The Press: After Flemington

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From Jan. 2 to Feb. 13, 1935, the State of New Jersey was engaged at Flemington in trying Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. Concessionnaires sold to the 60,000 daily sightseers 10¢ replicas of the kidnap ladder, reporters adjourned to Nellie's Tap Room, after filing a million words daily, to sing a parody of the German Schnitzel-bank song about the ransom note and the baby's sleeping garment, and Edward J. Reilly took the defense with small chance of pay because "it's a criminal lawyer's dream of a case." To millions of decent U. S. citizens the Flemington trial seemed more like a nightmare, and fortnight ago, after long study, a committee of 18 leading U. S. editors, publishers and lawyers agreed that it was "the most spectacular and depressing example of improper publicity and professional misconduct ever presented to the people of the United States. . . ."

In January 1936 Lawyer Newton Diehl Baker was appointed by the American Bar Association chairman of a committee of lawyers to meet with a committee of editors (under Stuart Perry of the Adrian, Mich. Telegram) and a committee of publishers (under Paul Bellamy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer) to "agree upon standards of publicity of judicial proceedings and methods of obtaining an observance of them. . . ." The 18 members met twice, communicated often. Groundwork for the final report, considered at the A. B. A. convention at Kansas City this week, was a report which the A. B. A.'s Special Committee on Publicity in Criminal Trials prepared (but never released) as a result of political complications ensuing from the Hauptmann trial. The half-dozen recommendations which formed the nub of this week's report, therefore, while studiously avoiding any direct reference to the doings at Flemington, evoked strong recollections of that amazing case as point by point the committee implied a well-known horrible example for each reform proposed:

At Flemington, Sheriff John H. Curtiss packed newsmen into the stuffy courtroom like cordwood, accepting "donations" of $5 and $10 for seats.

Recommendation in this week's report to the A. B. A.: "That attendance in the court room during the progress of a criminal trial be limited to the seating capacity of the room."

At Flemington, officials of high and low degree paid off social and political obligations by obtaining courtroom passes for the curious.

Recommendation: "That the process of subpoena or any other process of the court should never be used to secure preferential admission of any person or spectator; that such abuse of process be punished as contempt."

At Flemington, defense and prosecution rehearsed each night for the benefit of the press. Detailed previews of the trial's every legal move were on every U. S. newspaper front page the next morning before court convened.

Recommendation: "That broadcasting of arguments, giving out of argumentative press bulletins, and every other form of argument or discussion addressed to the public by lawyers in the case during the progress of the litigation be definitely forbidden."

At Flemington, defense counsel lost no time announcing that it would appeal on 16 points including Judge Thomas Whitaker Trenchard's "misleading" charge to the jury.