Ethel Rosenberg. Two years later, Cohn embarked on the most memorable phase of 

his career, serving as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy in his investigations 

into alleged Communist subversion of the federal government.

Cohn was born February 20, 1927, in New York City, and grew up in Manhattan. 

His father, Albert, was a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, the 

state’s second-highest court, and a 

prominent member of the Democratic Party. The family’s political 

connections allowed Cohn to secure a job with the U.S. attorney’s 

office in the Southern District of 

New York at the age of twenty-one, 

after graduating from Columbia 

Law School at twenty. He quickly 

rose to prominence in the office, 

specializing in prosecutions of individuals charged with subversive 

activities and working on several 

important cases. In 1950, U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol made Cohn 

his confidential assistant. Cohn’s 

participation in the Rosenberg trial 

brought him further attention, and 

in 1952, he became a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General James 

McGranery.

Once in Washington, Cohn developed a reputation as a staunch 

anti-Communist, leading Senator 

McCarthy to appoint him chief 

counsel to his Senate investigations 

subcommittee in 1953. McCarthy, 

Cohn, and Cohn’s friend David Schine teamed up to conduct aggressive investigations 

of the State Department and other government agencies, looking for Communist 

infiltration. After Schine was drafted into the Army, Cohn’s alleged efforts to secure 

Roy Cohn

New York World-Telegraph and the Sun Newspaper 

Photograph Collection

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress 

[LC-USZ62-117816]
The Rosenberg Trial

36

special treatment for him led to formal charges against both McCarthy and Cohn. 

Although the two were cleared, the televised Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954 that 

resulted from the charges contributed heavily to McCarthy’s eventual loss of credibility and influence.

After leaving McCarthy’s subcommittee in 1954, Cohn returned to New York City 

and began the private practice of law. He was extremely successful, possessing a roster 

of high-profile clients, and building a reputation as a tough and brilliant litigator. 

Despite his professional success, Cohn found himself beset by legal troubles, including 

frequent IRS audits, liens for millions of dollars in back taxes, and federal charges 

including conspiracy, bribery, and fraud, of which he was acquitted in separate trials 

in 1964, 1969, and 1971. Cohn attributed his brushes with the law to vendettas on 

the part of his enemies, most notably U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and 

Robert Morgenthau, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

After several accusations of unethical conduct as an attorney, Cohn was disbarred 

by the state of New York in June 1986. Already gravely ill by the time of his disbarment, Cohn died at age fifty-nine on August 2, 1986, while receiving treatment at the 

National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Emanuel Bloch

Emanuel Bloch, who defended the Rosenbergs at trial along with his father and 

law partner, Alexander, was hailed for his 

exhaustive efforts to defend his clients and 

save them from the death penalty, but also 

criticized for several crucial errors that may 

have hurt the Rosenbergs’ already slim 

chances of acquittal, retrial, or a reduced 

sentence.

Immediately after Julius Rosenberg 

was arrested in July 1950, he retained the 

services of Bloch, a Manhattan lawyer 

with a good reputation who had defended 

Communists and other leftists. Shortly 

before the Rosenberg case, Bloch had 

represented some of the “Trenton Six”—a 

group of African American youths accused 

of killing an elderly shopkeeper; students 

at the City College of New York who were 

arrested while demonstrating against two 

professors accused of anti-Semitism and 

Emanuel Bloch

United Press photo, New York World-Telegraph 

and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of 

Congress [LC-USZ62-118203]
37

racial discrimination; and William Rosen, who was sentenced to prison after refusing 

to answer questions before the federal grand jury investigating the Alger Hiss perjury 

case. Based on Bloch’s association with the left-wing National Lawyers Guild, as well 

as tips from informants, the FBI believed Bloch to be a Communist, and J. Edgar 

Hoover suggested that the Bureau open an investigative file on him at the conclusion 

of the Rosenberg case.

Throughout the trial and the more than two years of appeals that followed it, 

Emanuel Bloch spared no energy in attempting to rescue Julius and Ethel Rosenberg 

from the electric chair. He raised a multitude of arguments in the district court, court 

of appeals, and Supreme Court, and sought executive clemency from Presidents 

Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. Bloch continued to seek stays of execution 

until the last possible moment, and after the Rosenbergs were executed, he played a 

major role in seeing to the welfare of the couple’s sons, Michael and Robert, acting 

as a temporary guardian and helping to arrange their adoption. In the trial, however, Bloch failed to offer many of the challenges that might have been the basis for 

successful appeals and motions for rehearings. 

At the funeral of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 21, 1953, Emanuel Bloch accused President Eisenhower, U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., and Federal 

Bureau of Investigation head J. Edgar Hoover of “the murder of the Rosenbergs.” As 

a result of his remarks, the New York City bar association sought the revocation of 

his law license. On January 30, 1954, eight days after being served with the complaint, 

Bloch died in his New York City apartment at the age of fifty-two.

The jurists

Irving Kaufman

Judge Irving Kaufman, despite a distinguished career of nearly forty-three years 

on the federal bench, was best known as the man who sentenced Julius and Ethel 

Rosenberg to die in the electric chair. In the decades following the trial, he was the 

subject of intense criticism from those who doubted the Rosenbergs’ guilt as well 

as from those who believed the Rosenbergs to be guilty but viewed their sentences 

as unduly harsh. To others Kaufman was a brave defender of judicial independence. 

When President Reagan awarded Kaufman the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 

1987, he referred to the “international campaign to thwart the course of justice in the 

Rosenberg espionage case” and to Kaufman’s “noble and heroic work” in “protecting 

the courts from political pressures.”

Kaufman already had a reputation as a staunch anti-Communist judge by the 

time of the Rosenberg trial, and his hostility toward the defendants was particularly 

evident in his sentencing statement, which characterized the Rosenbergs as traitors 
The Rosenberg Trial

38

whose crime was worse than murder. The appeals court found nothing in Judge 

Kaufman’s conduct on the bench that would justify overturning the verdict, but the 

court dismissed some of the most serious charges against Kaufman because the defense 

lawyers had not adequately challenged those actions during the trial. Unbeknownst 

to the defense lawyers, Kaufman had 

consulted with the prosecution and officials in the Justice Department during 

the trial and the appeals process. 

Judge Kaufman did make public his 

personal struggle with the sentencing 

decision. The day after he delivered the 

death sentences, the New York Times

reported that Kaufman had slept only 

“a bit more than ten hours” during 

the preceding week, and that “several 

times he went to his synagogue seeking spiritual guidance.” But Kaufman 

expressed no regrets after imposing the 

death sentence. In his decision denying 

the Rosenbergs’ motion for a reduced 

sentence, Kaufman used even stronger 

language in condemning their crime 

as “traitorous acts . . . of the highest 

degree.” The death penalty in espionage 

cases was based on the recognized need 

to deter others, a deterrent all the more 

“vital in the world in which we live, 

infiltrated as we are by the home grown 

and foreign variety of spies.” 

Kaufman was born on June 24, 1910, in New York City and attended high school 

in the Bronx. After obtaining his law degree from Fordham University at age twenty, 

he alternated work in the private and government sectors. He began at the New York 

City law office of his future father-in-law, departing three years later for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, where he remained from 1935 

to 1940. After another stint in private practice, Kaufman served as a special assistant 

to the U.S. attorney general from 1947 to 1948. The following year, President Harry 

Truman appointed him a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District 

of New York.

To Kaufman’s dismay, the Rosenbergs’ deaths in June 1953 became the most 

prominent aspect of his judicial career, despite the many other significant cases he 

handled, including his issuance in 1961 of the first order desegregating a public 

Judge Irving R. Kaufman 

Associated Press photo, New York World-Telegraph 

and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of 

Congress [LC-USZ-117761]
39

school in the North. Later in 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the 

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Kaufman served on the appellate 

court until his death on February 1, 1992. He was chief judge from 1973 to 1980, and 

took senior status, or semi-retirement, in 1987. While on the appeals court, he wrote 

several important opinions, including some that expanded First Amendment rights 

for journalists. In 1971, in United States v. New York Times, Kaufman dissented from 

the appellate court’s decision that publication of the Pentagon Papers could be restrained in the name of national security. The Supreme Court agreed with Kaufman’s 

position, reversing the decision. 

Jerome Frank

Jerome New Frank, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which 

sat in New York City, wrote the opinion in February 1952 affirming the convictions 

of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell. In reviewing the case as part of 

a three-judge panel, Frank rejected each of 

the Rosenbergs’ arguments on appeal. Frank 

denied that the death penalty imposed on 

the Rosenbergs was cruel and unusual punishment, but privately he had advised Judge 

Kaufman not to sentence the Rosenbergs to 

death. In his opinion, he also suggested that 

the Supreme Court might want to revisit 

the questions about the death penalty for 

crimes similar to treason. Frank dissented 

from his two colleagues by voting to grant 

Morton Sobell a new trial. The jury, according to Frank, should have been permitted to 

decide whether Sobell had joined the other 

conspirators in their plan to send atomic 

information from Los Alamos to the Soviets, 

or had merely engaged in a separate, less 

significant conspiracy with Julius Rosenberg 

to transmit non-atomic information. 

