The seven justices of the Supreme Court of California last week descended from their high judicial bench to hear John MacDonald recant testimony that had sent Thomas J. Mooney and Warren K. Billings, radical labor agitators, to prison for life. Sitting without robes, not as a court but as an advisory pardon board, the justices commenced what was virtually and peculiarly a retrial of the bombing of San Francisco's Preparedness Day parade in 1916. Billings, as a two-time felon, could be pardoned only with the Supreme Court's approval.
Witness MacDonald, wandering waiter, had been...