After the Trial

After the conviction of the 11 Communist leaders last week, two problems linger on to bother those who wish to maintain justice while preventing subversion. One is a legislative problem, the other a question of specific procedures used by courts and loyalty boards.

After a stop at the Circuit Court of Appeals, the Communist conspiracy case will move to the U. S. Supreme Court. Here the Justices will have to deal with a highly important issue: the constitutionality of the Smith Act, under which the 11 indictments were brought.

No layman can competently decide such a question. But we can say that we have been a little worried about the Smith Act, which was passed in 1940. We are particularly concerned about this clause:

"(It is illegal) to organize or help to organize any society, group or assembly of persons who teach, advocate or encourage the overthrow or destruction of (the) government . . . by force or violence; or to be or become a member of, or affiliate with, any such group, society or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof."

Both the wording and the scope of this section appear so broad that a zealous prosecutor might, using the Act, jail a citizen who was naive, but decidedly loyal.

There is comfort, however, in the fact that although their lawyers condemned the proceedings, the 11 Communists received the procedural safeguards provided in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. For example, each Party boss was, in the language of the Bill of Rights, "informed of the nature and cause of the accusation" and "confronted with the witnesses against him."

In the past week many newspapers have made a dramatic comparison between the safeguards employed in the Communist trial and the methods of the recent Czechoslovakian purge. The comparison is legitimate and brings credit to our courts. But it is less satisfactory to compare the procedures in Judge Medina's court with the methods of some for our Loyalty Boards, which can not imprison a man, but which can deprive him of his job and his reputation.

One recent loyalty case involves a young woman who one year ago was fired from the Federal Security Agency for suspected "Communism." According to the New Yorker magazine, the lady had produced witnesses who said she was a vigorous anti-Communist. But she lost her job--despite the fact that no witnesses confronted her, and despite the fact that the "only evidence against her was the unsworn statements of unknown persons," whose allegations rest in a still-secret FBI report.

The lady's dismissal has been upheld by the Loyalty Review Board and by a Federal Judge, who sustained the dismissal on the ground that the FBI report contained "hearsay evidence", which he defended as admissible in French courts.

Loyalty boards who subscribe to such nonsense might well read up on he mechanics of the Communist trial to find out what are proper procedures for trying American citizens. It is true that a Loyalty Board is not a court of law. But since when is justice so closely confined?