81

(SUPREME COURT.) FRANKFURTER, FELIX. Typed Letter Signed, to Otto von Stockhausen Whitelock,

REVISITING HIS ROLE IN DEFENDING AN INNOCENT SOCIALIST ACTIVIST (SUPREME COURT.) FRANKFURTER, FELIX. Typed Letter Signed, to Otto von Stockhausen Whitelock, promising to send a copy of the report by President Woodrow Wilson's Mediation Commission concerning the case against activist Thomas J. Mooney as well as a copy of his article responding to the allegations made against Mooney ["In Answer to Mr. Beck," New Republic, 18 January 1922], explaining that the report was not authored by Frankfurter alone since the Commission chairman [Secretary of Labor William B.] Wilson carefully edited the text, remarking that he was not aware of Olin's pamphlet [John Myers Olin, Review of the Mooney Case: Its Relations to the Conduct in this Country of Anarchists, I.W.W. and Bolsheviki, 1920?], requesting a copy of the pamphlet for the Harvard Law School Library, and looking forward to his book on the subject. 1½ pages, 4to, written on two sheets of "Law School of Harvard University" stationery; faint toning to lower and left edges of first page, paper clip stain at upper left edge, folds. Cambridge, 13 May 1932

". . . Under separate cover I am sending you . . . the official text of the report of the President's Mediation Commission on the Mooney Case . . . .
". . . The report was in fact drafted by me as counsel for the President's Commission. . . . In addition, President Wilson in instructing the Commission to investigate the Mooney case said that 'as the lawyer of the Commission,' it 'would naturally be' my 'special responsibility'. While I drafted the report, every word of it was painstakingly gone over by the members of the Commission, and more especially by Secretary Wilson. It is most accurate, therefore, to say that the report was the report of the Commission. Certainly neither Mr. Stanley Arnold nor anyone else had any more to do with its drafting than did you.
". . . The other allegations which you attribute to the Olin pamphlet you will, I think, find conclusively dealt with in my reply to Mr. Beck's repetition of like charges. . . . [T]he quotations which you give from him are old and wholly untruthful stuff. I call your particular attention to the procedure which the Commission followed in investigating the case, the thorough inquiry that it made into the issues that seemed to it relevant, and the wide range of witnesses both for and against Mooney and disinterested outsiders to the controversy, like Archbishop Hanna . . . .
"If you happen to have a copy of the Olin pamphlet . . . I should be . . . thrice grateful if you have a spare copy, for permanent deposit in the library of this School. . . ."
On July 22, 1916, during a Preparedness Day Parade [a rally anticipating the U.S. entry into the War] in downtown San Francisco, a bomb exploded killing 10 and wounding scores. Anti-war activists were suspected and Thomas J. Mooney was arrested, charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. Recognizing that the political atmosphere of the city at the time might have prejudiced the case, President Wilson ordered a commission to investigate. The commission, whose secretary and legal counsel was later Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, found no evidence to support the conviction and the president subsequently commuted Mooney's sentence to life imprisonment. Years later, after the main witnesses confessed that their testimony during the trial had been perjured, the case against Mooney became indefensible and he was released in 1939.

  • Provenance:

    ". . . Under separate cover I am sending you . . . the official text of the report of the President's Mediation Commission on the Mooney Case . . . .
    ". . . The report was in fact drafted by me as counsel for the President's Commission. . . . In addition, President Wilson in instructing the Commission to investigate the Mooney case said that 'as the lawyer of the Commission,' it 'would naturally be' my 'special responsibility'. While I drafted the report, every word of it was painstakingly gone over by the members of the Commission, and more especially by Secretary Wilson. It is most accurate, therefore, to say that the report was the report of the Commission. Certainly neither Mr. Stanley Arnold nor anyone else had any more to do with its drafting than did you.
    ". . . The other allegations which you attribute to the Olin pamphlet you will, I think, find conclusively dealt with in my reply to Mr. Beck's repetition of like charges. . . . [T]he quotations which you give from him are old and wholly untruthful stuff. I call your particular attention to the procedure which the Commission followed in investigating the case, the thorough inquiry that it made into the issues that seemed to it relevant, and the wide range of witnesses both for and against Mooney and disinterested outsiders to the controversy, like Archbishop Hanna . . . .
    "If you happen to have a copy of the Olin pamphlet . . . I should be . . . thrice grateful if you have a spare copy, for permanent deposit in the library of this School. . . ."
    On July 22, 1916, during a Preparedness Day Parade [a rally anticipating the U.S. entry into the War] in downtown San Francisco, a bomb exploded killing 10 and wounding scores. Anti-war activists were suspected and Thomas J. Mooney was arrested, charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. Recognizing that the political atmosphere of the city at the time might have prejudiced the case, President Wilson ordered a commission to investigate. The commission, whose secretary and legal counsel was later Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, found no evidence to support the conviction and the president subsequently commuted Mooney's sentence to life imprisonment. Years later, after the main witnesses confessed that their testimony during the trial had been perjured, the case against Mooney became indefensible and he was released in 1939.
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