Frank was born on September 10, 1889, 

in New York City. After his family moved to 

Chicago when he was seven years old, Frank attended the city’s public schools, the 

University of Chicago, and the University of Chicago Law School, from which he 

graduated in 1912 with the highest grades in school history. After stretches in private practice in Chicago and New York, Frank moved into government service after 

the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president in 1932, and Frank soon became 

Judge Jerome N. Frank

Harris & Ewing Collection

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of 

Congress [LC-DIG-hec-26352]
The Rosenberg Trial

40

an ardent New Dealer. Between 1933 and 1941, he served as general counsel of the 

Agricultural Adjustment Administration, as special counsel to the Reconstruction 

Finance Corporation, and as both commissioner and chair of the Securities and 

Exchange Commission. 

In 1941, Roosevelt appointed Frank to the court of appeals, where he remained 

until his death. As an appellate jurist, Frank became known as a staunch protector of 

civil liberties, and influenced the Supreme Court—both through his written opinions 

and his personal interactions with justices—to expand civil liberties protections as 

well. He was also a prolific writer, authoring several books on legal philosophy. His 

most influential book, Law and the Modern Mind (1930), made him a pioneer of the 

legal realism movement. Frank died at the age of sixty-seven on January 13, 1957, in 

New Haven, Connecticut.

William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas was the longestserving justice in the history of the 

Supreme Court of the United States, 

sitting on the nation’s highest court 

from 1939 until his retirement in 1975. 

The Rosenberg case became one of 

the more prominent episodes in his 

long judicial career when he granted 

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg a stay of 

execution on June 17, 1953, two days 

before they were put to death in the 

electric chair. Douglas faced enormous 

public criticism for the stay and for his 

published dissent asserting that the law 

should have prohibited the death sentence unless it was recommended by a 

jury. Douglas also faced harsh, though 

private, criticism from other justices 

for his shifting and seemingly inconsistent votes on the multiple petitions 

from the Rosenbergs. Douglas voted to 

deny the first petition for certiorari, the 

petition for a rehearing, and, initially, 

the second petition for certiorari. After 

changing his vote on the second petition, he denied a petition for oral arguments 

on a stay related to the discovery of new evidence. Douglas’s fierce rivalry with his 

Justice William O. Douglas

Harris & Ewing Collection 

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress 

[LC-USZ62-44543]
41

colleagues, particularly Robert Jackson and Felix Frankfurter, complicated the already 

difficult conference discussions on the Rosenbergs’ appeals.

Born on October 16, 1898, in Maine, Minnesota, the son of a Presbyterian minister, Douglas spent most of his early life in the state of Washington. He moved to 

New York City in 1922 to study at Columbia Law School, from which he graduated 

second in his class. After a short stint in private practice with a major Wall Street 

firm, Douglas embarked on an academic career, teaching at Columbia and Yale Law 

Schools.

In 1934, Douglas entered government service with the newly formed Securities 

and Exchange Commission and soon found himself a close confidant of President 

Franklin D. Roosevelt. By 1937, he had been named chairman of the SEC. Two years 

later, upon the resignation from the Supreme Court of Justice Louis Brandeis, Roosevelt nominated Douglas to fill the position. Douglas took his seat on the Court on 

April 17, 1939, at the age of forty, becoming the youngest justice since Joseph Story 

was appointed in 1811.

As a justice, Douglas was known as a fierce protector of individual liberty, especially regarding freedom of expression. In the 1950s, he decried what he felt were 

witch hunts for domestic Communists. He dissented from the Supreme Court’s 

1951 ruling in Dennis v. United States upholding the speech-based convictions of 

Communist leaders for conspiracy to overthrow the government, and from another 

ruling upholding a New York law requiring the firing of schoolteachers belonging to 

organizations the state board of regents deemed subversive. 

Douglas retired from the Court in November 1975 because of health problems, 

and he died in Washington, D.C., on January 19, 1980, at the age of eighty-one.

Felix Frankfurter

Felix Frankfurter served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United 

States from 1939 to 1962. Throughout the Supreme Court’s deliberations on the various petitions from the Rosenbergs, Frankfurter consistently voted to hear arguments 

on the case. As in many other cases, Frankfurter was concerned with the public image 

of the Court and in maintaining public confidence in the judicial process. In the final 

proceeding in the case before the Supreme Court, Frankfurter joined William Douglas 

and Hugo Black in dissenting from the Court’s ruling that lifted the stay of execution 

Douglas had granted the Rosenbergs. Frankfurter believed that the questions regarding the sentencing provisions of the Atomic Espionage Act were too complex to be 

resolved without more time for consideration. Three years later, Frankfurter wrote 

the recently appointed Justice John Marshall Harlan that “the Rosenberg case is the 

most disgusting, saddest, despicable episode in the Court’s history in my lifetime.”

Frankfurter was born on November 15, 1882, to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. 

His family immigrated to the United States in 1894 and settled on New York City’s 
The Rosenberg Trial

42

Lower East Side. Frankfurter graduated from the College of the City of New York in 

1902, and shortly thereafter entered Harvard Law School.

After law school and a short stint in private practice, Frankfurter served as an 

assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York under U.S. Attorney 

Henry Stimson. When Stimson was named secretary of war, he put Frankfurter in 

charge of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, which oversaw United States territories. 

In 1914, Frankfurter was appointed the first Jewish professor at Harvard Law 

School and became one of the nation’s leading legal scholars. He placed many of 

his students as law clerks to Supreme 

Court justices. He also participated in 

progressive causes, most notably by 

advocating a new trial for condemned 

Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and 

Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Frankfurter 

frequently worked with the federal 

government during the New Deal, helping to draft legislation, including the 

Securities Act, the Social Security Act, 

the Revenue Act, and the Fair Labor 

Standards Act.

In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter to replace Justice 

Benjamin Cardozo on the Supreme 

Court. Like many Progressives who 

came of age in the early twentieth century, Frankfurter believed in a kind of 

judicial restraint through which courts 

deferred to elected legislatures. This restraint often separated him from other 

Supreme Court justices in the years 

after the Second World War when the 

Court was more active in protecting 

civil liberties and defending federal authority. Frankfurter was a critic of the death 

penalty and believed the Supreme Court should accept any petition appealing a 

federal death sentence.

Throughout his tenure on the Supreme Court, Frankfurter frequently clashed with 

other strong-willed justices, and was particularly critical of Douglas and Black, even 

though he joined them in dissent in the Rosenberg case. Frankfurter retired from the 

Court in 1962, and died three years later, on February 22, 1965, in Washington, D.C.

Justice Felix Frankfurter

Harris & Ewing Collection

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress 

[LC-DIG-hec-21701]
The Rosenberg Trial

Media Coverage and Public Debates

Media coverage of the Rosenberg case was powerfully shaped by the Cold War atmosphere in which the trial took place. Much of the foundation for the public’s perception of the Rosenbergs was laid before most Americans had even heard their names. 

Newspapers in the years leading up to the Rosenbergs’ arrests reported heavily on the 

Soviet Union’s efforts to expand its influence in Eastern Europe and its acquisition 

of the atomic bomb, as well as the arrests and prosecutions of domestic Communists for advocating the overthrow of the United States government. The notion of 

Communists as spies was also a familiar subject of press coverage, as exemplified by 

the Alger Hiss perjury case. 

When the Soviets conducted their first successful test of the bomb in August

1949, many Americans were shocked to find that the United States had lost its 

atomic monopoly. A New York Times headline read, “Soviet Achievement Ahead of 

Predictions by 3 Years,” and the accompanying column warned that the Soviet 

Union might soon have a stockpile of bombs sufficient “to destroy fifty of our cities 

with 40,000,000 of our population.” The following day, a headline in the Los 

Angeles Times proclaimed, “Russ Bomb Threat to Life of West.” In February 1950, 

four months before Julius Rosenberg was arrested, newspapers reported the 

arrest of atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs for passing information about the bomb to 

the Soviets. The Times reported that Fuchs had possessed “vital” data about the 

bomb and that some members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic 

Energy believed that he was responsible for the Soviets acquiring the bomb earlier 

than expected. The revelation of atomic espionage following the detonation of a 

Soviet bomb fueled anxieties over the threat to national security posed by 

Communist subversion.

In the midst of the Red Scare, with widespread sympathy unlikely for 

Commu-nists suspected of atomic espionage, the media presented the case to the 

public in a light favorable to the prosecution and detrimental to the Rosenbergs. 

