The Key West Citizen Newspaper, June 17, 1953, Page 3

FATE OF ROSENBERGS HANGS IN BALANCE TODAY Justice Considers Granting Of Stay -For Doomed Pair By DONALD SANDERS IGTON (#—The question liam O. Douglas, and possibly with him alone. ‘ Douglas considered for much of »> yesterday, and into the night, ? pleas from two groups of attor- neys for a stay of the execution scheduled in New York’s Sing man and wife convicted espionage for Russia had hope that President Eisen- would reverse his previous and spare their lives, they mo encouragement yesterday. @elegation of four clergymen the President to urge a Teprieve, and three of them ap- their mission of mercy as one. They said they got the impression Eisenhower was standing by his rejection of a simi- lar clemency petition Feb. 11. Justice Douglas, who voted with ‘Wednesday, June 17, 1953 SCN NRE ERLE THREB HOTELS IN THE KEY WEST CITIZEN the minority in Monday’s 5-4 Su- preme Court action refusing a stay of execution, spent 13 hours—less time for meals—studying legal data and listening to attorneys yes- terday. Shortly before 11 o'clock last nignt, Supreme Court Clerk Harold B. Willey announced that Douglas had not yet completed his study and that~his decision would not be announced before morning. The Rosenbergs’ principal attor- | ney, Emanuel H. Block, filed with the Justice Department a new pe- | tition for a presidentjal reprieve of the death sentences imposed more than two years agu. Block said that Daniel Lyons, the pardon attorney who will con- sider the appeal, told him it would not be “officially processed” or sent to the White House until the defense attorneys had exhausted | their legal moves. Bloch had obtained tae Rosen- bergs’ signatures on a visit to Sing Sing yesterdczy with couple’s sons, Michael, 10, and Robert, 6. The couple’s petition urged the President to “prevent a crime worse than murder” said that ‘the guilt, if we die, will be America’s.” “We are innocent,” the petition | Page 3 MIAMI at POPULAR PRICES Lecated in the Heart of the City WRITE or WIRE for RESERVATIONS with BATH and TELEPHONE Ritz Pershing Miller Hotel Hotel Hotel ' 132 G. Plagier St. 226.N.E. ist Ave. 229 N.E. Ist Ave. 102 Reoms 100 Rooms 80 Blevater Selarium Elevstor Heated Rooms Elevator $3 BLOCKS FROM UNION BUS STATION “Me? IM retired, too. 1 borrowed from CITY LOAN ‘0. to help convert the upstairs of my house into two apartments!” @ It’s surprising what a lot of good opportunities friendly help of TY 30 “ ean from cur children. mer, extra behind “almost Here are a few ha tips play. you can lene for yourself with the courteous, City Loan Co. An CO. WEST 524 SOUTHARD ST. DIAL 2.5681 In Springtime, Children, Like Flowers, Come Out Just About Everywhere ACCORDING TO COMMANDER H. N. KIRKMAN OF THE STATE HIGHWAY PATROL And that gives us an extra good reason for being better and more careful drivers during the Spring and Summer months, if for no other reason, said Kirkman. Continuing his appeal for the new Spring effort ef the motorist, Kirkman acid: oni era, don't always stay put, so that is why the motorist nearly always get—the unexpected “Children, unlike flow- foon now school will be out for the Sum- should be taken to safe- precautions the children who will be darting unexpectedly : everything” and right into the path of your auto, Kirkman declared. . the motorist can well and the alert in zones where children are - Be a two-purpose driver and watch where 1 ete en Snare ore | gs agp les or skating. kids a “brake” and by-pass the po Skea ha @ near panic. where n are horn. A sudden biast from @ child already in danger the unexpected when driv- at play, riding or walking. Overseas Transportation Company, Inc. the | and | | said. “The truth does not change.” |This wording was similar to that in a recent statement in which | | the Rosenbergs Gevlared they had | | rejected an offer, which they said | came from Atty. Gen. Brownell, for. clemency if they would tell what they know of Soviet espion- }age in this country. | Bloch, asked if there was any | chance they, would talk in an effort jto save their lives, replied: “‘No, they still maintain their inno- cence.” Official Moscow