CRIME: Second Time Around

James Michael Curley had come full circle, and he looked it. Even before he began his spectacular political career—four terms as Boston's mayor, one term as Massachusetts governor and three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives—Curley had done time for trying to defraud the Civil Service Commission. Now, 72, gaunt with sickness, he was back in jail, this time for using the mails to defraud.

Curley had fought his conviction and sentence through U.S. Appellate and Supreme Courts, and lost. Last week, in the Washington District Court of Judge James M. Proctor, he made a final effort to beat the rap. But despite doctors' affidavits saying that Curley suffered from nine dangerous afflictions, and Curley's dramatic pleas for clemency, Judge Proctor was unmoved. Said he: "I think the defendant should be committed today." Said Curley: "You are sentencing me to death. There should be some less punishment than that." Said the Judge: "Penal institutions are staffed and equipped to care for prisoners in ill health."

While U.S. marshals bundled Curley off to serve 6 to 18 months in the federal prison at Danbury, Conn., Boston quietly saw to it that Democrat Curley would get the best of care. The state legislature voted to pay him his $20,000-a-year salary while he was in jail. Then the obliging legislature upped ruddy, 49-year-old City Clerk John B. Hynes, a political unknown, to the office of temporary mayor. Salary: $20,000. In or out of jail, sick or hale, Jim Curley still seemed to have official Boston firmly by the tail.