NEW YORK: Safety Play

• Share

Memorable for Harry Hopkins' speech in Iowa, which may help decide the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1940 (see p. 11), last week was also punctuated by a speech from the leading Republican Presidential possibility. Scene was the Manhattan courtroom of General Sessions Judge Charles C. Nott Jr. There 62-year-old Tammany Leader Jimmy Hines, a New Deal patronage dispenser in Manhattan, was on trial for serving as prop and protection dispenser for Harlem's $20,000,000-a-year numbers racket (TIME, Aug. 29)* There, too, 37-year-old Republican District Attorney Thomas Edmund Dewey was on trial for his political life.

Quiet, matter-of-fact, smiling was Prosecutor Dewey as he rose to sum up the State's case before the blue-ribbon jury. Although Tom Dewey's first attempt at pinning Jimmy Hines had ended in a mistrial and given the defense a complete preview of his case, although his star witness. Numbers Racketeer George Weinberg, had committed suicide before he could be brought back to the stand, Tammanyman Hines and his counsel had seemed unable to press their advantage. Nevertheless, even confident Tom Dewey was pleasantly surprised when the jury returned less than seven hours after it went out. His smile broke into a relieved grin as to each of the 13 counts in the Hines indictments the jury's foreman, a meat salesman, Leonard T. Hobert, chanted a firm "Guilty."

Four months ago that verdict might have had the immediate political effect of winning Tom Dewey New York's Governorship. Last week its political effect was longterm, for Mr. Dewey a vital safety play rather than a touchdown. For old Jimmy Hines, whose attorney, hard-boiled Lloyd Paul Stryker, burst into tears, it meant a possible prison sentence of 25 years unless he appeals successfully.