Michael Musmanno Michael Angelo Musmanno ( April 7 , 1897 – October 12 , 1968 ) was an American jurist , politician , and naval officer . For nearly two decades from the early 1930s , he served as a judge in courts of Allegheny County , Pennsylvania . Entering the United States Navy during World War II , he served in the military justice system . After the war in 1946 he served as a governor of an occupied district in Italy . Beginning in 1947 , he served as a presiding judge for the Einsatzgruppen Trial in US military court at Nuremberg . Musmanno returned to the United States and in 1951 was elected as a justice to the state Supreme Court in Pennsylvania , where he served from 1952 to his death in 1968 . He set a record for the number of dissenting opinions filed . Considered " a complicated figure in Pittsburgh history " , he was known for defending Sacco - Vanzetti , as well for anti - Communism and support for civil rights . In addition to his long judicial career and postwar contributions in Europe , he wrote sixteen books and articles related to his cases and career . He also wrote to express his sympathy for working men and deep interest in the Italians in the United States . Early life and education . Musmanno was born into an ethnic Italian family in Stowe Township , in Allegheny County , Pennsylvania , an industrial neighborhood a few miles west of Pittsburgh . He worked with his father in the coal mines before going to college and law school . He became a labor lawyer and always kept a sympathy for the working man . Career . Politics and judiciary . After entering law practice , Musmanno got involved in politics during the 1920s . He was elected as a Republican state legislator for Pennsylvania in 1928 . He was deeply interested in the plight of the working man and was sympathetic to the Italians and other ethnic minorities who worked in Pennsylvania industries . He served as an appellate attorney in the 1920s in relation to the Sacco - Vanzetti case ; the men were convicted in 1921 , in an atmosphere of anti - immigrant feeling . The appeals upheld the lower court decision , and the men were sentenced to death in 1927 . Haunted by the conduct of the trial , Musmanno wrote " After Twelve Years " ( 1939 ) , a book about the case , as well as two articles in 1963 , published in " The New Republic " and the " Kansas Law Review " . A miner Mike Shemanski was murdered in Imperial , Pennsylvania in 1929 by the Coal and Iron Police during a strike . Musmanno was outraged and , as a state legislator , worked to banish the private police force , supporting the governor ' s efforts . In addition , he published a short story about the case , entitled " Jan Volkanik . " This was adapted in part as the basis of the film " Black Fury " ( 1935 ) , starring Paul Muni as a coal miner , and with a screenplay written by Abem Finkel and Carl Erickson . It was directed by Michael Curtiz . In 1931 , Musmanno became the youngest judge in the county court of Allegheny County . In 1934 he switched to the Democratic Party . He was appointed as a judge in the common pleas court , where he served until 1951 . World War II . During World War II , Musmanno entered the United States Navy Judge Advocate General Corps ( JAG ) , where he rose to the rank of Rear Admiral . During the Allied occupation after the war , he served as a regional military governor of the Sorrentine Peninsula in Italy . In 1946 , he was appointed head of the three - person Board of Soviet Repatriation of Displaced Persons in 1946 in Austria . He opposed the forcible repatriation of Cossacks and refugees to the Soviet Union , many of whom did not want to be " repatriated . " He was successful in aiding some of these people . Later it was learned that Stalin ' s government persecuted many of these returnees , condemning many to internal exile or the harsh labor camps of the gulag in Siberia , where they died . Beginning in 1947 , Musmanno was presiding judge at the Einsatzgruppen Trial of the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunal , held in Nuremberg , men charged with killing more than a million people behind the front lines , including Jews , Poles , and minorities . He also served as a member of the court during the military trials of Milch and the Pohl . In 1966 Musmanno testified as a prosecution witness in Jerusalem in the Israeli trial of Adolf Eichmann . In 1948 Musmanno conducted interviews with several people who had worked closely with Adolph Hitler in the very last days of WWII . These served as the basis of his book , " Ten Days to Die " ( 1950 ) . These interviews were filmed but were lost to history until early 2013 . Postwar career . Musmanno tried to enter politics , running unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor in 1950 . He resumed his judicial career . A strong anti - Communist in the postwar years , Musmanno was an unofficial spokesman for the local Americans Battling Communism . He was noted for testifying for the prosecution in the 1950 anti - Communist sedition case against Steve Nelson , who was leading a regional branch of the American Communist Party . The Communists had sold political tracts ( available at any library ) for $ 5 . 