CORRUPTION IN STATE POLITICS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am sure that there are many who, like myself, found your lead editorial of May 22, 1964 shocking.

I wonder, on the basis of your editorial, whether it is old-fashioned and unsophisticated to feel that the concepts that an indictment is no evidence of guilt and that a defendant in a criminal case is presumed innocent until found guilty still have some validity. I wonder whether there are many other newspapers which have applied the term "crooks" to those who have been indicted by a grand jury but have not yet had the opportunity to make their defenses in court. I wonder, in view of the fact that proceedings before grand juries are absolutely secret, whether it is bad taste or worse to refer to rumors that the head of the Massachusetts "Turnpike Commission" (sic) would have been indicted, had he not died.

I believe that most of your readers during the so-called McCarthy era would have been astonished to read an editorial propounding the thesis, on the basis of the abandoned proceedings in the courts against Owen Lattimore or the ultimately unsuccessful loyalty proceedings against John Stewart Service and others, that the Government service was riddled with "reds" and "pinks". Yet, among other things, you refer to the case of an official under indictment leading a Harvard Commencement procession without pointing out that the indictment was later dismissed or that the indictment had nothing whatsoever to do with alleged corruption.

Respect for fundamental standards of fairness and precision and accuracy are as important in the newspaper profession as in any other. Your editorial meets none of these criteria. William P. Homans, Jr. '41   Representative, Second Middlesex District

The CRIMSON did not intend to pass upon the innocence or guilt of the indicted officials, but to bring attention to a situation which demands immediate legal action.--Ed.