Newspaper stories often relied on Department of Justice or FBI press releases for 

the bulk of their source material, and sensational headlines referring to the 

Rosenbergs as al-leged “atom spies” accused of aiding and abetting a “Soviet ring” 

helped to foster a public perception that they were dangerous traitors bent on 

helping a bitter enemy to destroy the United States.

After Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death 

in April 1951, most mass-circulation newspapers reported the news without 

editorial comment, and none announced themselves opposed to the sentences. 

In August, however, the National Guardian, a left-wing New York City paper, 

began a vigorous campaign to exonerate the Rosenbergs, claiming that they had 

been the victims of a government frame-up. The Guardian’s advocacy helped to 

spark an internation-al movement on the Rosenbergs’ behalf, and led to the 

formation of the National 

43
The Rosenberg Trial

44

Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case. The view of the case presented 

by the Guardian and the movement it helped to inspire were at first ignored by the 

mainstream press in the United States.

While the Rosenberg case was on appeal, frequent coverage of the nuclear arms 

race and its potential impact on national security continued. In late April 1951, for 

example, the New York Times reported on a statement by the New York City Civil 

Defense Office asserting that New York City was “considered by competent authorities to be the country’s atomic target No. 1.” In June, the Times printed Governor 

Thomas Dewey’s urging that preparations be made “as though the atom bomb were 

expected to fall on us tomorrow.” 

In 1952, mainstream American newspapers began to take notice of the growing 

international movement on behalf of the Rosenbergs, and their coverage equated 

the movement with Communism and anti-Americanism—the approach taken in 

a six-part series that ran in the New York Post in December 1952 and another series 

of equal length written by syndicated columnist Bob Considine in January 1953. In 

February, a New York Times story headlined, “Rosenbergs Used in ‘Hate U.S.’ Drive” 

referenced “daily reports of [pro-Rosenberg] rallies in the Communist press.” Even 

as the movement grew within the United States during 1953, the media continued 

to portray it as distant and Communist-controlled. 

Press coverage of the Rosenbergs in Western Europe had a flavor substantially 

different from that in the United States. This was especially true in France, where by 

1952 newspapers of all ideological stripes opposed the pending executions. Public 

opinion in France grew so heated that in December 1952, American press attaché Ben 

Bradlee, later the editor of the Washington Post, was sent from Paris to New York to 

read the trial transcript and draft a report on the case for distribution to the French 

media. The report mitigated some of the fiercest hostility to the United States, but 

deep opposition remained. Some American commentators were critical of the sympathy for the Rosenbergs exhibited by the foreign press; for example, a Washington 

Post editorial accused Paris daily Le Monde of having been hoaxed into joining an 

anti-American propaganda campaign.

American newspapers continued to stress the intertwining of the pro-Rosenberg 

movement with Communism. A New York Times article that ran the day after the 

Rosenbergs were executed emphasized Communist involvement in the previous 

day’s protests in England, France, and Italy, and described the efforts of media 

outlets in Soviet satellite states to publicize the Rosenbergs’ deaths for propaganda 

purposes. The following day, the paper ran an Associated Press report on the efforts 

of American officials to counter Communist propaganda. The report asserted that 

“the Communists have tried unceasingly to make the case a cause célèbre in the cold 

war” while making only brief references to appeals for clemency that had come from 

non-Communists. 
45

Throughout the posttrial proceedings, members of Congress carefully monitored 

coverage of the case, and many senators and representatives read into the Congressional 

Record editorials from papers in their home states condemning the Rosenbergs and 

praising the prosecutors and Judge Kaufman. The Chicago Daily News was the only 

major mainstream American newspaper to advocate clemency for the Rosenbergs, 

and in the wake of the executions, several papers ran editorials in support of the 

government’s handling of the case. Ten days after the Rosenbergs’ deaths, defense 

attorney Emanuel Bloch penned an angry editorial in the National Guardian accusing 

the press of a “conspiracy of silence” regarding the case. “Our great newspapers,” he 

wrote, “which during the trial, had seized eagerly upon every propaganda release of 

the prosecution, closed their pages to all news about the victims. From the Government’s point of view, and the point of view of its ally the press, the Rosenbergs were 

as good as dead.” 

47

Historical Documents

Emanuel Bloch, closing argument for the defense, March 

28, 1951

Aware of the political climate of the early 1950s and concerned that his clients would 

suffer prejudice as a result of their being Communists, defense attorney Emanuel 

Bloch began his closing argument by urging the jurors to ignore the Rosenbergs’ 

political beliefs and focus solely on the factual allegations against them. 

[Document Source: United States v. Rosenberg, et al., Stenographer’s Minutes, 

pp. 2168–71.]

 

The fear that an impartial jury could not be secured was particularly important 

in this type of case. Now, all of you are New Yorkers or you come from the environs 

of New York. We are a pretty sophisticated people. People can’t put things over on 

us very easily. We are fairly wise in the ways of the world and the ways of people and 

we all know that there is not a person in this world who hasn’t some prejudice, and 

you would be inhuman if you didn’t have some prejudice. But we ask you now as we 

asked you before, please don’t decide this case because you may have some bias or 

some prejudice against some political philosophy.

I think by the time we get through here and by the time the Court charges you, 

you will find out as you have been told repeatedly that these defendants are being 

charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. This is a very, very serious crime, 

one of the most serious crimes that we know under our law. They are not charged 

with being Communists, because if they were charged with being Communists they 

would not be defending themselves against the indictment in this case. It would be 

an entirely different indictment. They would be charged with different acts.

. . . 

If you want to convict these defendants because you think that they are Communists and you don’t like Communism and you don’t like any member of the Communist Party, then, ladies and gentlemen, I can sit down now and there is absolutely 

no use in my talking. There was no use in going through this whole rigmarole of a 

three weeks’ trial. That is not the crime. . . . 

Now, I said we are sophisticated New Yorkers and we can use our common sense 

and our understanding of the political climate of our times. We know that there is a 

great tension now in the world. We know that there is great tension by reason of the 

differences between this country and the Soviet Union. We know that Communism 

is being attacked repeatedly here in the United States as a doctrine which is inimical 
The Rosenberg Trial

48

to the interest of the United States. But believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I am not 

here; other defense counsel are not here as attorneys for the Communist Party and 

we are not here as attorneys for the Soviet Union. I can only speak for myself and my 

father. We are here representing Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two American citizens, 

who come to you as American citizens, charged with a specific crime, and ask you to 

judge them the way that you would want to be judged if you were sitting over there 

before 12 other jurors.

I say that because unless you keep your minds open and your minds should be 

open even at this time, although you should have done a lot of thinking about the 

case up to this point, unless you do that, then there is a farcical trial.

Irving Saypol, closing argument for the government, 

March 28, 1951

U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol devoted most of his closing argument to a methodical 

recounting of the evidence against each defendant, but also stressed the importance 

of the defendants’ Communist affiliations as relevant to their motive to spy on behalf of the Soviet Union. Although the government was not required to prove that 

the Soviet Union was a hostile nation in order to obtain a conviction under the 

Espionage Act, Saypol emphasized the tension between the Soviet Union and the 

United States in order to impress upon the jurors the seriousness of the charges and 

to diminish any sympathy they may have felt for the defendants. 

[Document Source: United States v. Rosenberg, et al., Stenographer’s Minutes, 

pp. 2266–2313]

 

Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard statements of defense counsel here concerning the injection of Communism in this case. I repeat again, these defendants are 

not on trial for being Communists. I don’t want you to convict them merely because 

of their Communist activity.

Communism, as the testimony has demonstrated, has a very definite place in this 

case because it is the Communist ideology which teaches worship and devotion to 

the Soviet Union over our own government. It has provided the motive and inspiration for these people to do the terrible things which have been proven against them. 

It is this adherence and devotion which makes clear their intent and motivation in 

carrying out this conspiracy to commit espionage.

We ask you to sustain the charge of the grand jury in a verdict of guilty against each 

of these three defendants, on one basis and one basis alone: the evidence produced 

in this courtroom as to their guilt of the crime of conspiracy to commit espionage; 

that proof as to each defendant has been overwhelming. The guilt of each one has 

been established beyond any peradventure of doubt.
49

The crime charged here is one of the most serious that could be committed 

against the United States of America. These defendants before you were parties to an 

agreement to spy and steal from their own country, to serve the interests of a foreign 

power which today seeks to wipe us off the face of the earth. It would use the produce 

of these defendants, the information received through them, from these traitors, to 

destroy Americans and the people of the United Nations.

These three defendants stand before you in the face of overwhelming proof of 

this terrible disloyalty, proof which transcends any emotional consideration which 

must eliminate any consideration of sympathy.

No defendants ever stood before the bar of American justice less deserving of 

sympathy than these three.

Judge Irving Kaufman, charge to the jury, March 28, 1951

In his instructions to the jury, Judge Kaufman emphasized that evidence about the 

defendants’ ties to Communism was introduced for the purpose of establishing a 

motive for espionage, and not to incriminate them based on their political beliefs. 