newspapers, in |their editions for today, took up the Rosenberg case for the first time and declared that “‘progres- sive opinion” in the U. S. and the | world ‘generally regards them as | “the victims of the war hysteria.” | “At the trial of the Rosenbergs,” |the Moscow papers ‘said, ,“‘there was not presented any convincing | proof whatsoever of their guilt.” Communists throughout the world have been agitating on be- half of the Rosenbergs, claiming they were convicted on perjured testimony. Red Poland yesterday offered to grant the couple “asy- lum” if the U. S. freed them—an offer which the State Department denounced as an “impertinence” to which it would not reply. There have also been numerous appeals in behalf of the couple from church groups and individ- juals never accused of Communist sympathies. The clergymen who called on Eisenhower to urge that he com- mute the sentence to life imprison- ment were Dr. Bernard Loomer, | head of the University of Chicago’s | School of Religion; the Rev. Dan- iel Ridout, Negro secretary of the Methodist Church in the Baltimore area; Rabbi Abraham Cronbach of | Cincinnati; and Dr. Bruce Dahl- | berg of Brooklyn. “My feeling was that the answer |was no,” said Dr. Loomer. The | Rev. Mr. Ridout said the President “indicated he would not commute the sentence.” One of the arguments made to Justice Douglas was that the trial judge, U. S. District Judge Irving R, Kaufman of New York, had Rosenbergs | (Part tl) By ARTHUR EVERETT »NEW YORK (™—There are 27 cells in the death house at Sing | Sing Prison and three of them are | jin a wing reserved for women. | The cells are slightly larger than }the average prison cell, being 8 | feet wide, 12 feet long and 9 feet | high. But they are furnished the }same as any other cell, with little ; more than a bed and a lavatory, Into one of these cells on April {11, 1951, vanished Ethel Rosen- | berg, a tiny mother of two sons, {She is now 37 years old. She was the first woman spy Sing Sing had ever seen. In fact, she was the | first federal prisoner ever to enter the death house. Mrs, Rosenberg, her husband Julius and their friend Morton | Sobell had been convicted the pre- vious March 29 on charges of con- | spiring in time of war to hand over | America’s atomic secrets to Soviet Russia. Julius Rosenberg followed his | wife to Sing Sing’s death house on May 15, 1951, Mrs, Rosenberg and her husband had been sentenced to death by | Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman, | who branded theirs a “crime Worse than murder.” Sobell, a lesser member of the conspiracy, got off | with As death ago, her last remark to the out side world came in a denunciation of her secution as “a political ears, Mrs, Rosenberg entered ‘the the sentences of were pronounced, the Rosenber; ease had not aroused unusual in- terest. The Communist press had treated the accusations sneeringly but not hysterically. But the unprecedented sentence, never before levied against Ameri- can spies outside a military court, changed all that. the rise of a baton, | broke into a tre- | of propaganda | feath sentence. And j the one Ethel Rosen- | heme was suggested when she entered the death house—frameup. The orators of condemned to were Communist sympathizers, because they were Jews. ¢ Kaufman, the sentencing was Jewish. He had spent in prayer in house that day two years | left pro- | ciaimed that the Rosenbergs were | fie because they \To Die Thursday UNLESS last-ditch appeals bring a stay of execution, Ethel Rosen- berg will be the seventh woman to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing, when she and her hus- band, Julius, condemned spies, are executed tomorrow night. no right to impose the death sen- tence. Attorneys argued that the Atom- ic Energy Act supersedes the 1917 Espionage Act under which the couple was sentenced, and that under the Atomic Energy Act the death sentence mzy not be im- posed without a recommendation \from the jury. Downfall Is Dramatic Spy Tale well be prepared to overwhelm us.” Many groups stepped forward. to refute the suggestion of anti-Semi- tism, among them the Jewish War Veterans, who commended Judge Kaufman’s