Briefs of Kamin, Furry Registered With Judge

Briefs supporting a motion to dismiss contempt of Congress indictments against Wendell H. Furry, associate professor of Physics, and Leon J. Kamin '49, former research assistant in Social Relations, reached Federal District Judge Bailey Aldrich '28 yesterday.

Gerald A. Berlin, Furry's lawyer; Calvin P. Bartlett, and John L. Saltonstall, Jr., counsels for Kamin, declared in separate briefs that the indictments should be rejected on the following grounds:

1) They fail adequately to inform the defendants of the charges they face, in that they do not state "the nature of the question under inquiry" in the hearings where furry and Kamin refused to answer questions put by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. This failure, the attorneys declare, is in violation of the Sixth Amendment.

Hearing Called illegal

2) The inferred subject of the bearings, "investigation of subversion in defense establishments and industry," does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Government Operations Committee of the Senate as defined in the Legislative reorganization Act of 1946.

In that act, the Committee was assigned supervision of budgetary and accounting measures in the Executive Branch, other than appropriations, and of Executive reorganization. Congress intended these functions to be performed within defined limits, and made no provision for the Committee to assume a general "watching" function or to investigate such areas as Communism in education.

3) The Vagueness of the law setting up the Government Operations Committee violates the Constitution. The law should, the lawyers said, be construed closely in criminal cases, and, by precedent, must thoroughly define the crime. Berlin included in his brief a section attacking the validity of each of the ten indictments against Furry.