Imperial Valley press., 1938-10-12
A PROPER END
FOR THE MOONEY CASE

If, as current news dispatches seem
10 agree, the last legal resort has been
exhausted in Tom Moneys fight for
freedom, we are inclined to believe it is
a good thing.
Not that we think we have heard the
last of the Mooney case. By no means!
As long as this business of being a mar
tyr pays dividends to left wing organi-
cations in one way or another, Tom
Moneys case will be kept before the
public.
We may now expect a concerted drive
IN an effort to obtain gubernatorial
pardon for Mooney And, if that fails
they will probably seek a presidential
pardon.
Through it all, thousands of dollars
will be added to the other thousands the
Mooney case has already cost the public.
Mooney was convicted, and all the
courts of the land have upheld his con-
viction. All the governors of California
up to now have refused to pardon him.
Surely, if he were not guilty of the
vicious crime charged against him. these
men who have reviewed his case in de-
tail would not have taken the stand
they have taken. IN the microscopic
examination given the Mooney case, the
slightest indication of innocence would
have stood out as boldly as Mt. Everest
And yet, before the United States Su-
preme Court, Moneys attorneys made
the bold assertion that it has come to be
nationally recognized that Mooney was
convicted on perjured evidence.
The statement bears all the earmarks
of an attempt to make the country be-
lieve something
Largely because the case is so shroud-
ed in legal complications and logged by
the passage of time, it may be we'll here
briefly to consider this per jured" testi-
mony that sent Tom Mooney to San
Quentin prison.
THESE 'REPUDIATIONS'
In the case of one witness the testi-
mony which helped convict Mooney was
not repudiated until years later. His
testimony on the witness stand was
straightforward convincing the judge
and jury of its truth. Then one day he
walked into an attorneys office in New
York and said he had lied at the Mooney
trial. The attorney happened to be as
sociated in MONEYS defense group.
Consider the proved circumstances of
that reputation.
1t was made after Chicago labor
group sent Negro partisan of MONEYS
to get in touch with the witness. For one
whole year the Negro lived in the same
boarding house as the witness. At the
end of the year the reputation was
Forthcoming.
And the reputation itself was SO shot
full of holes that its inconsistencies are
too long to list here. One was his denial
that he had talked with anyone about his
testimony before he appeared in the of
flee of the New York attorney-yet the
story of his reputation was printed in
New York newspapers before the witness
ever saw the attorney
Another witness who ''repudiated' his
testimony got so mixed up in the repudia
tion that his second story-the one Moon
ey now swears by-was proved to be i'm
possible because no trains ran at the
time he said he left small town across
the bay from San Francisco. Yet his
first story fitted train schedules and
every other known fact.
And so it is with the other witnesses
who have repudiated their testimony, or
since attempted 10 help Mooney one way
or another.
Yes, we think it good thing the legal
case is at an end.
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