disposition of the ease. But the Communists had. other Propaganda tunes to offer, and they were sung again and again, to the marching rhythm of pickets’ feet here and abroad in the next two years, in repeated demands to “save the Rosenbergs.” Another drama, quieter. and more gripping in its way, was un- der way within hours after the Rosenbergs were condemned. It was played out by their defense attorney, Emanuel H. Bloch, in every available appeals courtroom in the land, In the next two years, the Rosen- bergs were allowed to see each other twice a week. There were occasional visits from their two sons, Michael, 10, and Robert, 6. Most of the time, the couple spent apart, reading and listening jto the radio loudspeaker, Unlike other prisoners, death house in- mates do not have radio ear phones in their cells. They get Their programs from a_ central loudspeaker. When weather permitted, the | Rosenbergs were allowed outside for exercise, although not together. | Sing Sing’s Warden Wilfred | Denno found them no different in ‘their attitude “than any other | prisoner.” It was not until Feb. 25, 1952, that the U. S. Circuit Court of Ap- peals was ready to act on the first | jappeal from the Rosenbergs’ con- viction. The defense argued the | verdict was based on the Rosen- Our USED CAR LOT Is Open until 10 P.M. Each Night We Invite You te Come In and Leok Over Our New NAVARRO, Inc. USED CAR LOT 424 Southard St. Dial 2-262 \| WHATEVER YOUR NEEDS In THE LINE OF Children’s TOYS COME TO THE TROPICAL TRADER 718 Duval St. Dial 2-6262 | bergs’ purported sympathy for Russia and not en any real peril they presented to the nation. “It is nonsense to pass off espio- nage as mere political nonconform- ity,” angrily retorted the govern- ment. The Appeals Court refused to in- terfere with the death sentences. On Oct. 13, 1952, the U. S. Su- preme Court refused for the first time to review the conviction. Only Justice Black dissented. Again on Nov. 21, Black was the sole dis- senter as the Supreme Court re- fused for a second time to inter- vene. . Judge Kaufmen scheduled the execution of the Rosenbergs for the week of Jan. 12, 1953—a date later fixed at Jan. 14. The judge re- vealed he was beset by a “mount- ing campaign of vilification, abuse and pressure.” Leftists stepped up their demon- strations. Pickets marched outside the White House in Washington. A floral tribute to the Rosenbergs was left in the rai at the base of their prison wall. Not all the protests were Commu- nist inspired, however. Many sin- cere people took issue, not so much with the verdict as with the un- precedented death sentence, un- heard of in America. Albert Ein- stein was among these who urged clemency upon the White House. Late in 1952, Pope Pius XII inter- vened in behalf of the condemned couple. The head of the Roman Catholic church, without entering into the merits of the case, in- formed the Justice Department -of the many appeals he received for intercession in behalf of the Rosen- bergs. However, his plea never got beyond the Justice Department un- til after the White House had denied clemency, Later the Pope renewed it. On Jan. 2, 1953, Judge Kaufman denied the clemency cf his court keep their lips sealed ... I still feel that their crime was worse than murder.” His statement strengthened the belief the government might com- mute the death sentences if the Rosenbergs would confess and name other spies who had escaped detection. | er, Mrs. Tessie Greenglass, went to Sing Sing Jan. 6 and spent 90 minutes with her daughter. Gov- ernment sources indicated she tried in vain to get Ethel to But from Sing Sing, the husband | °mfess- and wife reasserted “cur innocence | On Jan. 9, five days before the before God and men.” scheduled execution, a stay of ex- Ethel Rosenberg’s bent old moth-! (Continued on Page Eleven) wih Kownd SUN-RAIN Gnd HURRICANE PROTECTION RM STOP IING - SHUTTER Phone 2-5531 ___ ESTIMATES CHEERFULLY GIVEN Key West Venetian Blind Co. 123 DUVAL STREET Awnings — Doors — Jalousies When you know your beer ...1TS gounn To te BUD A bottle of Bud can make an ordinary meal a real banquet! 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