The defendants later challenged the use of such evidence as prejudicial, but the U.S. 

Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that Kaufman had acted appropriately 

in allowing it. Kaufman’s statement to the jury regarding the importance of enforcing laws against espionage because of international tension and the development of 

the atomic bomb was also challenged on appeal as implying that to acquit the defendants would be a dereliction of the jurors’ patriotic duty, but the court of appeals 

found nothing improper about the statement. Kaufman reminded the jurors that 

they were not to consider the fact that the death penalty could apply in the event of 

a conviction. 

[Document Source: United States v. Rosenberg, et al., Stenographer’s Minutes, 

pp. 2325–67.]

 

The defendants are accused of having conspired to commit espionage. Espionage, 

reduced to essentials, means spying on the United States to aid a foreign power. Because of the development of highly destructive weapons and their highly guarded 

possession by nations existing in a state of tension with one another, the enforcement 

of the espionage laws takes on a new significance. Our national well-being requires 

that we guard against spying on the secrets of our defense, whether such spying is 

carried on through agents of foreign powers or through our own nationals who prefer 

to help a foreign power.

This does not mean that the mere allegation or use of the word “espionage” should 

justify convicting innocent persons; however, irrational sympathies must not shield 

proven traitors.

. . . 
The Rosenberg Trial

50

Now I wish to instruct you at this point that I have admitted testimony as to 

membership or activity in the Communist Party and also testimony to the effect that 

the Communist Party is dedicated to furthering the interests of the Union of Soviet 

Socialist Republics solely on the question of the defendants’ intent or reason to believe 

that the alleged secret information to be transmitted would be used to the advantage 

of a foreign nation, in this case the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which is an 

element of the charge that the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

I wish to caution you most strenuously that proof of Communist Party membership or activity does not prove the offense charged in this indictment, but may be 

considered by you solely on the question of intent which is one element of the crime 

charged here. It will be up to you to determine whether you believe that testimony 

and, if so, the weight that you will give it on the question of intention.

. . . 

You are instructed that the question of possible punishment of the defendants in 

the event of conviction is no concern of the jury, and should not in any sense enter 

into or influence your deliberations. The duty of imposing sentence rests exclusively 

upon the Court. You cannot allow a consideration of the punishment which may 

be inflicted upon the defendants to influence your verdict in any way; the desire to 

avoid the performance of an unpleasant task cannot influence your verdict.

Judge Irving Kaufman, sentencing of Julius and Ethel 

Rosenberg, April 5, 1951

Judge Kaufman’s personal feelings about the Rosenberg case became apparent when 

he sentenced the couple to death. Reflecting the beliefs of many Americans in the 

1950s, Kaufman described the Soviet Union as an evil nation bent on the total 

destruction of the United States. Although the Espionage Act made no distinction 

between friendly and hostile foreign powers, Kaufman’s explanation of his decision 

to apply the death penalty rested heavily on what he viewed as the existential threat 

posed by the Soviet Union. Similarly, although the indictment did not charge the 

Rosenbergs with acting with intent to harm the United States, Kaufman labeled 

their actions as treason and asserted that the Rosenbergs must have known of “the 

basic Marxist goal of world revolution and the destruction of capitalism.”

[Document Source: United States v. Rosenberg, et al., Stenographer’s Minutes, 

pp. 2447–55.]

 

Citizens of this country who betray their fellow-countrymen can be under none 

of the delusions of the benignity of Soviet power that they might have been prior 

to World War II. The nature of Russian terrorism is now self-evident. Idealism as a 

rationale dissolves.
51

The issue of punishment in this case is presented in a unique framework of history. It is so difficult to make people realize that this country is engaged in a life and 

death struggle with a completely different system. This struggle is not only manifested 

externally between these two forces but this case indicates quite clearly that it also 

involves the employment by the enemy of secret as well as overt outspoken forces 

among our own people. All of our democratic institutions are, therefore, directly 

involved in this great conflict. I believe that never at any time in our history were 

we ever confronted to the same degree that we are today with such a challenge to 

our very existence. The atom bomb was unknown when the espionage statute was 

drafted. I emphasize this because we must realize that we are dealing with a missile 

of destruction which can wipe out millions of Americans.

. . . 

I consider your crime worse than murder. Plain deliberate contemplated murder 

is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed. In committing the act of murder, the criminal kills only his victim. The immediate family 

is brought to grief and when justice is meted out the chapter is closed. But in your 

case, I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb 

years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already 

caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people 

may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have 

altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country. No one can say that 

we do not live in a constant state of tension. We have evidence of your treachery all 

around us every day—for the civilian defense activities throughout the nation are 

aimed at preparing us for an atom bomb attack.

. . . 

In the light of the circumstances, I feel that I must pass such sentence upon the 

principles in this diabolical conspiracy to destroy a God-fearing nation, which will 

determine with finality that this nation’s security must remain inviolate; that traffic 

in military secrets, whether promoted by slavish devotion to a foreign ideology or 

by a desire for monetary gains must cease.

. . . 

The sentence of the Court upon Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is, for the crime 

for which you have been convicted, you are hereby sentenced to the punishment of 

death. . . 

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, decision on the 

defendants’ appeal of their convictions, February 25, 1952

The defendants sought to have their convictions overturned by the U.S. Court of 

Appeals for the Second Circuit, citing a host of legal errors Judge Kaufman allegedly 
The Rosenberg Trial

52

made during the trial. Among their claims was that the judge unfairly prejudiced 

the jury by admitting testimony regarding the defendants’ admiration for the Soviet 

Union and membership in the Communist Party USA. The court of appeals, in an 

opinion written by Judge Jerome Frank, held the evidence to be admissible, while 

conceding that it could be “highly inflammatory in a jury trial.”

[Document Source: United States v. Rosenberg, et al., 195 F.2d 583 (1952).]

 

Evidence was introduced to the effect (1) that the defendants expressed a preference for the Russian social and economic organization over ours, and (2) that the 

defendants were members of the Communist Party. The defendants say this evidence 

was incompetent to show they would commit espionage for Russia, and that it improperly inflamed the jury against them. We think the evidence possessed relevance. 

An American’s devotion to another country’s welfare cannot of course constitute 

proof that he has spied for that other country. But the jurors may reasonably infer 

that he is more likely to spy for it than other Americans not similarly devoted. Hence 

this attitude bears on a possible motive for his spying, or on a possible intent to do so 

when there is other evidence in the case that he did such spying. We have held such 

testimony admissible in a similar case involving espionage for Nazi Germany. . . . 

Communist Party membership presents a somewhat more complicated problem 

than pro-Soviet statements. The government had to prove that the Communist Party 

was tied to Soviet causes in order to make membership in it meaningful as evidence 

of motive or intent to aid Russia. . . . To that end, the government put Elizabeth Bentley on the stand. She testified that the American Communist Party was part of, and 

subject to, the Communist International; that the Party received orders from Russia 

to propagandize, spy, and sabotage; and that Party members were bound to go along 

with those orders under threat of expulsion. If the jury believed her, she supplied the 

missing link connecting the Communist Party with the Soviet Union, and making 

Communist Party membership probative of motive or intent to aid Russia.

Of course, such evidence can be highly inflammatory in a jury trial. This court 

and others have recognized that the Communist label yields marked ill-will for its 

American wearer. . . . Whether and how much of that kind of evidence should come 

into a trial like this is a matter for carefully-exercised judicial discretion. Each time 

Party membership was alluded to, and again in his final charge, the judge cautioned 

the jurors “not to determine the guilt or innocence of a defendant on whether or not 

he is a Communist.” It may be that such warnings are no more than an empty ritual 

without any practical effect on the jurors. . . If so, this danger is one of the risks run 

in a trial by jury; and the defendants made no effort to procure a trial by a judge 

alone, under Criminal Rule 23(a).
53

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 

decision on defendants’ motion to have their sentences 

overturned, December 10, 1952

After the court of appeals affirmed their convictions, the defendants filed a motion 

with the district court seeking to have their sentences overturned on the ground that 

they were imposed in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Because he had presided over 

the trial and imposed the sentences in question, Judge Kaufman asked Chief Judge 

John C. Knox to assign the motion to a different judge. Judge Sylvester Ryan, to whom 

Knox assigned the matter, denied the motion, finding no reason to believe the defendants’ constitutional rights had been violated. Much of his written opinion was devoted to the defendants’ claim that extensive media coverage of the case before and during 

the trial had deprived them of a fair trial. In support of this claim, the defendants 

submitted a large number of newspaper articles as well as a chart quantifying newspaper coverage between February 1950 and April 1951 in four categories: “Atomic 

Espionage,” “Communists as Spies,” “Atomic Bomb,” and “Rosenberg-Sobell Case.”

