The Press: Back on the Beat

• Share

In a Tulsa courtroom, U.S. Attorney B. Hayden Crawford charged that Tulsa Tribune Reporter Nolen Bulloch, famed for his exposes of bootlegging and political corruption, had actually for nine years masterminded an underworld ring that smuggled liquor into legally dry Oklahoma (TIME, March 11). Bulloch, roared the prosecutor, was the conductor of "a streetcar named Desire—and the desire was for money." He wanted Reporter Bulloch convicted on a conspiracy charge.

Last week, after seven days of inconclusive, often contradictory testimony from a parade of bootleggers, prostitutes and hoodlums called as government witnesses, Prosecutor Crawford's streetcar was derailed. Without even hearing the defense, U.S. District Judge Royce H. Savage directed a verdict acquitting Bulloch and two other defendants. When the verdict was announced, Reporter Bulloch, 49, who had contended that vengeful racketeers and politicians had tried to frame him, quietly moved from the defendant's bench to the press table, calmly picked up his pencil and paper, and started covering the rest of the case against 17 other Oklahomans who were charged with conspiracy. Sixteen of them, including the police commissioner, police chief and six members of the force, were convicted.