page_title: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
section_title: Trial and conviction
hierarchical_section_title: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg / Rosenberg case / Trial and conviction
context_page_description: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple was accused of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs; at that time the United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 in the Sing Sing correctional facility in Ossining, New York.
  Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.
  For decades, the Rosenbergs' sons and many other defenders maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, much information concerning them was declassified, including a trove of decoded Soviet cables, which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets and Ethel's role as an accessory.
context_section_description: The trial of the Rosenbergs and Sobell on federal espionage charges began on March 6, 1951, in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Judge Irving Kaufman presided over the trial, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol leading the prosecution and criminal defense lawyer Emmanuel Bloch representing the Rosenbergs. The prosecution's primary witness, David Greenglass, said that he turned over to Julius Rosenberg a sketch of the cross-section of an implosion-type atom bomb. This was the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device used in the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He also testified that his sister Ethel Rosenberg typed notes containing US nuclear secrets in the Rosenberg apartment in September 1945.
  The Rosenbergs both remained defiant as the trial progressed. During testimony, they asserted their right under the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment not to incriminate themselves when asked about their involvement in the Communist Party or their activities with its members.
  On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. They were sentenced to death on April 5 under Section 2 of the Espionage Act of 1917, which provides that anyone convicted of transmitting or attempting to transmit to a foreign government "information relating to the national defense" may be imprisoned for life or put to death.
  Prosecutor Roy Cohn later claimed that his influence led to both Kaufman and Saypol being appointed to the Rosenberg case, and that Kaufman imposed the death penalty based on Cohn's personal recommendation. Cohn would go on later to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy, appointed as Chief Counsel to the investigations subcommittee during McCarthy's tenure as Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee.
  In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman noted that he held the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage but also for American deaths in the Korean War:
  "I consider your crime worse than murder ... 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."
  Julius Rosenberg claimed the case was a political frame-up.
caption: David Greenglass's sketch of an implosion-type nuclear weapon design, illustrating what he allegedly gave the Rosenbergs to pass on to the Soviet Union
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