[Document Source: United States v. Rosenberg, et al., 108 F. Supp. 798 (1952).]

 

Petitioners complain of the pre-trial and trial publicity and argue in substance 

that it so adversely reflected on their innocence and created a trial atmosphere of 

such prejudice and hostility toward them as to make impossible the selection of an 

impartial jury and the conduct of a fair trial. They object to the “newspaper publicity 

developed by the independent initiative and private enterprise of the newspapers” and 

say it contributed to a situation by which they were denied the essential requirement 

of fair play and of justice—a trial by an impartial jury.

We enjoy a free press; neither the policies nor writings of the press may be censored or dictated by the state or government agencies. “Jurors cannot be treated as 

unable to withstand any effect of newspaper publications. Indeed such a ruling would 

make it practically impossible to conduct trials in metropolitan centers and would 

treat the average sceptical juror as a helpless person.” [case citation omitted]

Newspapers, unquestionably in response to popular demand, feature with large 

headlines and considerable space reports of investigations of corruption, crime, 

vice and espionage activities. The trials of those charged with these offenses have 

been made “sensational” and have been the source of what is well-nigh universally 

considered by the newspapers as “good copy.” I need not here consider the wisdom 

of attempts at judicial curtailment of such publications, or the dangers to our constitutional guaranties of freedom of speech and press which would flow in the wake 

of unwarranted judicial restrictions on free expression.

A reading of the newspaper articles submitted by petitioners reveals nothing 

of an unusual or inflammatory character. The articles seem but a fair response to 
The Rosenberg Trial

54

a legitimate public interest in a matter of vital concern to all—the atom bomb and 

atomic energy and the hope for its employment for the benefit and not the destruction 

of mankind. The accounts of the arrests and subsequent indictments of petitioners 

tended to allay a public anxiety and to give assurance that those charged with the 

protection of vital information were alert and diligent in the performance of their 

obligations.

When these publications are measured against the field in which they were 

circulated their effect upon the general public is seen as negligible. . . . Any public 

prejudice which might be ascribed to newspaper publicity incident to the arrest of 

these defendants had long since been dissipated among the populace of the area from 

which [jurors] were drawn—an area where occurrences no matter how sensational 

lose their news value and no longer attract public interest after a much shorter space 

of time than seven months.

Supreme Court of the United States, opinions regarding 

stay granted by Justice Douglas, July 16, 1953

Two days after Justice Douglas granted the Rosenbergs a stay of execution to litigate 

the question of whether the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, rather than the Espionage 

Act of 1917, should have applied to their case, the full Supreme Court lifted the stay 

by a vote of 6 to 3. It was the first time the Court had lifted a stay granted by an individual justice. The Court set forth its decision in a brief per curiam, or unsigned, 

opinion. The following month, the Court released a longer opinion, authored by 

Chief Justice Fred Vinson, explaining why the Court chose to resolve the issue itself rather than allowing the lower courts to do so. Justices Black, Frankfurter, and 

Douglas published separate dissents. Frankfurter criticized the haste of the Court 

majority in dismissing a substantive claim in the final hours after what had already been a prolonged judicial process and argued the Court owed it to the cause 

of justice to examine and answer the claim presented in the petition for a stay. 

Douglas unhesitatingly asserted that the claim in the petition was correct and that 

the Rosenbergs should not have been sentenced to death under the 1917 act. 

[Document Source: United States v. Rosenberg, et al., 346 U.S. 273 (1953).]

 

Opinion of the court

It is true that the full Court has made no practice of vacating stays of individual 

Justices, although it has entertained motions for such relief. But reference to this practice 

does not prove the nonexistence of the power; it only demonstrates that the circumstances must be unusual before the Court, in its discretion, will exercise its power.

The power which we exercised in this case derives from this Court’s role as the final 

forum to render the ultimate answer to the question which was preserved by the stay.
55

Thus Mr. Justice Douglas, in issuing the stay, did not act to grant some form of 

amnesty or last-minute reprieve to the defendants; he simply acted to protect jurisdiction over the case, to maintain the status quo until a conclusive answer could be 

given to the question which had been urged in the defendants’ behalf. . . . 

This Court has the responsibility to supervise the administration of criminal 

justice by the federal judiciary. This includes the duty to see that the laws are not 

only enforced by fair proceedings, but also that the punishments prescribed by the 

laws are enforced with a reasonable degree of promptness and certainty. The stay 

which had been issued promised many more months of litigation in a case which 

had otherwise run its full course.

The question preserved for adjudication by the stay was entirely legal; there was 

no need to resort to the fact-finding processes of the District Court; it was a question 

of statutory construction which this Court was equipped to answer. We decided that 

a proper administration of the laws required the Court to consider that question 

forthwith.

Frankfurter dissent

The crux of all I am suggesting is that none of the obvious considerations for 

bringing the all too leaden-footed proceedings in this case to an end should have 

barred the full employment of the deliberative process necessary for reaching a firm 

conclusion on the issue on which the Court has now spoken, however unfortunate 

it may be that that issue did not emerge earlier than it did. Since I find myself under 

the disability of having had insufficient time to explore the issue as I believe it should 

have been explored, nothing I am saying may be taken to intimate that I would now 

sustain the last claim made in behalf of the Rosenbergs. But I am clear that the claim 

had substance and that the opportunity for adequate exercise of the judicial judgment 

was wanting. 

To be writing an opinion in a case affecting two lives after the curtain has been 

rung down upon them has the appearance of pathetic futility. But history also has 

its claims. This case is an incident in the long and unending effort to develop and 

enforce justice according to law. The progress in that struggle surely depends on 

searching analysis of the past, though the past cannot be recalled, as illumination 

for the future. Only by sturdy self-examination and self-criticism can the necessary 

habits for detached and wise judgment be established and fortified so as to become 

effective when the judicial process is again subjected to stress and strain.

Douglas dissent

The crime therefore took place in substantial part after the new Act became effective, after Congress had written new penalties for conspiracies to disclose atomic 

secrets. One of the new requirements is that the death penalty for that kind of espi-
The Rosenberg Trial

56

onage can be imposed only if the jury recommends it. And here there was no such 

recommendation. To be sure, this espionage included more than atomic secrets. But 

there can be no doubt that the death penalty was imposed because of the Rosenbergs’ 

disclosure of atomic secrets. The trial judge, in sentencing the Rosenbergs to death, 

emphasized that the heinous character of their crime was trafficking in atomic secrets. 

. . . 

But the Congress in 1946 adopted new criminal sanctions for such crimes. Whether Congress was wise or unwise in doing so is no question for us. The cold truth is 

that the death sentence may not be imposed for what the Rosenbergs did unless the 

jury so recommends. . . . 

Before the present argument I knew only that the question was serious and substantial. Now I am sure of the answer. I know deep in my heart that I am right on 

the law. Knowing that, my duty is clear.

Federal statutes regarding espionage

The defendants were indicted, convicted, and sentenced under the Espionage Act 

of 1917, which prohibited the disclosure to a foreign nation of information related to the national defense of the United States. On June 17, 1953, Justice William 

Douglas granted the defendants a stay of execution to allow them to litigate the issue 

of whether the trial court should have sentenced them under the Atomic Energy 

Act of 1946, which required both the recommendation of a jury and proof that the 

defendants had acted with intent to injure the United States before a death sentence 

could be imposed. 

[Document Source: 40 Stat. 218 (1917) and 60 Stat. 766 (1946).]

 

Espionage Act of 1917

Sec. 2. (a) Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury 

of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, 

or transmits . . . information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by 

imprisonment for not more than twenty years: Provided, That whoever shall violate 

the provisions of subsection (a) of this section in time of war shall be punished by 

death or imprisonment for not more than thirty years . . . 

Sec. 4. If two or more persons conspire to violate the provisions of sections two or 

three of this title, and one or more of such persons does any act to effect the object 

of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be punished as in said 

sections provided in the case of the doing of the act the accomplishment of which is 

the object of such conspiracy. 
57

Atomic Energy Act of 1946

Sec. 10. (a) POLICY – It shall be the policy of the [Atomic Energy] Commission to 

control the dissemination of restricted data in such a manner as to assure the common 

defense and security. Consistent with such policy, the Commission shall be guided 

by the following principles . . . 

(2) That the dissemination of scientific and technical information relating to atomic 

energy should be permitted and encouraged so as to provide that free interchange of 

ideas and criticisms which is essential to scientific progress.

(b) RESTRICTIONS – 

(1) The term “restricted data” as used in this section means all data concerning the 

manufacture or utilization of atomic weapons . . . 

