Evening star., 1944-09-09
LANCER Denounces
5edition Trial, Calls
For Release Of B
~ CARTER BROOKE JONES.

Win the Sedltion TRIAL IN week
end recess today, out-of court anglei
Of the celebrated case attracted at-
tention.
Senator Langer, Republican, OF
North Dakota, denounced the mass
trial In the Senate yesterday after
noon. declaring Attorney General
Biddle would do his country . serv-
Ice II he asked dismissal of the
indictments.
Chief Justice Edward G. Eicher,
presiding ut the 5-month-old trial
in District Court. refused to halt
the case until Ellis O. Jones, . de-
fendant, could 60 to Baltimore next
week to testify for James J. Laugh
lin, Washington attorney, charged
with obstructing justice at high
way robbery trial.
Mrs. McLaughlin to Reappear.
When the sedition trial is resumed
Monday the cross-examination to
which q Government witness, Mrs.
Betty Lee Mclaughlin Of Los An
geles, has been subjected since
Thursday afternoon, will be resumed
by some of the defense attorneys.
Mrs. Mclaughlin described how
meetings were conducted in Los An
geles by Jones and other defend
ant, Frank X. Ferenz, and a former
defendant, Robert Noble, before and
after the Pearl Harbor attack. She
told Of pro-Axis, defeatist speeches
and appeals for nonsupport of the
war at these meetings, under the
auspices of the Friends of Progress,
which Jones and Noble directed.
The woman Is to be followed on
the stand by her husband, John Ivan
Mclaughlin, who, she said, accom-
panied her to the meetings and COL
laborated in the reports which they
wrote afterward. She said they were
engaged without compensation to
investigate the meetings by Ben
Beery, who was chairman of the Los
Angeles American Legion Commit
tee on Un-American Activities.
Jones Claims Subpoena.
Jones, who is defending himself,
informed Justice Eicher late yester-
day that he had been advised that
writ Of habeas corpus had been is
sued requiring him to appear Mon
day in the Federal Court for the
western district of Maryland. He
added that he was unwilling to
waive his right to attend all sessions
of the sedition trial and so he moved
for q recess until he could return
from Baltimore. Justice Eicher de-
MED the request without comment.
Mr.. Laughlin, former defense
attorney in the sedition case, faces
trial Monday on an indictment
charging him with obstructing JUS
tice in the defense of man accused
OF completely in a $4,000 payroll
robbery at Hyattsville, Md. He
listed Jones as a necessary defense
witness. Jones Is, in District Jail
owing to previous convictions in
California of violating Federal and
State sedition laws.
Senator LANCER, who was a Spec
tator at the sedition trial Wednes-
day and Thursday, discussed it in
the Senate for nearly two hours.
LANCER Urges Dismissal.
He urged that the rs defendants
charged with conspiring to incite
the armed forces to mutiny be al
lowed to return to their homes and
go to work.
Senator LANCER said it had i'm
pressed him that several editors and
some OF Washington's outstanding
lawyers believed the trial was "a
legal farce" and "a preversion of
justice"
while there is credible evidence
he conceded, that some of these de-
fendants did much more than ex-
press their opinions and evade the
issues-that they did, in fact, carry
on in . manner to give aid and COM
fort to the avowed enemies of the
democracies and the way of life In
our country, which we all cherish
the evidence shows that those ef-
forts were impotent and, character
1stic OF the general conduct of these
defendants, relatively ineffective"
Some Of the defendants, in his op-
inion, "are either actually demented
or approximately insane, at least to
a point belonging distinctly to the
lunatic fringe"