75 to Musmanno , who declared their store " the equivalent of an advance post of the Red Army . " Nelson initially was sentenced to 20 - years in prison , $ 10 , 000 in fines and $ 13 , 000 in prosecution costs . The Supreme Court of the United States ultimately threw out the case and the Pennsylvania and other state anti - sedition laws , saying federal law superseded the state law under which Nelson was prosecuted . Musmanno gained name recognition from his part in the Nelson trial . He was elected in 1951 as justice to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania , serving from 1952 to his death in 1968 . During his long career on the bench , he " became known as an advocate for the underdog . " He also was noted for his dissenting opinions : during his first 5 years on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court , he wrote more dissenting opinions than all of the other justices on the court had collectively written in the previous 50 years . When asked if he read Musmanno ' s dissenting opinions , Pennsylvania Chief Justice Horace Stern said he was not " interested in current fiction . " Not long afterward , however , the court issued a ruling in which this Justice participated , and the wording was unquestionably similar to that in one of Musmanno ' s dissenting opinions . In " Perpetua v . Philadelphia Transportation Company , " Musmanno wrote the dissenting opinion , while in " Koehler v . Schwartz , " he wrote the prevailing opinion , in which Stern joined him . In a book about personal injury suits and these cases , the attorney Melvin Belli added that Chief Justice Stern " lived to regret " his insulting remark . In one case , because Musmanno had failed to circulate a dissenting opinion among the other justices before he filed it , the piece was not published in the official Pennsylvania State Reports . He sought a writ of mandamus to require its publication . The trial court denied the writ . When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard the case , Musmanno represented himself as defendant ; , the Court affirmed the lower court ' s decision . While a controversial figure for such actions , Musmanno was noted as having wonderful " pro - labor credentials . " In addition , during the 1960s he supported civil rights marchers . Musmanno strongly dissented from a 1966 state ruling that Henry Miller ' s book " Tropic of Cancer " was not obscene . He wrote : " Cancer " is not a book . It is a cesspool , an open sewer , a pit of putrefaction , a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity . And in the center of all this waste and stench , besmearing himself with its foulest defilement , splashes , leaps , cavorts and wallows a bifurcated specimen that responds to the name of Henry Miller . One wonders who the human species could have produced so lecherous , disgusting and amoral a human being as Henry Miller . One wonders why he is received in polite society . . . . " Books . Musmanno wrote a total of sixteen books , some reflecting his professional cases . He described the sedition case in his book , " Across the Street from the Courthouse " ( 1954 ) . Other works include a 30 - page transcript of his 1932 debate with Clarence Darrow on immortality in Pittsburgh , " The Story of Italians in America " ( 1965 ) , and " Glory & The Dream : Abraham Lincoln , Before and After Gettysburg " ( 1967 ) . In 1966 he published a novel version of the 1935 film , " Black Fury . " by the same name . He was very proud of his Italian heritage . Among the books he wrote was one arguing that Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover the New World . This had been replaced by documentation that European fishermen had reached the northeast coast of North America before Columbus ' time . The judge was a lifelong Catholic and attended the Mount St . Peter Church in New Kensington . On 11 November 1951 , he was the first lay orator to read from the pulpit of the newly dedicated building . Musmanno was intensely religious . The last of his many dissenting opinions was against overturning an assault / attempted rape conviction in which the trial judge instructed the jury to seek God ' s guidance in reaching their decision . He wrote in his dissent : I was afraid it would come to this . It is becoming the fashion to make light of religious invocation . Books are being published asking whether God is dead . Well , God is not dead , and judges who criticize the invocation of Divine Assistance had better begin preparing a brief to use when they stand themselves at the Eternal Bar of Justice on Judgment Day . Justice Musmanno concluded : " I am perfectly willing to take my chances with [ the trial judge ] at the gates of Saint Peter and answer on our ' voir dire ' that we were always willing to invoke the name of the Lord in seeking counsel in rendering a grave decision on earth , which I believe the one in this case to be . " - " Miserere nobis Omnipotens Deus ! " Justice Musmanno died the following day , October 12 , 1968 , Columbus Day . Articles and books . Catalogue entries of his writings are available at Hathi Trust Digital Library .