(2) Whoever, lawfully or unlawfully, having possession of, access to, control over, or 

being entrusted with, any document, writing, sketch, photograph, plan, model, instrument, appliance, note or information involving or incorporating restricted data – 

(A) communicates, transmits, or discloses the same to any individual or person, or 

attempts or conspires to do any of the foregoing, with intent to injure the United 

States or with intent to secure an advantage to any foreign nation, upon conviction 

thereof, shall be punished by death or imprisonment for life (but the penalty of death 

or imprisonment for life may be imposed only upon recommendation of the jury 

and only in cases where the offense was committed with intent to injure the United 

States); or by a fine of not more than $20,000 or imprisonment for not more than 

twenty years, or both . . . 

President Dwight Eisenhower, statement regarding 

executive clemency, February 11, 1953

In his statement denying executive clemency, the recently inaugurated President 

Eisenhower stressed the seriousness of the Rosenbergs’ crime and expressed confidence that the legal system had treated them fairly. Eisenhower limited his remarks 

to the Rosenbergs’ convictions for conspiracy (and implied that the Supreme Court 

had reviewed the case on its merits, which it had declined to do), making no explicit 

mention of the appropriateness of the death penalty.

[Document Source: “Eisenhower Statement on Spies,” New York Times, Feb. 

12, 1953.] 

 

I have given earnest consideration to the records in the case of Julius and Ethel 

Rosenberg and to the appeals for clemency made on their behalf.
The Rosenberg Trial

58

These two individuals have been tried and convicted of a most serious crime 

against the people of the United States. They have been found guilty of conspiring 

with intent and reason to believe that it would be to the advantage of a foreign power, 

to deliver to the agent of that foreign power certain highly secret atomic information 

relating to the national defense of the United States.

The nature of the crime for which they have been found guilty and sentenced 

far exceeds that of the taking of the life of another citizen; it involves the deliberate 

betrayal of the entire nation and could very well result in the death of many, many 

thousands of innocent citizens. By their act these two individuals have in fact betrayed 

the cause of freedom for which free men are fighting and dying at this very hour.

We are a nation under law and our affairs are governed by the just exercise of 

these laws. The courts have provided every opportunity for the submission of evidence bearing on this case. In the time-honored tradition of American justice, a 

freely selected jury of their fellow-citizens considered the evidence in this case and 

rendered its judgment. All rights of appeal were exercised and the conviction of the 

trial court was upheld after four judicial reviews, including that of the highest court 

in the land.

I have made a careful examination into this case and am satisfied that the two 

individuals have been accorded their full measure of justice.

There has been neither new evidence nor have there been mitigating circumstances 

which would justify altering this decision, and I am determined that it is my duty, 

in the interest of the people of the United States, not to set aside the verdict of their 

representatives.

Intercepted Soviet intelligence cable regarding Ethel 

Rosenberg, November 27, 1944

Shortly before World War II, the U.S. government began intercepting messages sent 

to the Soviet Union by Russian nationals in the United States. The U.S. Army’s 

Signal Intelligence Service began a program in February 1943, later codenamed 

Venona, to break the Soviet code and decrypt the intercepted messages. By the time 

of the Rosenberg trial, intelligence officials were in possession of decrypted cables 

identifying Julius Rosenberg as a Soviet spy, but did not disclose this evidence to 

prosecutors for use at trial in order to maintain the Venona program’s secrecy. When 

the National Security Agency declassified the translated cables in 1995, one message 

in particular made clear that Ethel Rosenberg, while aware of Julius’ spying, was almost certainly not an active espionage agent. The footnotes added to the translation 

reflect information gathered by intelligence officials through their investigations. 

[Document Source: National Security Agency, http://www.nsa.gov/public_

info/_files/venona/1944/27nov_mrs_rosenberg.pdf]

 
59

From: New York

To: Moscow

No:1657

 27 November 1944

To VIKTOR [i].

Your no. 5356 [a]. Information on LIBERAL’s [ii] wife [iii]. Surname that of her 

husband, first name ETHEL, 29 years old. Married five years. Finished secondary 

school. A FELLOWCOUNTRYMAN [ZEMLYaK] [iv] since 1938. Sufficiently well 

developed politically. Knows about her husband’s work and the role of METR [v] 

and NIL [vi]. In view of delicate health does not work. Is characterized positively 

and as a devoted person.

. . . 

 ANTON [xi]

Notes: [a] Not available

Comments:

[i] VIKTOR: Lt. Gen. P.M. Fitin.

[ii] LIBERAL: Julius ROSENBERG.

[iii] Ethel ROSENBERG, nee GREENGLASS.

[iv] ZEMLYaK: Member of the Communist Party.

[v] METR: Probably Joel BARR or Alfred SARANT.

[vi] NIL: Unidentified.

. . . 

[xi] ANTON: Leonid Romanovich KVASNIKOV.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, prison correspondence, 1951

The letters Julius and Ethel Rosenberg exchanged while incarcerated at Sing-Sing 

Prison were filled with expressions of love for each other and their children as well as 

proclamations of their innocence and their determination to have their convictions 

overturned on appeal. The Rosenbergs were writing for a public audience as well as 

for each other; some of the letters were published in the National Guardian in 1951 

in order to bolster support for clemency, and others were published in book form 

only weeks before their deaths in June 1953. In 1994, their son Michael published a 

complete volume of his parents’ prison correspondence.

[Document Source: Meeropol, Michael, ed. The Rosenberg Letters: A Complete 

Edition of the Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. New York: 

Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994.]

 
The Rosenberg Trial

60

Julius to Ethel, August 16, 1951

My Most Precious Darling Ethel,

Overwhelming longings have taken hold of me and I desire so to hold you in my 

arms. It is not enough to see you and talk to you. My love for you is overflowing and 

it crys out for more adequate expression. . . . Honey you may not think so but you 

are the determing influence in my stability. Of your beauty I can sing. Your loveliness 

is so satisfying to my eyes and your sweetness warms my heart. The time I am with 

you I am completely removed from this tomb of steel and concrete and filled with 

sufficient inspiration, emotional uplift and mental stimulation to make me strong to 

stand erect in facing the daily hardships. My words are not able to express completely 

how tremendous an effect you have on me. If only we could spend the time together 

the torture and hurt would not be so great. However reason and human treatment 

is not the criteria here. It is so hard to take and conceive particularly because we are 

so completely innocent of this charge and are only victims of a hedious political 

frameup. How the pattern keeps on unfolding, more political arrests, arrogant disregard for the rights of people or the Constitution of our land and a greater hysteria 

spreads through the country. Now is the time for the people to stand up and defend 

their rights. We see so clearly the similarity with all this of our own case the complete identity of our position with that of the American peoples fight for Democracy 

and peace. It is essential that the truth and facts be made known to all. . . . Only our 

complete freedom and an early reunion with our family can serve to heal the harm 

done to us. No matter what I’ll continue to fight for our vindication. All my love

Julius

Ethel to Julius, November 1, 1951

Hello Julie dearest,

Since Wednesday morning and all the good, sweet words that passed between us, 

I have been walking on air; was there foul weather or fair, I followed the unhurried 

progress of the clock, undismayed. And whatever the hour brought of loneliness and 

distaste, could not overthrow the shining monument that is our union. My dear one, 

rest easy; I am ever fortified in your love.

Also I am fortified in the support of decent people everywhere which is so 

heart-warmingly and so selflessly increasingly forthcoming. Darling, what a treat 

it is to be reading this week’s issue of the Guardian, today of all gloomy rainy days; 

all of a sudden the drab gray of my wretched surrounding is touched with magical 

radiance and color. How unutterably thrilling are the expressions of sympathy and 

devotion from other precious human beings; I am overwhelmed with an answering 

love and gratified and the profound desire to be worthy of the beautiful tribute with 

which they have honored us! In all humility, I pledge my self anew, to the unceasing 
61

war against man’s inhumanity to man, in whatever shape, manner or form it may 

rear its ugly brute’s head. Nor shall I never sell short the priceless trust and faith they 

have reposed in me for a questionable reward of a “mess of pottage”; else shall I have 

lived my life for naught!

Sweetheart dear, how very much I love you and want you at my side; and with how 

much longing do I recall the happy life we led and all the problems of parenthood 

we were so eagerly in the process of solving! The healthy growth and development of 

the children often gave us cause for grave concern, but they were also a source of so 

much genuine enjoyment and pleasure, that no difficulty was too great to dampen 

our enthusiasm and pride in them.

I am hoping to compose myself enough this week-end to drop them a few lines 

honey I am reminded of the many kind offers of assistance the Guardian has received 

with regard to the bunnies. There are no words that will adequately describe the 

sense of bond and tenderness these “strangers” woke. I am simply speechless with 

admiration for my new-found brothers and sisters!

Mail call – dearest.

I love you – Ethel

Ethel Rosenberg, letter to President Dwight Eisenhower, 

June 16, 1953

Three days before Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, Ethel sent President 

Eisenhower a letter pleading with him to commute the death sentences. She claimed 

to have been inspired to do so by the case of William Oatis, an American journalist sentenced to prison in Czechoslovakia on charges of espionage, whom the Czech 

government pardoned in May 1953, supposedly because of a plea made by his wife. 

