The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 29, 1919, Page 7

At j ~ JUDG Leader and other League papers. . farmers and their pro- ~nesota ‘political gang to ‘the- - League’s disloyalty . " ‘the simple reason, to state ‘has been forced to make a ~statement on behalf of ~a statement of 10 type- - alty and otherwise bitter- Judge Dean of Jackson county, Minn., who presided at the Townley-Gilbertttrial, that he has at last been forced to make a three-column statement for publication in the newspapers at- SO WIDESPREAD and emphatic has become the criticism of tempting to justify his biased conduct. Judge Dean has not been ' forced into this very embarrassing defensive position solely through accounts and criticisms of the trial appearing in the Nonpartisan ( The menace to the honor and integrity of the courts and the threat against the fundamentals of American institutions, contained in such farcical proceedings as that at -Jackson, have aroused thinking people throughout the country, and from every state in the Union have come protests and demands for fair play to Mr. Townley and Mr. Gilbert, entirely in- dependent of the Nonpartisan league and largely from perczons and source$ not even in sym- : : pathy with the organized gram. Not only has the spir- - it for fair play inherent in all true Americans been enlisted everywhere on be- half of Messrs. Townley and Gilbert, but the news- papers and interests that were expected by the Min=- take advantage of the con- victions as propaganda against the League, have not done so. They have not dared to exploit the convictions as evidence of and unworthiness, nor to defend Judge Dean,. for it plainly, that the whole frameup and proceeding was rotten to the core, and the League enemies knew it. ~And so Judge Dean himself. When Mr. Town- . ley and M¢. Gilbert ap- peared . at Jackson last week to be sentenced the judge read from the bench written pages, intended to answer his critics and put in as good a light as pos- sible the judicial persecu- tion to which the political machinery of Jackson county lent itself. One of the chief things that showed Judge Dean’s prejudice was an interview by him appear- ing before the trial in the St. James Plaindealer, in which he accused the Non- partisan league of disloy- He called it “The. Thinker.” ly attacked it. The inter- view showed him to be a violent enemy of -the g League. Judge Dean now AR 2 repudiates that interview, a year after it was published. In his recent statement from the bench he avoids denying directly that he used the language quoted, but he now says the quotation was not authorized by him. He says it was written “by an irresponsible employe of the Plaindealer” and “printed without the knowledge or consent of the editor of that paper.” He admits that the language quoted “contains parts of a private conversation had among three people, of which this court was one,” but he says it was a “garbled and distorted” report of his conversation and “published in viola- ‘“tion-of newspaper ethics.” This, of course, is not a denial of the essential truth of the - "Plaindealer’s interview with him, and it is a very thin and .trans- parent piece of quibbling. Apparently the judge’s consciente will - not permit him to deny flatly words which he knows:he spoke, but - this does not prevent him from trying to get out of the difficulty by a pretty piece-of squirming. The judge has done just exactly rate *pgd SEVEN what every shifty politician does when he finds that his intempe '——Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris. A French sculptor, Rodin, made a famous statue of a man sitting in silent thought. Morris has drawn a parody on this famous study. He represents the opposiiion to tho League thinking. Morris® cartoon, of course, is a joke, because the opposiiion to the League does not think. If the opposition did think it would reach the same conclusion as that reached by the gentleman shown above. But instead of doing something for the farmer, and thus preventing the League from get- ting a foothold, the Leaguc opposition contents i‘self with pcrsecutions, calling names, | mob violence and the like. And then they wonder why the League.kecps qn.growing! and injudicious words look bad in print. He has stated the inter- view is ‘“not authorized” and “printed in violation of newspaper ethics,” without specifically denying it. He has become more in- volved in his embarrassing situation, instead of getting out of it. But all this is aside from the fact that the Plaindealer inter- view, which plainly showed his prejudice against the League and disqualified him from presiding at the trial, has been allowed to ‘stand for a year without a public retraction by the judge, until ‘recently, when he finds it is to his advantage to deny his former words. Now the Plaindealer is an anti-League publication which. faithfully serves the Minnesota political gang, with which gang also Judge Dean and the prosecuting attorney of Jackson are in good standing. The Plaindealer would have published the judge’s denial of the interview any time during the last year, had he requested it, i : and it is legitimate to as- sume he would have re- quested it had the inter- view been a misquotation. Judge D ean makes much of the fact that nei- ther Messrs. Townley and Gilbert or their attorneys filed a formal affidavit of prejudice against him and asked for a different judge or change of venue. He ¢a2ys this should have been done had the defendants believed him biased. The facts are, as the judge knows, that it is impos- sible, under Minnesota ju- dicial procedure, for -de- fendants to force a change of venue in misdemeanor cases. The code specifical- ly provides that a change of veriue can be had on motion of the defendants only in cases where the offense charged is punish- able with death or impris- cnment in the peniten- tiary, and the offense charged in this case was not so punishable. It is true that Judge Dean could, under the law, on his own motion, have let " another judge try the'case, if he believed himself prejudiced; and in certain cases the governor may order another judge to try a case. But, though the lawyers of the defendants intimated to Judge Dean in unmistakable terms that they considered him unfit to give their clients justice, he made no move to relinquish the case to another court, and of - course, no matter what representations Messrs. Townley and Gilbert had made to the governor, he would not have acted. The certain conviction of the defendants in the court of S a biased judge would too ' well serve the political purposes of the governor and his henchmen" to permit him to act in favor of the League representatives. The - ® IMUST DO DIFFERENTLY THE ONLY WAY TO STOP. THE. GFPOWTH OF THE SQUARE DEAL, " .governor had already refused to remove the sheriff of Jackson county; although the League over a year ago presented evidence to him that the sheriff had permitted mob violence there against Mr. Gilbert and his attorneys in connection with Gilbert’s trial for “un- lawful assemblage” early in 1918. The evidence against the sheriff was conclusive, as the record shows. 3 Judge Dean, in the lengthy defense of his conduct, takes up statements made in articles criticizing him which have appeared in Leslie’s Weekly and the Public, and seems to be particularly angered by the statement that the political gang chose an “out-of- the-way, county’’ and an “inaccessible town” in which to stage the trial. " But he has made no attempt to answer equally strong eriti- | cisms of his conduct made in the Nation, the New Republic, the Out- look, the labor press generally, many big eastern dailies and other non-League publications. If he did it would take four more columns; 3 DEAN ON THE DEFENSIVE