Ethel’s emotional appeal also implied that for the United States to execute her and her 

husband would be an act analogous to the Nazi atrocities committed upon European 

Jews. She closed the letter with an appeal to Eisenhower to “take counsel with your 

good wife. . . with the mother of your only son; her heart which understands my grief 

so well and my longing to see my sons grown to manhood like her own.”

[Document Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, 

http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/rosenbergs.

html]

 

Dear Mr. President,

At various intervals during the two long and bitter years I have spent in the Death 

House at Sing Sing, I have had the impulse to address myself to the President of the 

United States. Always, in the end, a certain innate shyness, an embarrassment almost, 
The Rosenberg Trial

62

comparable to that which the ordinary person feels in the presence of the great and 

the famous, prevailed upon me not to do so.

Since then, however, the moving plea of Mrs. William Oatis on behalf of her 

husband has lent me inspiration. She had not been ashamed to bare her heart to the 

head of a foreign state; would it really be such a presumption for a citizen to ask for 

redress of grievance and to expect as much consideration as Mrs. Oatis received at 

the hands of strangers?

Of Czechoslovakia I know very little, of her President less than that. But my own 

land is a part of me, I should be homesick for her anywhere else in the world. And 

Dwight D. Eisenhower was “Liberator” to millions before he was ever “President.” It 

does not seem reasonable to me, then, that a letter concerning itself with condemned 

wife as well as condemned husband, should not merit this particular President’s sober 

attention.

. . . 

It is chiefly the death sentence I would entreat you to ponder. I would entreat you 

to ask yourself whether that sentence does not serve the ends of “force and violence” 

rather than an enlightened justice. Even granting the assumption that the convictions 

had been properly procured (and there now exists incontrovertible evidence to the 

contrary), the steadfast denial of guilt, extending over a protracted period of solitary 

confinement and enforced separation from our loved ones, makes of the death penalty 

an act of vengeance.

As Commander-in-Chief of the European theatre, you had ample opportunity 

to witness the wonton and hideous tortures that such a policy of vengeance had 

wreaked upon vast multitudes of guiltless victims. Today, while these ghastly mass 

butchers, these obscene racists, are graciously receiving the benefits of mercy and in 

many instances being reinstated in public office, the great democratic United States 

is proposing the savage destruction of a small unoffending Jewish family, whose guilt 

is seriously doubted throughout the length and breadth of the civilized world! As 

you have recently so wisely declared, no nation can chance “going it alone.” That, Mr. 

President, is truly the voice of the sanity and of the leadership so sorely needed in 

these perilous times. Surely you must recognize then, that the ensuing damage to the 

good name of our country, in its struggle to lead the world toward a more equitable 

and righteous way of life, should not be underestimated.

. . . 

 Respectfully yours,

 (signed) (Mrs.) Ethel Rosenberg #110-510

 Women’s Wing – C C
63

Letters to Justice William Douglas regarding the stay of 

execution, June 1953

After Justice Douglas granted the Rosenbergs a stay of execution on June 17, 1953, his 

chambers were flooded with letters from the public. Many writers praised Douglas 

for taking a courageous stand in the face of anti-Communist hysteria and expressed 

anxiety that if the Rosenbergs were executed, the country’s international reputation 

would suffer. Others, many of whom had family members serving in Korea, condemned him for being soft on Communism and accused him of being sympathetic 

to traitors who had put American lives at risk.

[Document Source: William O. Douglas Papers, Library of Congress, 

Washington, D.C.]

 

Letters Favoring Stay

June 17, 1953

Dear Sir:

I heartily endorse your action regarding the Rosenbergs. 

You have upheld the fair name of our country in face of hysterical attacks from 

individuals who hide their reactionary aims under the guise of “Americanism.”

Respectfully yours,

SH Anderman, DDS

Kew Gardens, NY

June 17, 1953

Dear Justice Douglas,

An hour ago the news came over the radio announcing your decision to grant a 

stay of execution to the Rosenbergs. Hearing it, I felt that at last the light of courage 

was breaking through an otherwise dreary scene. . . . 

Of course, you will be attacked, as courage has always been attacked, but I am sure 

you will have not only the sustenance of your own convictions, but the active support 

of all liberal America, all conscienced America, should you need it. . . . Tomorrow, 

the Rosenbergs might have been dead, and America would again have been shamed 

in the eyes of all Europe and Asia. . . . 

Respectfully,

George Bluestone

Baltimore, MD
The Rosenberg Trial

64

June 19, 1953

Dear Sir:

Congratulations for proving yourself to be a true Christian and American. The 

Rosenbergs are dead now, but thru no fault of yours. It took a lot of courage and 

good judgement to do what you did.

. . . 

You may be impeached, smeared, and hated, but you have proved yourself to be a 

true Christian, something they can never take away. There are people in this country 

(they’re not all “Communists”, like some of the reactionaries say) who will always 

remember your courageous stand in the Rosenberg case. I am one of them.

Sincerely yours,

Donald Adamowicz

Chicago, IL

Letters Opposing Stay

June 17, 1953

Dear Mr. Douglass:

You sold us out in the face of Red and Jewish pressure. I wished they would send 

you to Korea to face some real “Red Pressure.” What did we fight for? You let us down 

and we won’t forget you – Why don’t you retire? You do our country great harm – No 

Guts.

Lou – Ed – Tom – Dat

Four GIs from Korea

[No date]

[No salutation]

I hated to call you Justice. I am Three (3) generation American, and to think we 

have to put up with the likes of you as a so-called Justice.

I have a brother in the Korean War, and to think he is fighting for the likes of 

you and those stinking Rosenbergs who have been granted a stay by you. What did 

you receive from the commuies, your kind wouldn’t take anything but $150,000. I 

suppose. You surely were fixed, but you will be fixed in other ways. You won’t have a 

night’s sleep after giving those dirty bums a stay. Just to think, born Americans and 

they sold our country to russia, and then you also sold us out to rusia. You should be 

put on a fast ship and sent over to russia, right after the Rosenbergs are electrocuted. 

I hope you never have another happy moment while you live and that your mind 

will always be troubled with horrible night-mares because that is what you wished 

on our beautiful country, a night-mare.

[No signature]
65

June 17, 1953

Dear Sir

What a disgrace to America you are. How much are you getting from the Commies? If anyone in America had a fair trial the Rosenbergs did. You must be low. 

We are the laughing stock of the world now for sure. You should be put in the chair 

in their place. This is the first letter of this kind I ever wrote. What is happening to 

America? I am a veteran of the last war. My two sons are in the Marine Corps. You 

saved the lives of two people who would have killed thousands of Americans. How 

could you be such a rat.

J.R. Bernhard

New York, NY

U.S. Representative Elijah Forrester, remarks on Rosenberg 

protests, June 19, 1953

On the day the Rosenbergs were executed, Congressman Elijah Forrester, a 

Democrat from Georgia, spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives regarding Washington, D.C., protests of the pending executions. His remarks reflected the 

view, also prevalent in newspaper coverage, that the pro-Rosenberg movement was 

entirely inspired and controlled by Communists. Forrester suggested the passage of 

laws to gather information on people involved in such protests to determine whether 

they were disloyal to the United States.

[Document Source: 99 Cong. Rec. 6892 (1953).]

 

I despise communism, and the people I represent despise communism, and we 

will do anything in our power to defeat it. . . . 

But if we are to fight communism we must fight it wherever it appears. That we 

have not done. I never believed I would live to see what I have seen in Washington 

in the past few days. Last Sunday I saw six or seven thousand mongrels picketing the 

White House, parading with banners, charging that our Government had bribed 

witnesses, and with banners demanding that two particular children not be made 

orphans. Not one of that crowd was concerned over the widows and orphans of our 

fine young men who died fighting communism in Korea.

Yesterday the Capitol Grounds were alive with hundreds of people who have no 

interest whatsoever in our country except to destroy it, even to take our country over. 

Today as I came down to the office, I saw that riff-raff picketing the President of the 

United States.

. . . It is my belief that these terrible assemblies, such as I have heretofore described, 

organized to disturb and cause trouble, can also be placed under reasonable regulations such as requiring each person to register with the proper authorities and give a 
The Rosenberg Trial

66

description of himself or herself, together with a complete and true address, and to 

state that he or she is not a member of any organization advocating the overthrow 

of our Government by force and violence, and any other necessary information that 

would be conducive to the police powers of our Government.

. . . 

It will do no good to fight communism abroad and let it flourish here. It is not 

realistic – it is not even ordinary sense. It makes law abiding citizens lose confidence. 

Communism must be unpopular here if we expect to build sentiment against it 

abroad.

Los Angeles Times, editorials regarding Rosenberg 

executions, January 15 and June 20, 1953

Between April 1951, when Judge Kaufman sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg 

to death, and June 1953, when the executions took place, newspapers throughout 

the country ran editorials condemning the Rosenbergs for their crimes and expressing confidence that they were being treated fairly by the American judicial system. 

In the months leading up to the executions and the days immediately following 

them, editorials such as those below focused specifically on the appropriateness of 

the death sentences and on the nature of those arguing for clemency.

[Document Sources: “Communists and the Rosenberg Case,” Los Angeles 

Times, Jan. 15, 1953, and “They May Have Condemned Millions,” Los Angeles 

Times, June 20, 1953.] 

 

Communists and the Rosenberg Case

In making the most of the Rosenberg case both here and abroad the Communist 

enemies of the United States are little concerned with the fate of Julius and Ethel 

Rosenberg, or their children. In ruthless pursuit of world power the Soviet masters 

cannot be moved by the case of an American-born couple who served them well 

until they were charged with stealing atomic secrets, tried, convicted and sentenced 

to the electric chair.

The mass meetings in foreign capitals, the pickets outside the White House, the 

shrill cries of martyrdom in the Red press simply follow the Communist practice 

of exacting the last ounce of usefulness from their converts. In this the Rosenbergs 

seem willing still to serve.

Whatever action the President takes on the Rosenbergs’ final appeal for commutation of the death sentence, the Communists and their dupes have succeeded in 

muddying the waters of public opinion in the case. It is not, in a legal sense, a treason 

case, nor is the penalty “unprecedented” for the crime.
67

The Rosenbergs’ crime was espionage and death has been the standard and almost 

universal punishment for spies since the dawn of history. In wartime it is carried out 

summarily and without protest.

. . . 

Whatever their fate, the Rosenbergs have done damage enough. But if the Communists can still use them for propaganda purposes, freedom-loving citizens of this 

country can also learn a valuable lesson from the case. It is that such extremes of 

individual conceit as they and [British atomic spy] Dr. [Alan Nunn] May have shown 

cannot be tolerated. Not even here, in the citadel of freedom, can one person arrogate 

to himself the moral right to jeopardize all.

They May Have Condemned Millions

The real tragedy of the Rosenberg case is not that they were condemned to die for 

a crime which society has punished with death since the dawn of recorded history.

The real tragedy is that the Communist conspiracy of which Julius and Ethel 

Rosenberg were by no means minor members did, before they were apprehended, 

succeed in its design. That design was stealing from the responsible democracies of 

the United States, Canada and Great Britain the secrets of atomic bomb design and 

turning them over to the ruthless and aggressive totalitarian regime of the Soviet 

Union.

Even more terrifying is the fact that, long after this sordid story of espionage and 

treason was told, many Americans and others in the free nations still remain blithely 

oblivious of the magnitude of the threat implicit in this international conspiracy and 

strangely unmoved by the depravity of those who willingly served and continue to 

serve its godless and inhuman goals.

Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has spoken with finality on the 

legal aspects of the Rosenberg case, it is important to clear away the cloud of lawyers’ 

argument and recall the essential facts.

First and foremost, it must be remembered that no reasonable doubt has been 

raised as to the guilt of the Rosenbergs in the terrible crime with which they were 

charged and convicted.

The Rosenbergs themselves protested their innocence, and Communists in this 

country and abroad have echoed the cry. But the American jury which heard all the 

evidence against them, and their own defense, unanimously found them guilty; the 

trial judge, the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court have confirmed that 

verdict of guilt, and the President of the United States has concurred in it.

Except for the Communist chorus, there has been no question of the Rosenbergs’ 

guilt or the fairness of their trial. The only argument has been about the severity of 

their sentence, which some honest individuals have questioned on legal, religious or 

sentimental grounds.
The Rosenberg Trial

68

That these individuals, some in exalted places, have been exploited by the Communist apparatus should be no surprise. But the intelligent citizen will distinguish 

between those appeals for mercy which would be made as readily if the condemned 

were ordinary murderers and the caterwauling that has arisen solely because they 

were Communist spies.
69

Bibliography

Note: Those wishing to read further about the Rosenberg case should keep in mind 

that much of the literature below was written by those with a personal connection 

to the case, and because the question of Julius and Ethel’s guilt remained open for 

decades after their deaths, some authors approached the topic with advocacy for a 

particular view of the case. Many books about the case were written prior to the declassification of FBI files in the 1970s and 1980s, the opening of the Soviet archives in 

the early 1990s, the U.S. government’s release of intercepted Soviet cables in 1995, the 

unsealing of grand jury testimony in 2008, and interviews given by David Greenglass 

and Morton Sobell between 2001 and 2010. 

Alman, Emily Arnow and David. Exoneration: The Rosenberg–Sobell Case in the 21st

Century. Seattle: Green Elms Press, 2010.

Feklisov, Alexander. The Man Behind the Rosenbergs: by the KGB Spymaster who 

was the Case Officer of Julius Rosenberg, Klaus Fuchs, and Helped Resolve the Cuban 

Missile Crisis. New York: Enigma Books, 2001.

Fineberg, S. Andhil. The Rosenberg Case: Fact and Fiction. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana 

Publications, 1953.

Garber, Marjorie, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, eds. Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, 

McCarthyism, and Fifties America. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Gardner, Virginia. The Rosenberg Story. New York: Masses & Mainstream, Inc., 1954.

Goldstein, Alvin H. The Unquiet Death of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg. New York: 

Lawrence Hill & Co., 1975.

Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Meeropol, Michael, ed. The Rosenberg Letters: A Complete Edition of the Prison 

Correspondence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 

1994.

Meeropol, Robert, and Michael. We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius 

Rosenberg, Second Edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Neville, John F. The Press, the Rosenbergs, and the Cold War. Westport, Conn.: 

Praeger, 1995.
The Rosenberg Trial

70

Nizer, Louis. The Implosion Conspiracy. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973.

Parrish, Michael E. “Cold War Justice: The Supreme Court and the Rosenbergs.” 

American Historical Review 82, no. 4 (October 1977): 805–42.

Radosh, Ronald, and Joyce Milton. The Rosenberg File, Second Edition. New Haven: 

Yale University Press, 1997.

Roberts, Sam. The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and 

How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair. New York: Random 

House, 2001.

Root, Jonathan. The Betrayers: The Rosenberg Case—A Reappraisal of an American 

Crisis. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1963.

Schneir, Walter. Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case. Brooklyn, 

N.Y.: Melville House, 2010.

Schneir, Walter and Miriam. Invitation to an Inquest, Fourth Edition. New York: 

Pantheon Books, 1983.

Sharlitt, Joseph H. Fatal Error: The Miscarriage of Justice that Sealed the Rosenbergs’ 

Fate. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989.

Sharp, Malcolm P. Was Justice Done? The Rosenberg–Sobell Case. New York: Monthly 

Review Press, 1956.

Snyder, Brad. “Taking Great Cases: Lessons from the Rosenberg Case.” Vanderbilt 

Law Review 63, no. 4 (May 2010): 885–956.

Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in 

America—the Stalin Era. New York: Random House, 1999.

Wexley, John. The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. New York: Cameron & 

Kahn, 1955.
The Federal Judicial Center 

Board 

The Chief Justice of the United States, Chair

Judge Catherine C. Blake, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland 

Magistrate Judge Jonathan W. Feldman, U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York 

Judge James F. Holderman, Jr., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois 

Judge Michael M. Melloy, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit 

Chief Judge C. Ray Mullins, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia 

Judge Edward C. Prado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 

Judge Kathryn H. Vratil, U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas 

Judge Thomas F. Hogan, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts 

Director 

Judge Jeremy D. Fogel 

Deputy Director 

John S. Cooke 

About the Federal Judicial Center 

The Federal Judicial Center is the research and education agency of the federal judicial system. It 

was established by Congress in 1967 (28 U.S.C. §§ 620–629), on the recommendation of the Judicial 

Conference of the United States. 

By statute, the Chief Justice of the United States chairs the Center’s Board, which also includes 

the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and seven judges elected by the Judicial 

Conference. 

The organization of the Center reflects its primary statutory mandates. The Education Division 

plans and produces education and training programs for judges and court staff, including video 

programs, publications, curriculum packages for in-court training, and Web-based programs and 

resources. The Research Division examines and evaluates current and alternative federal court practices and policies. This research assists Judicial Conference committees, who request most Center 

research, in developing policy recommendations. The Center’s research also contributes substantially to its educational programs. The two divisions work closely with two units of the Director’s 

Office—the Information Technology Office and the Communications Policy & Design Office—in 

using print, broadcast, and online media to deliver education and training and to disseminate the 

results of Center research. The Federal Judicial History Office helps courts and others study and 

preserve federal judicial history. The International Judicial Relations Office provides information to 

judicial and legal officials from foreign countries and assesses how to inform federal judicial personnel of developments in international law and other court systems that may affect their work.